Some birding locations are great to visit because they are new and exciting to explore, with all the possibilities of seeing new birds that goes with that. Other locations are great to visit because they are familiar, always have lots of birds to see, even if they are quite predictable but are just a place that we enjoy. For me Shellness, on the Isle of Sheppey, falls into that latter category, it is a place I have visited very many times since I was a youngster, particularly over the last few years and it is a location that always brings me a high level of solitude and no matter what the time of the year, there are always a lot of birds to see. So, while spending a few weeks in Britain I made a visit to Shellness on a pleasant, sunny day with time enough to spend just sitting on the beach and waiting for birds to arrive as the tide came in.
Jakarta Boat Trip Birding | Birding Indonesia
Where can you see Christmas Island Frigatebird, Sunda Teal, Pink-necked Green Pigeon, Milky Stork, Sunda Pygmy Woodpecker, Cerulean Kingfisher, Clamorous Reed Warbler and a wide range of other species in an urban setting? On a boat trip from Jakarta, Indonesia! The island of Java is one of the most densely populated areas of the world [...]
Pre-Trip Birding Around Incheon | South Korea Birding
Have you ever started a birding tour by getting off of the plane and rushed into a vehicle, sleep-deprived and confused, spending the remainder of the day birding in extreme weather conditions, seeing some amazing birds but not being able to enjoy them properly due to your body being on the verge of shutdown? Well, [...]
Top 5 Birds of Cambodia Birding Tour 2023 | Cambodia Birding
Cambodia is the last refuge of a number of exciting species in Southeast Asia as well as the home of a wide range of birds at a greater abundance than most of the surrounding countries. Leading the Calidris Birding Tours trip to Cambodia in March 2023 gave all of the tour participants the opportunity to [...]
Waterbirds at Prek Toal Reserve | Cambodia Birding
One of the great spectacles of any birding trip to Cambodia is a visit to the waterbird colonies at Prek Toal Reserve on Tonle Sap where birders can be surrounded by huge numbers of waterbirds from a trip on a small boat. This is exactly the situation I found myself in when leading the Calidris [...]
Birding at Bach Ma National Park – Vietnam Birding
At the beginning of November 2022 I found myself with the opportunity to visit Bach Ma National Park, near Danang in Vietnam. While other sites in Vietnam could promise more new birds for me but I had limited time and so arranged a driver to take me from Danang to the national park and back, [...]
Birding at Cat Tien National Park – Vietnam Birding
July 23rd, 2022 
Nick Out of the car, across the river, into the forest and within moments a stunning Bar-bellied Pitta emerges from the vegetation of the tropical forest floor; this is how birding should be every time one visits a new location with one of the target species showing itself well for full appreciation within minutes of arrival.
Sometimes there are places that are not far away that I always mean to visit but somehow never get around to; Cat Tien National Park in southern Vietnam is one of these. Spending much of my time in Bangkok, the flight to Ho Chi Minh City is a short one with the addition of only a four-hour drive to the national park itself but with the vast majority of species that occur there being the same as ones I frequently see in Thailand I have always put off visiting this famous birding location until another day. However, in June 2022 I found myself with the opportunity to spend a few days at Cat Tien to look for a few of its specialities and generally check out the birding.
If you would like to join me on a birding trip in Vietnam take a look at the dates, itinerary and all the details of my next tour - Vietnam Birding Tour.
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Forest Birding at Kitulgala – Sri Lanka Birding
May 5th, 2022 Nick If you want superb views across a forest-lined river, steamy mist forming over the forest, a fantastic morning chorus and lots of birds then Kitulgala is the perfect place. The location that was famously used for filming of the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai” does not disappoint visually and with three nights here it did not disappoint ornithologically either. Staying at Kitulgala Resthouse my room had a superb view across the river to the forest and village groves where most birders head but even around the guesthouse grounds birds were abundant, particularly in the early morning. Over the course of my stay birds were abundant in the orchards and gardens around the village and forest patches, making seeing a good number of Sri Lanka’s key species fairly easy, although birding the forest itself was quite difficult and slow, typical of tropical forest birding in Asia. Some of the best birds I saw at Kitulgala included Malabar Trogon, Sri Lanka Grey Hornbill, Layard’s Parakeet, Legge’s Hawk Eagle, Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot and a wonderful encounter with a pair of Sri Lanka Spurfowl.
