I recently had the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka, a little over three hours from Bangkok by plane, and I booked a hotel close to the airport for my first night as I arrived at around 4pm and did not want to start travelling overland through the evening. Looking online there were lots of hotels in the area and with a quick look at Google maps I located King’s Gate Airport Transit Hotel which was a very short walk from a Buddhist temple on the edge of a fairly large greenspace which would give me the chance for an hour or so of birding before dark and a little time the next morning before getting some transport to my first proper birding site of Kitulgala. Sri Lanka is a very birdy country so it turned out that the spot I chose served up a good number of interesting species in the very short time that I spent there including several with ranges either restricted to only Sri Lanka or Southern India and Sri Lanka.
City Park Bird Abundance | Birding in Thailand
For those of us lucky enough to travel internationally to see birds it quickly becomes apparent that in some countries birds are abundant while in others birders have to work harder to see a wide range of species. This was brought home to me most recently spending a morning at Sri Nakorn Kuean Khan Park [...]
Touristing & Birding at Petra | Birding in Jordan
For those of us who travel with non-birding partners it can sometimes be tricky to balance enjoying time together somewhere interesting and the craving to maximise the opportunity to see new birds in new places. Personally, having a good holiday with my wife is the most important thing when planning trips together but doing some [...]
Rainy Season Birding at Pathum Thani Rice Research Centre | Birding in Thailand
There can be times of the year when bird watching hits a trough because a lack of activity, unhelpful weather or overfamiliarity with a smaller selection of species than at other times. In Thailand these factors are all true in the rainy season with a large number of species absent, on their breeding grounds further [...]
Mountain Birding from Chimgan | Birding in Uzbekistan
I have always loved immersing myself in mountain landscapes but over recent years my opportunity to do so has been limited with much of my time spent in tropical forests and wetlands in Thailand so when the opportunity presented itself to spend some time birding in mountain habitats in Uzbekistan I took it without having [...]
Jakarta Boat Trip Birding | Birding Indonesia
Where can you see Christmas Island Frigatebird, Sunda Teal, Pink-necked Green Pigeon, Milky Stork, Sunda Pygmy Woodpecker, Cerulean Kingfisher, Clamorous Reed Warbler and a wide range of other species in an urban setting? On a boat trip from Jakarta, Indonesia! The island of Java is one of the most densely populated areas of the world [...]
Birding at Benjakitti Park | Thailand Birding
February 18th, 2022 
Nick Most people who have visited Thailand will not be familiar with Benjakitti Park in Bangkok. Lumphini Park is well-known and well-visited by birders and over recent years Rot Fai Park and the adjacent Queen Sirikit Park have become favourites with birdwatchers in Bangkok. However, Benjakitti Park may well become a regular in the Bangkok birding scene in years to come with the large extension that is in the process of being opened up to the public.
Until recently Benjakitti Park offered a fairly limited plot of land to walk around on despite occupying a large area; most of the site being a sterile lake. It wasn’t always this way though, I remember ending up here in the late 1990s when the whole plot of land was an overgrown area of wetland with Asian Golden Weavers, Bronze-winged Jacanas and other wetland birds apparent even though I was not actually visiting for birding nor using binoculars. However, in more recent years it has been converted to a public access area with a good number of mature trees down one side. But now, there is a huge extension to the park with some ambitious habitat creation and an incredible network of elevated walkways. I was in the area so decided to check it out and got some nice photos of some common garden/parkland birds.
