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.

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