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 [...]

Tropical Shellness | British Birding

July 26th, 2019

Nick

One of my favourite locations when birding in UK is Shellness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Invariably I have the place more or less to myself and it is a remarkably wild place considering how close to London it is but the main attraction is the fact that it forms a high tide roost for large numbers of birds after they have been feeding on mud flats in the area including thousands of Oystercatchers along with large numbers of Black-tailed Godwits.

Yesterday I checked the tide times which indicated that shorebirds would be heading to their roost at a time when, if I stood on the beach, they would be flying towards me with the light behind me; perfect for photography. The only complication being that the weather forecast was for it to be the hottest day of the year with temperatures of 35C plus. A pleasant sea breeze took the edge off of the heat and as well as Oystercatchers and Black-tailed Godwits I saw Common Greenshank, Eurasian Curlew, Sanderling, Ruddy Turnstone, Common Redshank, Whimbrel, Common Ringed Plover as well as Mediterranean Gull, Sandwich Tern, Little Tern, Common Gull and Common Tern all coming to the roost site. The following is a collection of photographs from the day. Read more »

Destruction and Fragmentation of Wildlife Habitats | British Birding

July 17th, 2019

Nick

A few days ago I saw an appeal to sign a petition to save a small area of wildlife habitat in my hometown of Dartford in England which has been described as a “wildlife gem” where birds such as Sedge Warbler, Reed Bunting, Cetti’s Warbler and Nightingale have occurred. There is precious little habitat for these species within the Borough of Dartford so it was disappointing to hear of this habitat being under threat. We have all read about rain forest destruction, poaching of endangered species and melting ice caps but conservation should start at home so considering how lots of wildlife habitat in this area is under threat from development and agricultural intensification, in the form of polytunnels, I was keen to take a look myself to see if I could do anything to help in the conservation local wildlife. Read more »

Top 5 Birds of Kazakhstan Birding Tour 2019 | Kazakhstan Birding

June 25th, 2019

Nick

My 2019 birding tour to Kazakhstan was one of the best I have led over the last few years; incredible landscapes and non-stop fantastic birds made it hard not to enjoy every moment. Species such as Asian Crimson-winged Finch, Eversmann’s Redstart, White-headed Duck, Black Lark, White-winged Lark, Sociable Lapwing, White-winged Woodpecker, White-capped Bunting, Asian Desert Warbler, Pallid Harrier, Pine Bunting and Upland Buzzard attest to the quality of the birding we were treated to from the first until the last day of the tour, yet none of these amazing birds made the group’s final top five species of the trip.

As with all the trips I lead I asked all participants, on the final night, to rank their top five birds of the trip. We flicked through our copies of Birds of Central Asia to remind ourselves of all the birds we saw and then we allocated a score 1-5 to the species we each chose and added up the scores from all the birds voted for. The following are our top five species from Kazakhstan 2019.

If you would like to join me on a birding trip in Kazakhstan take a look at the dates, itinerary and all the details of my next tour – Central Asia Birding Tour.

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Black-crowned Night Herons at Wat Phutta Bucha – Thailand Birding

June 22nd, 2019

Nick

Wat Phutta Bucha is a fairly typical Buddhist temple, similar to thousands of others around Thailand, but one that happens to be fairly close to where I live and with hidden secret around the back of the temple complex. A canal forms the boundary of the temple grounds at the rear and a group of around twenty Black-crowned Night Herons can always be seen at close quarters where they wait in trees, man-made perches and on overhead wires within a few metres of passers-by. What are they waiting for? Well one needs to understand the practice of releasing fish and other animals in order for people to “make merit”. The concept is that by releasing fish or frogs (and sometimes birds) into the wild, people get good karma for such a deed and at the back of Wat Phutta Bucha, these Night Herons have learned that there is a plentiful supply of fish and frogs being released. Many of these released creatures have been kept in oxygen-starved conditions for some time and are in a weakened state, so they are easy pickings for the Night Herons. Yesterday I spent a few hours taking photos and making some video clips of this population of Black-crowned Night Herons in action. Read more »

Hotel Grounds & Golf Course Birds – Thailand Birding

June 18th, 2019

Nick

Much gets written about the prime birding spots in Thailand such as Kaeng Krachan, Doi Lang, Pak Thale and others but there are a vast amount of other locations, both national parks and otherwise, that do not get talked about much. Many visitors to Thailand are accompanied by non-birding friends or family and cannot get to the best birding spots while others have been to all of the most-visited birding sites and enjoy getting to unusual locations to see what can be found; the latter is how I recently found myself birding, with David Scott, James Thomson-Glover and friends, at Novotel Chumphon Beach and Golf Resort. An afternoon birding around the grounds of this resort and the nearby beach turned up a number of species that proved that there is plenty of interesting birding to be had in what may first appear to be habitat with rather a low potential. Blue-throated Bee-eater, Malaysian Plover, Vinous-breasted Starling, Pink-necked Green Pigeon, Pied Imperial Pigeon and resident maculatus subspecies of Black-naped Oriole were all nice birds to see along with plenty of others including some unseasonal migratory shorebirds. Read more »

Raptors | Kazakhstan Birding

June 3rd, 2019

Nick

Vast landscapes of mountains, farmland, stony plains, semi-desert and steppe have been the backdrop for the last few weeks in Kazakhstan where the birds have been superb in some amazing settings incredible for their scale. Before the trip I was asked if we would see many raptors on this birding tour of Kazakhstan and it proved that we did, not only good numbers of them, but a wide range of species were seen too. Black-eared Kites were the most numerous species over the course of the trip although Common Kestrel was the only raptor species seen every day. Spectacular views of Steppe Eagle, Long-legged Buzzard, Lesser Kestrel, Red-footed Falcon, Pallid Harrier and Lammergeier were very memorable but it was also good to see Upland Buzzard, Golden Eagle, Cinereous Vulture, Egyptian Vulture and many others as part of a superb Kazakhstan birding tour.

If you would like to join me on a birding trip in Kazakhstan take a look at the dates, itinerary and all the details of my next tour – Central Asia Birding Tour.

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Birding the Steppe near Astana | Kazakhstan Birding

June 1st, 2019

Nick

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Almaty, looking back on the last few days of the recent Kazakhstan birding tour that I have just finished leading. Our trip ended in the capital city of Kazakhstan, Nur Sultan (recently renamed from Astana), where we spent a few days birding in steppe and wetlands, enjoying some excellent birding, in fact it was in these last few days that we experienced the highest abundance of birds of the whole tour – a great way to finish. The undoubted highlights were the sighting of 6 critically endangered Sociable Lapwings, large numbers of spectacular Black Larks, watching White-winged Larks in song flight, huge numbers of Red-necked Phalaropes and a nesting colony of Pallas’s Gulls. However, it was not just about connecting with key birds, we just enjoyed a lot of top-quality birding and lots of excellent views of a wide variety of species.

If you would like to join me on a birding trip in Kazakhstan take a look at the dates, itinerary and all the details of my next tour – Central Asia Birding Tour.

Read more »