At the end of January I visited Yangon, Myanmar, for a few days. Although it was not exactly a birding trip, I managed to fit in a fair bit of birding around the city in between conducting the business I was there for. On my first morning I visited People’s Park which is probably the most accessible site for birding within the city and it also provides spectacular views of the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda. People’s Park is quite large but much of it is quite manicured, containing quite a few buildings. However, there are enough scruffy corners and lots of mature trees that seem to attract a decent variety of bird, certainly enough for a morning of birding and I even found one species that is a rarity in Myanmar.

One bird that can’t be missed in Yangon is House Crow. Everywhere you go in the city there are hundreds of them flapping around, screeching and generally being as obvious as they can be. In Yangon House Crows are so incredibly common that the constant high-pitched calling that they make becomes quite irritating after a short while and inevitably it was the first bird I saw when I arrived, by taxi, at People’s Park. It was hard to say how many I saw over the course of the morning, but it would be several hundred at least. The only reason not to see a House Crow in Yangon is if you have had your eyes pecked out by a House Crow!

Walking around shortly after sunrise revealed typical Southeast Asian parkland birds such as Olive-backed Sunbird, Yellow-browed Warbler, Taiga Flycatcher, Spotted Dove, Asian Koel, Oriental Magpie Robin and Coppersmith Barbet while a lake held Little Cormorants, White-throated Kingfisher, Common Kingfisher as well as Chinese Pond Heron along with one Indian Pond Heron in partial breeding plumage.

On the lawns there were plenty of Common Mynas feeding but alongside them were also Asian Pied Starlings and Jungle Mynas.

Large numbers of Mynas drew me towards a fruiting tree which also contained lots of Coppersmith Barbets. While trying to photograph these I noticed something different which turned out to be a Rosy Starling. This is always a nice bird so I got a few photos only to later find out that there were no records at all for Rosy Starling on eBird for Myanmar. Given how frequently it is recorded in India and Thailand it seemed impossible that this could be a first for Myanmar and after posting this sighting on Facebook I was informed of a few previous records for the country but not very many at all. It seems that there could be fewer than ten records for Myanmar (or if there are more than ten, then not that many more) so quite a rarity for this country.

Also in the fruiting tree were at least two Chestnut-tailed Starlings while nearby there were Blue-tailed Bee-eater and Black-naped Oriole.

Searching around in some of the more unkept parts of the park turned up Asian Brown Flycatcher, a couple of Radde’s Warblers, a Thick-billed Warbler hiding in some bamboo, some Ashy Minivets, Common Tailorbird and several Ayeyarwady Bulbuls. A pair of Baya Weavers were feeding alongside some House Sparrows and a Chestnut Munia was a surprise.

As the morning was drawing to an end I things started to get a little hot a Black Kite lingered overhead and an Oriental Honey-buzzard was something of a surprise to me.

For anyone who finds themselves with a few hours to kill in the morning in Yangon, then People’s Park is a decent option, particularly if you are also planning to visit Shwedagon Pagoda on the same day.