Dartford Waffler

On 23rd March I collected Andreas Egelund Christensen at 5am from his hotel near Silom Road: Room at Silom Hotel. We arrived at Laem Pak Bia at about 7am and made our first stop at the spot which has been used as a wintering site by a pair of Black-faced Spoonbills: Black-faced Spoonbill wintering site […]

The King’s Project area at Laem Pak Bia is a really good birdwatching site in Thailand. However, any visit is certain to result in sightings of large water monitor lizards in and around the water, as well as birds. Many people ask me what such large lizards eat, and I have long suspected that they […]

On 19th March I joined Alex Vargas on a search for broadbills at Kaeng Krachan as he was after some photographs of those species for his collection:  My Birds, Thailand by Alex Vargas.
Before heading into Kaeng Krachan, however, we spent an afternoon at some paddie fields near Petchaburi before moving on to the King’s Project […]

On Sunday 16th March 2008, my wife and I went to Chatuchak Market in Bangkok to do some shopping. I took the opportunity to take a look at the animal section and was appalled to see large numbers of birds, mammals and reptiles being sold illegally. Squirrels were particularly numerous as were reptiles, but it […]

Kaeng Krachan national park is a great place for birdwatching with regular sightings of many species of woodpeckers, broadbills and other exciting birds. It also happens to be a superb place for seeing butterflies with huge clouds of them coming to wet patches to take salt in the middle of the day. If one stands […]

On 13th March Mark Tunmore and Neil Armitage joined me for a trip to Laem Pak Bia/Pak Thale. Their priority species were Malaysian Plover, “White-faced Plover” and Black-faced Spoonbill all of which had been reported as still being present just a week previously.
The drive from the centre of Bangkok to Laem Pak Bia took the […]

Bangkok is a crowded, busy and noisy city but it is amazing how many birds still manage to eke out an existence within the city boundaries. The housing area I have been living in for the last few weeks is quite crowded, with few areas of open land, although it is close to the edge of the […]

On Saturday morning (08/03/08) I finally got myself back to Muang Boran Fishponds in Samut Prakarn province - a place which used to be one of “local patches” in Thailand. Despite the slightly convoluted way in, I remembered how to get there and was on site by about 6.45am. It seemed little had changed here […]

On the evening of the 22nd February I joined up with Masayuki and Yasue Shimada from Japan for a few days birdwatching in Thailand at Kaeng Krachan and Laem Pak Bia/Pak Thale.
Travelling in the evening we stopped in the town of Petburi for some food - finding an open air food court serving cheap and tasty […]

My wife and I got up early to take a drive along the road to Ban Kuntien. This is close to where I used to live and work and where I used to do a little birding from a bicycle. However, there has been a lot of development in the four years I have been […]