Dartford Waffler

Gull Feeding Frenzy at Samut Sakhon | Birding in Thailand

A beautiful sunrise, thousands of birds, the sound of the sea; all the ingredients for one of the world’s birding hotspots, but in reality this is the atmosphere I was able to enjoy on a short morning excursion from Bangkok when visiting the “Red Bridge” coastal boardwalk in neighbouring Samut Sakhon province. Rather than being [...]

Birds in a Park in Bukhara | Birding in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is one of those countries that is great for birding and at the same time extremely interesting in touristic terms too; an ideal place to travel with a non-birding partner and then to find time to go birding in locations near the tourist spots and to visit some really spectacular scenery. In late April [...]

Top 5 Birds of Vietnam Birding Tour 2025 | Birding in Vietnam

Vietnam is the country in mainland Southeast Asia with the highest number of endemic species and the best place to see a number of regional endemics too as well as a fantastic supporting cast of more widespread birds. Leading the Calidris Birding Tours trip to Southern and Central Vietnam in March/April 2025 gave all participants [...]

A Day Birding in Qatar | Birding in Qatar

My annual migration between Thailand and UK has not only seen the cost of direct flights rise dramatically but I have grown very tired of sitting on a plane for twelve hours, if only I was able to make the journey under self-powered flight like a Bar-tailed Godwit! Indirect flights are, of course, a solution [...]

Parakeets & Peafowl | Birding in Thailand

One thing I have learned over the years that I have been bird watching is that there are many different ways for people to enjoy birds. I started birding by going on long country walks in England with birds being perhaps the most accessible category of wildlife to enjoy along the way. Friends of mine [...]

A Walk along Caerfanell Brook, Brecon Beacons | British Birding

September 18th, 2020

Nick

The sound of the fast-flowing mountain stream known as Caerfanell Brook always takes me back to holidays with my family when I was a child. I remember sitting with our feet in the cool waters to relieve ourselves from the hot weather we experienced one year when a Dipper turned up right next to us! It was very exciting at the time as I had only ever seen a couple of Dippers before and certainly never one that close. Over the years we revisited many times and the walk along the stream towards a waterfall became one of our favourites, with every visit being rewarded with a view of Dipper.

Over the years I have made many walks along this stream and it is always one of the places I visit when I am back in UK at various times of the year and for over thirty years I have been visiting this tranquil spot, seeing Dippers every time. Earlier this year I made an overdue trip and enjoyed a lovely walk along the stream, seeing a nice variety of birds including Dippers, which I made a short video about. The following is a selection of photographs taken from my walk in early August 2020 with a map of the location towards the end of the post. Read more »

Aldenham Country Park & Reservoir | British Birding

September 3rd, 2020

Nick

Today I made a trip to Elstree, not to star in a movie at the famous film studios but to collect my camera from the Canon service centre where it was repaired and serviced after a semi-submerging in sea water at Shellness last week. Canon got my camera repaired and cleaned up in just one week and after collecting it I went to the nearby Aldenham Country Park & Reservoir to have a look around and test the camera out. The Country Park is a pleasant place, not huge but a nice mixture of a small reservoir, fringing woodland and pasture, interlaced with drainage ditches and a small stream; a nice rural setting. Given the location and habitat it wasn’t particularly likely that I would see anything unusual but I did see a nice variety of birds and get the chance to test my camera out although a pair of juvenile Shelducks this far inland was a surprise and a migrating Spotted Flycatcher was a nice sighting. Read more »

High Tide Wader Roost at Shellness | British Birding

August 30th, 2020

Nick

One of the most spectacular things in bird watching is seeing large numbers of birds together in the same place. When I am in UK there is one obvious place for me to head to in order to get a taste of this type of experience; the high tide roost at Shellness in North Kent. This location is part of a National Nature Reserve and consists of a shingle spit adjoining salt marsh and mud flats; a great place for viewing waders particularly as numbers start to build up at the end of August and into September. Recently I paid a visit to this location, less than an hour’s drive from my home town of Dartford, in rather grey and windy conditions that were not ideal for using a telescope or camera but by timing it right I was able to enjoy the spectacle of large numbers of waders flying past me at close range, to their high tide roost on the shingle ridge. The following are some of the better photos I got, despite the gloomy conditions, and you will notice that all the birds are flying from left to right as they head to the roost site. Read more »

