For the vast majority of tourists to Thailand the primary focus of the trip will not be birding. Even for many birders a holiday to Thailand is a non-birding, family holiday which locates them away from prime bird watching sites and over the last few days I have found myself in that situation taking a short break with my wife at Karon beach in Phuket. The good news for birders traveling with non-birding partners in these situations is that good numbers of birds can be found in all sorts of scraps of habitat and even though these are not locations that would normally get included in a birding tour of the country, by visiting a few of them in early mornings, a fairly decent list of species can be seen. Over the last couple of mornings I have spent a little time just loafing around fragments of habitat around the hotel I am staying in and have seen a nice variety of species given the situation. I have stayed at In on the Beach a few times and it is a pleasant, quiet hotel on the beach with just about enough to keep a birder interested for an hour or so in the mornings.

Of course, birding in hotel gardens and habitat fragments means that most of the species seen will be fairly common but then if it is your first time to a region that does not matter. In fact, it did not matter to me much either as I found it enjoyable to watch and photograph species that I am very familiar with like these Eurasian Tree Sparrows.

Eurasian Tree Sparrows

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

One bird which was abundant around our hotel was Asian Glossy Starling. It is common in the area but as I don’t spend that much time in the south of Thailand it was nice to be able to see it at close quarters as they came down to drink in the mornings.

Asian Glossy Starling

Although it is a common bird in coastal areas in Thailand I was a little surprised to see Collared Kingfisher at Karon beach. It is quite a busy beach resort and there really is only the smallest piece of habitat for this bird – basically just a ditch running into the sea with some mangrove and casuarina pine trees along it. It was fairly shy though and I only saw it in the early morning before human activity became too disruptive to this bird’s habits.

Collared Kingfisher

For those who are raptor enthusiasts the good news is that Brahminy Kite is common in all coastal areas of Thailand and is easily seen from hotels near the sea.

Brahminy Kite

Not all the birds that will be seen in this type of casual and opportunistic birding will be common, and another raptor was a bit of a surprise for me: White-bellied Sea Eagle. Although not rare in coastal Southern Thailand, due to its size it has big territories so is never extremely abundant. To see it every day just over a small lake in Karon Park, right next to my hotel room was a nice surprise.

White-bellied Sea Eagle

Another small surprise was an adult male Pink-necked Green Pigeon feeding two young in a tree next to the hotel. Again, not a rare bird but it seemed a little out of place in such a busy area. Here is one of the juveniles.

Juvenile Pink-necked Green Pigeon

Coastal habitat and parks/gardens can be quite good for migrant species in autumn and spring but I did not find many migrants at all, probably we had the wrong weather conditions – blue skies and sunshine. There were a few species though including Black-naped Oriole, Asian Brown Flycatcher, Brown Shrike and Chinese Pond Heron.

Brown Shrike

Asian Brown Flycatcher

Chinese Pond Heron

A few days poking around close to the hotel turned up some interesting birds including a roost of over 30 Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters, 2 Pacific Reef Egrets that nearly flew into my head as I was swimming in the sea with my wife and a migrating Grey-faced Buzzard as well as a Peregrine Falcon hunting over the beach. Birding in this way is no substitute for visiting some of the best national parks but if you keep your eyes open for opportunities you can build up quite a decent list of birds.

Here are the eBird lists for my time at Karon Beach:

• 26 March 2019 – Karon Beach
• 27 March 2019 – Karon Beach
• 28 March 2019 – Soi Lumyai, Karon Beach

After Karon Beach I traveled on to Phang Nga, Surat Thani and Chumpon provinces, visiting several sites I had not been to before. I have written a full bird watching trip report here – Southern Thailand, 25-31st March 2019 Birding Trip Report