Recently bird activity has been at its lowest that I can remember during the dry season, making for some frustrating times looking for birds. I think that this is mostly due to the strange weather patterns that have produced late rain and hotter temperatures than normal and which are now followed by wind; these weather conditions make it very difficult to find birds for large parts of the day.

Bird activity has been virtually zero from about 10.30am until about 4pm leaving a huge time window to fill; this is when it is good to be interested in photographing butterflies as well as dragonflies and damselflies as they are at their most active in the heat of the day.

I photographed the above damselfly on the stream near Haew Suwat waterfall, Khao Yai, in the middle of the day after trying harder than should be required to find even the commonest birds on 27th December. Many other damselflies were present as were large congregations of butterflies, making this a good spot to visit in the middle of the day.