Birding Phuttamonthon Park | Thailand Birding
January 23rd, 2022 Nick When I first came to Thailand one of the first birds I saw was Oriental Scops Owl. I was walking around in a seldom-visited part of Khao Yai national park and a park ranger called me over and pointed out a pair of these tiny owls roosting, just a few feet off of the ground. Little did I know that this would be a bird I would see very few times over the next 25 years, just a couple of times in fact. So, having seen lots of photos of several Oriental Scops Owls roosting in bamboo at Phuttamonthon Park, in Nakhon Pathom province I decided to visit for myself and try to find them. Although I had some directions for where to look for them I knew there were lots of clumps of bamboo in the area and so it would not be easy to track them down, and so it proved, but of course I saw plenty of other interesting birds along the way. Read more »
A Morning Birding at Pathum Thani Rice Research Centre
January 6th, 2022 Nick The Central Plains of Thailand are full of rice fields, indeed Thailand is consistently the biggest exporter of rice in the world, but access to many of them can be difficult, requiring walking in hot weather. However, the rice research project in Pathum Thani, on the outskirts of Bangkok, is a perfect place to see and photograph birds of this habitat as it is criss-crossed by a series of tracks that allow birdwatchers to access the whole site. Pathum Thani rice research centre always makes for a nice variety of farmland and wetlands birds and it provides a perfect location to introduce birders to Thailand’s species which is what I found myself doing yesterday morning.
As this location is devoted to rice research, the plots are fairly small and there is almost always a rotation of crops from freshly ploughed and flooded plots through to rice crops ready to be harvested, which means that there is usually a wide variety of birds to be found here. This proved to be the case on this visit and I was able to get a nice set of photographs which I have published here, particularly of a family of Barn Owls. Read more »
Ring-necked Parakeets Sunflower Feast | British Birding
December 14th, 2021 Nick One day in October 2021 I made a visit to a local woodland, Farningham Woods, but was distracted before I got there by large numbers of Ring-necked Parakeets feeding on sunflower heads along the entrance road to the woods. The sunflowers were grown as a wildlife boundary crop in a strip a few metres wide but stretching for about half a mile alongside the country lane leading to the woods. Seemingly every sunflower head had its own Ring-necked Parakeet in attendance, plucking the seeds out to enjoy a feast.
When I was birding as a youngster Ring-necked Parakeets were seldom seen in the area I grew up in near Dartford, Kent. Instead if I wanted to see them I had to make a short journey into the London borough of Bexley where there were colonies that never seemed to spread. However, in the late 1990s they started to spread into our area of Kent and now they are a common sight but I have never seen them in the numbers that were buzzing around these sunflowers, swooping in from nearby trees in squadrons of 20-30 birds with a flock of about 500+ birds in total.
Shellness High Tide Birding | British Birding
October 25th, 2021 Nick The Roman philosopher Pliny claimed that a full moon caused moisture to form in the brain leading to madness and there may be something in this as I made the uncharacteristic decision to wake up at an unholy hour and embark on a day of dawn to dusk birding on the Isle of Sheppey on the advent of a full moon. An incoming tide always provides some good opportunities to take photographs of wading birds as they are gradually pushed closer and closer to the high tide line so I decided to start my day on the beach at Leysdown Coastal Park where I hoped to video and photograph Ruddy Turnstones. These stocky shorebirds are always numerous in this area at this time of the year and their characterful nature makes them an interesting subject. The roaring wind meant that I needed to get down to beach level to be able to steady my camera and doing my best commando crawl I got really close to a small group of Turnstones. Read more »
Brent Geese Arrive | British Birding
October 17th, 2021 Nick One of my personal key indicators of the onset of autumn is the mass arrival of Brent Geese to the North Kent coast. As early as September small numbers of these migratory geese arrive in dribs and drabs, seemingly disappearing as soon as they arrive and then suddenly large numbers of Brent Geese can be seen coming in off of the sea. Last week I went out on a foggy morning and spotted a group of around 140 Brent Geese feeding on exposed mudflats and as I watched them, twenty more came out of the fog of the North Sea to join them. Then another twelve. Forty-three more. Another small group, and another. Gradually the group in front of me had swollen to over 400 birds and as the tide covered the mud they all took off and flew towards the coast just east of the town of Whitstable where I caught up with them a few days later but by this time their numbers had increased to 3-4000 birds; truly impressive. Read more »