Kitulgala will feature on all my birding tours to Sri Lanka. If you would like to join one check out the details here - Sri Lanka Birding Tour.
Back of an Airport Hotel Birds – Sri Lanka Birding
March 22nd, 2022 Nick I recently had the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka, a little over three hours from Bangkok by plane, and I booked a hotel close to the airport for my first night as I arrived at around 4pm and did not want to start travelling overland through the evening. Looking online there were lots of hotels in the area and with a quick look at Google maps I located King’s Gate Airport Transit Hotel which was a very short walk from a Buddhist temple on the edge of a fairly large greenspace which would give me the chance for an hour or so of birding before dark and a little time the next morning before getting some transport to my first proper birding site of Kitulgala. Sri Lanka is a very birdy country so it turned out that the spot I chose served up a good number of interesting species in the very short time that I spent there including several with ranges either restricted to only Sri Lanka or Southern India and Sri Lanka.
Birding at Benjakitti Park | Thailand Birding
February 18th, 2022 Nick Most people who have visited Thailand will not be familiar with Benjakitti Park in Bangkok. Lumphini Park is well-known and well-visited by birders and over recent years Rot Fai Park and the adjacent Queen Sirikit Park have become favourites with birdwatchers in Bangkok. However, Benjakitti Park may well become a regular in the Bangkok birding scene in years to come with the large extension that is in the process of being opened up to the public.
Until recently Benjakitti Park offered a fairly limited plot of land to walk around on despite occupying a large area; most of the site being a sterile lake. It wasn’t always this way though, I remember ending up here in the late 1990s when the whole plot of land was an overgrown area of wetland with Asian Golden Weavers, Bronze-winged Jacanas and other wetland birds apparent even though I was not actually visiting for birding nor using binoculars. However, in more recent years it has been converted to a public access area with a good number of mature trees down one side. But now, there is a huge extension to the park with some ambitious habitat creation and an incredible network of elevated walkways. I was in the area so decided to check it out and got some nice photos of some common garden/parkland birds.
Birding Phuttamonthon Park | Thailand Birding
January 23rd, 2022 Nick When I first came to Thailand one of the first birds I saw was Oriental Scops Owl. I was walking around in a seldom-visited part of Khao Yai national park and a park ranger called me over and pointed out a pair of these tiny owls roosting, just a few feet off of the ground. Little did I know that this would be a bird I would see very few times over the next 25 years, just a couple of times in fact. So, having seen lots of photos of several Oriental Scops Owls roosting in bamboo at Phuttamonthon Park, in Nakhon Pathom province I decided to visit for myself and try to find them. Although I had some directions for where to look for them I knew there were lots of clumps of bamboo in the area and so it would not be easy to track them down, and so it proved, but of course I saw plenty of other interesting birds along the way. Read more »
A Morning Birding at Pathum Thani Rice Research Centre
January 6th, 2022 Nick The Central Plains of Thailand are full of rice fields, indeed Thailand is consistently the biggest exporter of rice in the world, but access to many of them can be difficult, requiring walking in hot weather. However, the rice research project in Pathum Thani, on the outskirts of Bangkok, is a perfect place to see and photograph birds of this habitat as it is criss-crossed by a series of tracks that allow birdwatchers to access the whole site. Pathum Thani rice research centre always makes for a nice variety of farmland and wetlands birds and it provides a perfect location to introduce birders to Thailand’s species which is what I found myself doing yesterday morning.
As this location is devoted to rice research, the plots are fairly small and there is almost always a rotation of crops from freshly ploughed and flooded plots through to rice crops ready to be harvested, which means that there is usually a wide variety of birds to be found here. This proved to be the case on this visit and I was able to get a nice set of photographs which I have published here, particularly of a family of Barn Owls. Read more »