Chelmarsh Reservoir | British Birding

August 20th, 2020

Nick

Recently I enjoyed spending some time in the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a lovely area indeed with some nice birds in areas of ancient woodland and a few upland species on areas of heath. However, my time in the area didn’t give me any opportunity to see birds associated with wetland habitats so on my way back to Kent I stopped at Chelmarsh Reservoir to take a look at what this site had to offer. I made the effort to get there early, arriving a little before 7am to find a very pleasant spot consisting of a large area of open water surrounded by woodland and famland patches but the real area of interest was a reed bed and the shallows at one end of the reservoir, with nice patches of ancient oaks nearby. A small hide gave me the perfect place to just sit and watch, giving me nice selection of birds and the opportunity to photograph Water Rail. Read more »

Birding by the Beach at Pranburi | Thailand Birding

July 16th, 2020

Nick

Thailand is an excellent country for a bird watching trip with a wide variety and number of impressive species. However, many birders come to Thailand for a more touristic trip with their non-birding partners and most of these will spend at least some time at one of Thailand’s famous beaches. I recently spent a few days taking it easy at a low-key beach area in Pranburi and while I really appreciated taking life easy I also wanted to do a little bit of birding in the mornings and make a virtual bird watching video to show people how many species of birds can be found around a typical beach so long as you do not stay in one of the very heavily built up resorts such as Patong or Pattaya. I have written on this subject before – Birding When Not Birding – but I wanted to expand upon this theme in a video; as they say a picture is worth a thousand words I suggest that a video is worth a thousand pictures. Read more »

Visiting Bang Khaem Fishponds | Thailand Birding

June 5th, 2020

Nick

Recently I have been visiting birdwatching sites that I have either never been to before or visit very seldom. While it is always nice to go to well-known birding locations where certain key species are know to be found, I also enjoy going to relatively unknown sites and seeing what can be found. In this frame of mind I made the journey from home in Bangkok to Nakhon Pathom province, a trip of just over an hour, to a location I visited for the first time earlier this year, having discovered it while browsing eBird hotspots; Bang Khaem Fishponds.

This is a rather odd area, a collection of ponds surrounded by dry, barren patches of land and the odd copse of trees. Perhaps the weirdest part of the site is an area that is used for dumping the stones/pits of mangoes that have obviously been prepared for sale. This general state of unkemptness makes it an area that is used by a lot of birds with quite a nice variety of species to be seen. Although few birdwatchers have visited this site it makes a nice morning of birdwatching from Bangkok.

I used my morning birding at Bang Khaem Fishponds to get some video footage to put together as a “virtual birding” trip as well as take some photographs and add a couple of species to my Nakhon Pathom province list! I have included the finished video here along with a collection of bird photos from the morning. Read more »

A Morning at Lat Krabang Rice Fields | Thailand Birding

May 25th, 2020

Nick

What do you do when you have been stuck at home for ages due to covid-19 restrictions when some inter-provincial travel is still restricted? Go birding close to home of course, and although Lat Krabang Rice Fields in on the opposite side of Bangkok to where I live, it is a fairly large area of open land which is visited by few people and would give me the space to do something a little bit different. By mid-May almost all winter and passage migrant species have departed but rice fields in Thailand always hold some nice birds at this time of the year including a few species that look wonderful in breeding plumage while they are rather dull at other times.

What I wanted to do at Lat Krabang was to put together a video based on the morning of birding; a series of video clips of some of the bird specialities as well as me talking to camera about a few of them. A sort of guided virtual birdwatching trip. Of course, as always, I wanted to find as many species as possible as well as obtain some nice still images. Below is a collection of the photographs I took at Lat Krabang Rice Fields as well as the finished video. Read more »