Bitterns

Cinnamon Bittern

A walk around Suan Rot Fai this morning produced a few notable birds including a Peregrine, four Night Herons, three  Pale-legged/Sakhalin Leaf Warblers, two Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers, a Black-naped Monarch and two species of Bittern on the same pool - a juv Cinnamon and two adult male Yellows.

Most bizarre to see was a Chinese Pond Heron in full breeding plumage - presumably the same bird that I saw in late October, featured on Birding Frontiers and which I had assumed would transition to non-breeding plumage, but actually seems to be more pristine now that it was a month ago. 

Chinese Pond Heron

22nd & 23rd Nov 2014

A rather busy weekend, but managed to get some birding in on both days.

Saturday morning found me checking out Muang Boran Fish Ponds and Bang Poo, with the Fish Ponds produsing  lots of Black-browed Reed Warblers (but not the hoped for Manchurian RW) as well as four Chestnut Munias, three Chestnut-tailed Starlings and several Pheasant-tailed Jacana.

Black-browed Reed Warbler

Bang Poo was a Gull-fest, with the seemingly homogenous flock of Brown-headed Gulls harbouring at least two Black-headed Gulls and a rather confusion selection of moult stages for a laraphobe like me (the last time I looked at gulls was here, two years ago!).

adult Brown-headed Gull

adult Black-headed Gull

adult Brown-headed Gull

adult Black-headed Gull

1 CY Brown-headed Gull

1 CY Brown-headed Gull

1CY Black-headed Gull

1CY Black-headed Gull

Sunday morning was spent taking some visitors to Khok Kham, and with the help of Mr Tii seeing a single Spoon-billed Sandpiper amongst a huge number of waders.  Broad-billed Sandpipers seemed to be especially well represented, with small numbers of Great and Red Knot, a couple of Turnstones and a single Dunlin in the mix.  Remarkably one of the flocks of grey-and -white winter plumaged red-necked stints held a breeding plumaged bird, looking very out of place.

very late "red" Red-necked Stint

Luscinia on the path

This morning was the first, after ten days of being laid up with flu that I actually felt like getting out of bed, so I went to Suan Rot Fai for a couple of hours.

There has been a big drop off in the number of Phylloscs passing through the park, with just a single PLLW/Sakhalin and three Yellow-browed Warblers heard, but a few late autumn migrants have turned up including 2-3 Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers, single Hair-crested Drongo and Black-naped Monarch.

The highlight of the morning however was the vision of a "robin" on the path that leads to a private area of woodland. As soon as I saw it my brain said (european) Robin as as I raised my bins my brain actually engaged and thought "wrong continent...whatever this is it's going to be good!" and then the binos finally met my eyes they were filled with a Bluethroat -  a new bird for the patch.

Bluethroats are reasonably common in arable land elsewhere in Thailand, but I've never seen one in the city, though it has been on my list of candidate species that could turn up in the Park.  This one sat in the open for about 20 seconds, but as I attempted to switch from bins to camera it flicked out of view and didn't reappear despite me putting in considerable effort to re-find it. Those Luscinia are sneaky little buggers!