Starting the year, I made a road-trip up to Lamphun twitching Black Stork & Bay-backed Shrike on the way up in Nakhon Sawan and Tak respectively. I went onto Lamphun with hopes of seeing Thailand’s first twitchable Short-eared Owl but narrowly missed out. I gained a lot of traveling experience and saw a few other cool birds while I was up there. Including, rare winter visitor to Thailand European Starling, Steppe Eagle & Western Marsh Harrier. The Harrier, I had already seen as first record in Bangkok when I was very new to birding!
Driving back down on the 10th, I was thinking of a good place to stop where I could see a new bird and I remembered the Variable Limestone Babbler and headed back to Bangkok via Uthaithani. It was really enjoyable and I also saw a provincial first Asian Stubtail.
Fast-forward to the following Monday, I planned a trip to the salt-pans of the Chachoengsao and it turned into a very eventful morning despite missing one target of White-faced Plover. Starting off the morning we got saw the critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper not long into our walk.
This was followed by successfully finding our other main target, Pied Avocet. Unfortunately the views were very distant but it was still great to see.
We also came across a few ducks, they turned out to be a flock of 7 Eurasian Wigeon, which I did see here last time but they are no at all common around these parts in winter so it was very nice to see.
Further down the bottom we relocated the Eurasian Curlew and we also found a few endangered Far Eastern Curlew mixed in with them but a bigger surprise for me was finding Bar-tailed Godwit also flying with them! Bar-tailed is pretty challenging to get in Thailand, it was a lifer for me. Funnily enough, the appearance of a Barwit is more similar to Eurasian Curlew than it is to the Black-tailed Godwit when in flight, so I’m not sure if it was calculated or just chance it was with the Curlews.
The most numerous birds were the Black-tailed Godwits which were conservatively estimated at 5,000 as many large ‘clouds’ of them had flew past in the early morning and on the actual site there were still thousands.
Full checklist can be seen here. I will definitely aim to spend more time at these key shorebird sites as they are very rewarding to bird. And if you’re living around Bangkok, you should make the most of the best birding nearby!
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Large Blue Flycatcher 