Alex Vargas recently took this photograph of a female Maroon-breasted Philentoma in the vicinty of Km 36 at Kaeng Krachan national park. He also saw the male well, through binoculars but only managed to obtain images of this female.

Maroon-breasted Philentoma is known from Kaeng Krachan but is very seldom seen, in fact it is seldom seen anywhere in Thailand – I have seen a pair just the once myself, at Krung Ching.

In this photo it is difficult to see the dark wash to the breast that field guides indicate the female should have, this may be down to the light conditions or the fact the field guides make more of this feature than is really visible.

Interestingly, Phil Round had this to say about the species;“The easiest place I know to see it, though, is (ironically) at its northerly known limit, at Phu Tho, Thongphaphum District, Kanchanaburi – a good 2 deg N latitude N of Kaeng Krachan. There there is some nice accessible evergreen forest at the base of limestone crags, which also holds Ferruginous Partridge and tons of other good birds. Nobody ever goes there these days since Kaeng Krachan was “discovered” some 20-plus years ago, but I visited the site last in May 2009 and saw a pair of philentomas just as easily as before.”

Alex has several more photographs of the bird here - Female Maroon-breasted Philentoma.