Mae Hia Agricultural College is a site I have visited in the past, but I decided to visit again on one of my spare days in Chiang Mai – the 2nd February 2008. From Chiang Mai town centre I took a tuktuk to the site which is a little tricky to describe in Thai, but eventually I got there. Basically, head down the canal road from the city and after about 4.5 kilometres the entrance can be seen on the right. The name is in English and Thai but the sign is tricky to see as it is laid out on a grassy bank.

Once into the site birds began to show themselves. The grassy areas are good for Indochinese Bushlark and a walk around flushed a few up soon enough. Plain and Grey-breasted Prinias were easy enough to see as were Pied Bushchat and Siberian Stonechat and  I also managed a quick look at a Baya Weaver.

As I moved towards the back of the site, where it abuts the lower slopes of Doi Suthep, I began to see a few forest species with a group of Red Junglefowl in a scruffy field being a bit of a surprise, Tickell’s Blue Flycatcher an interesting sighting and 3 Puff-throated Babblers jumping around on a road. Tony Ball has often described Mae Hia on his blog and I found Red-wattled Lapwing exactly where he predicted and as he has often noted, Bombax trees held some nice birds including Spangled Drongo and Racket-tailed Treepie. Whilst watching these a Shikra flew into the tree and got mobbed by the drongos.

Due to the ridiculous levels of overstocking of the cattle here, there are some areas with a lot of insects attracted by the animals and the dung. Taking advantage of this were a number of birds including Dusky Warbler, Thick-billed Warbler and a couple of Yellow-streaked Warblers – all nice to see. The overgrazed fields were an easy place to pick up birds like Brown Shrike, Spotted Dove and Green Bee-eater but as I walked towards some experimental farmland plots I came across one of the specialities of the site: Burmese Shrike. This beautiful bird is always present here in the winter months and this one gave me plenty of time to get a few half decent photos. Here is the best one.

A couple of Black-collared Starlings also allowed me to photograph them and also to prove that digiscoping still requires more skill than just sticking a digital camera on a telescope. 

As the weather got hotter I began to flag but still added Richard’s Pipit, Peregrine Falcon (japonicus), Crested Serpent Eagle, Arctic Warbler and White-rumped Shama to the day list. On my way back to the road I stopped at the little pool behind an office and found a group of about 250 Lesser Whistling Ducks and overhead I spotted 3 Wire-tailed Swallows, proving that this is still a reliable spot for this species. The only thing left for me to do was to take a couple of photos for my website and flag down a passing songthaew to get back into Chiang Mai.

birds, birding, thailand, nature, national parks