Avadavats

I spent the last week working in Mae Sot.  This allowed for some pre-work birding on three mornings, which was generally rather unproductive given the time.

A couple of nice features however were regular encounters with Horsfield's Bush Larks in song flight, but more spectacularly encounters with a group of Red Avadavats in the grassy filed where I had seen four birds the previous week.  This time I was armed with the camera, and whilst is is very difficult to estimate how many birds were present I feel confident of a minimum count in the range of 15-20 birds.

Unfortuantely none of these were adult breeding males (I think they have already finished breeding as I have seen breeding males with nesting material in early January).  HBW states: "Female is greyish-brown above, rump and uppertail-coverts red with few indistinct white spots, small white or pale buff tips on upperwing-coverts and tertials" and it also states that the female "gives a short song" whilst "Male non-breeding is like female, but with white spots on red uppertail-coverts, larger pale tips on greater coverts". This makes me think that perhaps that perhaps Bird 1 is an adult female - it was singing but the spots on the tertials are rather dull and the uppertail coverts only have a few spots.  I think that birds 2 and 3 are both males.

All images are taken with a Nikon V1 and 300mm f4 lens.

Bird 1 - female in song

Bird 1 - female

Bird 2 - non-breeding male, moulting tertials

Bird 3 - non breeding male

Mae Sot

A quick pre-breakfast visit to the rice fields behind Mae Sot Airport this morning produced excellent, prolonged views of four female-type Red Avadavats and a Bright-headed Cisticola. Naturally my camera had been left at home...

Sunday, 18th May

I fancied trying for some late spring waders yesterday, so made an early morning trip to Khok Kham to catch high tide.

Still  a good number of waders present

Despite the late date there were a good few birds around -  a mixture of over-summering 2nd calendar year birds and perhaps late migrating/non-breeding adults.  Highlights included 100+ Lesser Sandplover, 50+ Red-necked Stint, 10 Curlew Sandpipers, a posse for six Eurasian Curlew with a single Whimbrel, ten Black-tailed Godwits, one Terek Sandpiper, one Ruddy Turnstone and a couple of Greenshank.

Red-necked Stints

pink-legged Pond Heron

Whiskered Terns

 Herons included at least 10 Night Heron, and several Javan Pond Herons, including the  rather red-legged individual above (the leg colour a sign of prime breeding condition), whilst terns included thirty or so Whiskereds, a single White-winged Black and several Little Terns.  I took rather a meandering route back to Bangkok, picking up two stunning male Asian Golden Weavers from the car.

Possibly the highlight of the day however was seeing this huge waterspout over the Gulf of Thailand...

UK

I'm now back in Bangkok after a couple of weeks visiting family and friends in the UK.  There was a bit of time for birding at the beginning of my trip, taking in Dungeness (pair of Black-winged Stilts, Black Tern, Raven, Arctic Skuas) and Blakeney/Cley/Salthouse (Wryneck, Ouzel, Fieldfare, Redstart, Merlin, Med Gulls, Winchat, Wheatears), and some more casual efforts around the family home in Cambridgeshire (Garganey, Red Kite and escaped Black-winged Stilt) plus incidentals whilst in the Brecon Beacons (singing Redstart and Pied Fly, Raven, Red Kite).

above & below: Dungeness Stilts

Wryneck

Rouzel

Med Gulls

Plastic Stilt (note the orange leg ring)

Forest Wag

A short trip to Suan Rot Fai after work yesterday produced very little other than a Forest Wagtail (always a welcome sight) and a single Black-naped Oriole.  That's pretty much my Asian spring birding done as I will be away for the next two weeks and when I get back the patch will be all but deserted of Eastern Palearctic migrants.

Sakhalin/Pale-legged Leaf Warbler

This morning at Suan Rot Fai was again rather slow, but I eventually found a Sakhalin/Pale-legged Leaf Warbler which gave good views and so I thought I'd try a little playback experiment to see if it would respond, enabling me to confirm the ID.  I tried this once or twice last spring, in the hope that a male bird might come in to the tape or even sing, but the birds I tried it with last year ignored the tape entirely. This might be because the birds were not adult males, or because the quality of the sound recording of Sakhalin available in Xeno-Canto a year ago was rather poor (there is now a better recording by Frank Lambert).

Today's bird seemed to respond (more inquisitive) better to PLLW song, however a number of different speces were drawn in by the tape, so it is hard to say if this was a species-specific response, and the bird did not sing, so it remains unidentified. Others have had more success recently, with a singing Sakhalin found in another Bangkok park in the last few days, and Dave Bakewell blogged about one he found in Malaysia recently.

Sakhalin/Pale-legged Leaf Warbler

Other migrants included two Yellow-rumped Flycatchers (one an adult male), and a few winterers/migrants in the form of three Brown Shrikes, three Asian Brown Flycatchers and two Taiga Flycatchers. There are still a good number of Chinese Pond Herons around (I saw perhaps 10), plus at least three Javan PHs, plus last year's suspected hybrid Pond Heron seems to have reappeared.

possible hybrid Pond Heron

possible hybrid Pond Heron

One salutory reminder of needing to take care when considering the origin of birds (even migrant species) in the park was a Drongo Cuckoo with a heavily abraded tail which suggests that it was an escapee.

persona non grata

Another Ruddy Year

Today is Songkhran - Thai New Year and an excuse for the whole of Thailand to take an extended holiday and have a massive water fight!

I'll perhaps partake in the festivities later in the holiday, but this morning I hit Suan Rotfai  early for some migrant hunting.  Things started very slowly, but gradually picked up with a tally of one female Yellow-rumped Flycatcher, two Asian Brown Flycatchers, three Taigas, at least three Thick-billed Warblers, two Brown Shrikes, at least one roving flock of roughly 15 Ashy Minivets, a lovely pair of Forest Wagtails and best of all: a fleeting glimpse of a Ruddy Kingfisher - a good local rarity and the second one that I have found on the patch (the other bird being on 12th April last year, on the same stretch of khlong).

One of a pair of Forest Wagtails

Asian Brown Flycatcher

This young Indian Roller was freshly out of the nest