Woke up this morning with a fever, so abandoned plans to drive to Bang Pu for waders and gulls and instead plumped for a gentle session on the patch.
The weather was really gloomy - heavy overnight rain and low cloud meant that it still didn't really feel light even an hour after sunrise. In my febrile state, the birding was a bit laborious, but after a while I was rewarded with some uncommon migrants - two Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers and an Asian Paradise Flycatcher, followed by a very skulking Thick-billed Warbler that had me convinced for a while that it was going to be something more interesting.
The park was littered with Taiga Flycatchers and I saw at least 4 Asian Brown Flycatchers, phylloscs included several Yellow-brows and three Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warblers - one of which I had responding to Sakhalin call.
The bird of the morning however was a flyover Grey Heron, which was a patch tick! Grey Herons are reasonably common on the Gulf of Thailand, but I cannot recollect ever seeing one in the city.
Other herons this morning included numerous pond herons, including the adult breeding plumaged Chinese Pond Heron that is still hanging around.
EDIT: Doing some reading from Round (2008) about Grey Herons here in Thailand it appears that the race found here is jouyi and that although it used to breed in small numbers to at least 1950 the breeding population has been extirpated so that all birds seen today are migrants from north-eastern Asia. Indeed there are five recoveries of birds ringed as nestlings in south-eastern Siberia and the Amur Basin. The highest count on the gulf of Thailand is 450 at Petchaburi in January 2003.
The weather was really gloomy - heavy overnight rain and low cloud meant that it still didn't really feel light even an hour after sunrise. In my febrile state, the birding was a bit laborious, but after a while I was rewarded with some uncommon migrants - two Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers and an Asian Paradise Flycatcher, followed by a very skulking Thick-billed Warbler that had me convinced for a while that it was going to be something more interesting.
The park was littered with Taiga Flycatchers and I saw at least 4 Asian Brown Flycatchers, phylloscs included several Yellow-brows and three Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warblers - one of which I had responding to Sakhalin call.
The bird of the morning however was a flyover Grey Heron, which was a patch tick! Grey Herons are reasonably common on the Gulf of Thailand, but I cannot recollect ever seeing one in the city.
Other herons this morning included numerous pond herons, including the adult breeding plumaged Chinese Pond Heron that is still hanging around.
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| jouyi Grey Heron |
EDIT: Doing some reading from Round (2008) about Grey Herons here in Thailand it appears that the race found here is jouyi and that although it used to breed in small numbers to at least 1950 the breeding population has been extirpated so that all birds seen today are migrants from north-eastern Asia. Indeed there are five recoveries of birds ringed as nestlings in south-eastern Siberia and the Amur Basin. The highest count on the gulf of Thailand is 450 at Petchaburi in January 2003.
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