After enjoying a successful few days at the salt pans South of Bangkok we travelled north to Khao Yai National Park to explore an entirely different habitat. Forest. Miles and miles of it. It is one of the largest areas of forest remaining in Thailand and the health of this area is easily seen by its diversity of birds and other animals.
It's not surprising that birding in forests can be much more disappointing than on wide open areas such as the salt pans where all the shorebirds were. As a result we saw a lot of birds we couldn't identify or photograph in time and missed most of our 'target' birds. Nevertheless, it was very enjoyable with many new birds to identify and great looks at several of them.
3 highlights:
On our way to the park we happened to take a break at a marsh that held a large diversity of birds that gave a boost to our lists :)
Pheasant-tailed Jacana - not a rare bird but a good representative of the marsh:
Long-tailed Broadbills - glorious birds that I identified by their tail shape and we eventually managed to get great looks of 2 birds:
Photo from here
Sultan Tit - part of the same 'wave of birds' that contained the Long-tailed Broadbills - these guys caught my attention when I saw them in the field guide, I had no idea they were so large!
Photo from here
After several hours of eBirding I have some more accurate statistics from the trip:
~170 species total
~75 lifers
30 species of shorebird :)
