A few weeks ago I found myself in the town of Nakorn Sawan with a morning free to spend birding at nearby Bueng Boraphet (1st May). Rather than take a boat trip, I decided to go to the northeastern side of the lake and drive/walk around the area known as Pramong Panich where there is a variety of wetland habitats – rice fields, fish ponds, lakeside scrub, ditches and open water.

I arrived at first light (around 5.45am) and as expected it became very hot, very quickly having worked up quite a sweat by 7.15am! However, this did not stop me from seeing very large numbers of birds including several interesting species and obtaining some nice photographs of a few of them.

Driving along the dirt tracks entering the site revealed good numbers of Striated Grassbird singing from overhead wires and tussocks of vegetation. 20+ Cotton Pygmy Geese in a fishpond alongside the track were very nice and good views of Yellow Bittern, Plain-backed Sparrow, Black-winged Kite and Pied Kingfisher were also easily obtained using the car as a hide.

Other birds which were best viewed from the vehicle were nesting weavers, with large numbers of Streaked and Asian Golden Weavers in emergent vegetation alongside most of the ditches and Baya Weavers in trees and bushes. However, what I was really interested in was what could be found in the large area of lakeside scrub that is usually flooded when the water level is high but at this time was possible to walk around quite easily.

Yellow Bittern, Cinnamon Bittern and Black Bittern were all flushed from wet, typha-filled ditches and several Greater Painted Snipe also revealed themselves. A Spot-breasted Woodpecker performed very nicely for me on some dead trees. In the lakeside scrub birds such as Asian Pied Myna, Greater Coucal, Striated Grassbird, Asian Openbill and Streak-eared Bulbul were numerous and quite a few Red Avadavats were seen in flight buzzing back and forwards. Scarcer birds included Lesser Coucal and Chestnut Muna and there were still quite a few Black-browed Reed Warblers singing away.

The most interesting bird, though, turned out to be a Horsfield’s (Australasian) Bushlark which allowed me to get close and photograph it. I was alerted to this bird’s presence by its song which carried quite a long way and after spotting it in song flight I managed to get close to it after watching it land.

Horfield’s Bushlark – Photo by Nick Upton

In the field it was not obvious that this bird had an overgrown upper mandible but it is quite easy to see in this photograph. This individual allowed me to get close but I also saw at least 1 other individual of this species in song flight as I was photographing this one.

The heat became very intense so I headed back to the car, coming across 2 Savanna Nightjars along the way and startling an oriental darter that was resting next to some open water. What was nice about this morning was that there was a large amount of bird activity with always something interesting to see and lots of opportunities to take some nice photos. This was in contrast to a number of forest locations that I visited around the same time – Mae Moei NP, Doi Chiang Dao, Phu Suan Sai & Khao Yai NP, all of which provided very slow and frustrating birding.