Day 0
It took an entire day to get to Thailand, mainly as we flew via Qatar. That turned out to be a very good decision as we got to do a bit of birding from Hamad International Airport to get ourselves in the mood, but also because we were fortunate to get an upgrade to Business Class on the Doha to Bangkok leg. I do not usually fly with the Middle-Eastern carriers so this was a real eye-opener - miles better than my usual airline. We were on the upper deck of an Airbus A380 and it had a bar! I knew these existed but I had never seen one. It was just a shame that I was driving at the other end and I couldn't therefore partake in any lovely beverages.
Once in Bangkok we realised that we needed to fill in an online immigration form - this took us half an hour in a queue to find out, at which point we were sent back to the beginning. Luckily there was wifi at the airport that we could get on. One of the questions was about which countried you had travelled to during the previous ten days or thereabouts, and so I carefully put in Latvia, Grenada and Trinidad. This latter country is viewed as one with a Yellow Fever risk, and so this then gave me a new bit of form to fill out, including asking me to upload my Yellow Fever vaccination certificate and directing me to a kiosk where I had to get a health form. Yikes! Luckily I am pretty organised and had photographed my Yellow Fever certificate when I had the jab a few years ago, but can you imagine if I had not had that? What would have happened? Clearly there would have been at least some risk of being sent back to Qatar which would have been a disaster. The point being I had no idea that this entry requirement existed, it had not occured to me in the slightest that where I had been previously could have been a problem.
Once through we got the hire car easily enough and navigated in heavy rain through the outskirts of Bangkok before finding our route west, the 35. We had pre-booked a hotel very close to the main road about 100km away so that we were only 45 minutes from Pak Thale the following morning. What should have taken an hour and a half ended up taking closer to three hours as we were continually shunted off the main road onto side streets clogged with traffic due to massive construction work that has apparently been going on for years. Combined with our slow exit from the airport it was probably close to midnight local time when we finally made it to the hotel and the lady at reception was asleep and we unforunately had to wake her up.
Day 1
Despite the very short sleep, and for me a massive time difference given I had been in the Caribbean about 48 hours previously, we managed to wake up before dawn and get back on the road. Today was our first chance at the legendary Spoon-billed Sandpiper. The plan had been to arrive at Pak Thale shortly after dawn, but we were of course compelled to stop at the first sign of any birds to get the trip started so to speak. So it was that not even halfway to Pak Thale we found ourselves birding by the side of the road, scoping wonderful habitat full of birds. Primaily this was waders and herons of the largely the same species seen in the UK, but some Asian colour was added by Brahminy Kites, Malaysian Pied-Fantail, Mynas, Ashy Woodswallow, Oriental Darter and Asian Koel.
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| Spoonfinder General |
We finally made it to Pak Thale about an hour after sunrise. One European birder was already there, clearly looking for the same thing we were. Two guys from the RSPB bowled up shortly after we did, they were mapping water levels as part of a project (tough gig!) and gave us some good info about where they had been seeing the Spoon-billed Sandpiper, and what water levels it preferred. The individual pans change daily, and the water needs to be very shallow with exposed mud, so there was no guarantee that it would still be where they had seen it. We left them to their measuring and joined forces with the other birder, Joakim. He was Swedish and had very recently retired and immediately bought a one-way ticket to Thailand. Arriving a day before we did he had spent the entirety of the time at Pak Thale with an expensive guide and missed the Sandpiper. Oh dear. Looking around it was easy to see why. Innumerable pans, hundreds upon hundreds of identical looking small waders. We decided to walk towards the shore checking each pool along the way, this was the area the RSPB guys had seen it previously. At the second pool we stopped at Joakim found it. Having set aside two whole days to try and find it we had probably been here for about 20 minutes. Always nice to get the big one out of the way early on but honestly this was ridiculous. Looking at the bird, which was slowly moving further out, only in certain profiles could you actually see the wedge at the base of the bill. Sideways on, or feeding, and it looks like all the other small waders - mostly Red-necked Stints. I grabbed a rushed record shot and then immediately lost it, it had likely gone over the edge of the next bund and was lost to view, but when we later managed to scope that pool it was nowhere to be seen. We never saw it again and neither did Joakim. How jammy is that?
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| Spoon-billed Sandpiper |
We spent most of the morning exploring the site, heading out to the water's edge as well as to the obviously vegetated pools at the north of the site. It is hard to desribe how good it is - there are what we would consider mega-waders everywhere. Greater and Tibetan Sand Plovers, Asian Dowitchers, Terek Sandpipers, Marsh Sandpipers and Broad-billed Sandpipers. Greater and Lesser Crested Terns sat side by side on posts out on the Gulf, and there were also Whiskered Tern, Gull-billed Tern, Little Tern and Caspian Terns on site. In the distance we saw flights of Spot-billed Pelican, and in around the vegetated pools we had three Collared Kingfisher together, two Black-capped Kingfisher, two Common Kingfisher and Racket-tailed Treepies. Eastern Yellow Wagtail were common, and Coucal and Koel both called from the bushes.
Approaching late morning we left to go and explore some nearby eBird pins that held different birds. We started at the Bang Kun Sai wetlands, literally two minutes away, a lovely stretch of habitat along a straight road. Here we picked out our first Garganey, a mere 38 birds. There were untold numbers of Herons and Egrets here, including Purple Heron. Waders included Ruff, Wood Sandpiper, Kentish Plover, lots of Black-winged Stilts and our first Grey-headed Lapwing. A Booted Eagle flew overhead, Eastern Marsh Harrier cruised around, Brown Shrike was in the bushes with an Indochinese Roller. We marvelled at how rich and diverse Thailand was, 85 species and it wasn't even lunchtime.
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| Painted Stork |
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| Chinese Pond Heron. Or Javan. Take your pick. |
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| Red-necked Stint |
Talking of which we stopped in the nearby village as you carried on west down this road and had our first street food. Back in 1998 I caught bacillic dysentry in Thailand which was most unpleasant, and if anything my stomach is more fragile now than it was then. Ever since then I have always had this experience in the back of my mind, and here I was where it had happened. By any UK standard the small outdoor cooking set-up was filthy, and would have failed any basic checks. But at the same time this is how everything is made around here and everyone looks very healthy indeed. How dangerous could it be? Well it was delicious, simple rice and some kind of pork topping with chilli. I never looked back.
We spent a bit more time driving the narrow roads around here, stopping whenever it looked promising, which was most of the time. We added Asian Openbill, Scaly-breasted Munia, Great Myna, Streak-eared Bulbul, Common Tailorbird and Red-wattled Lapwing just by driving around. We tried a different spot at the coast, the Laem Canal estuary which was again teeming with waders, birded the salt pans near Laem Phak Bia where we finally added Long-toed Stint, and the Thetsaban Alley Wetlands where the flock of Garganey was in excess of 300! Our final stop in this area was at a small reedbed where we found a flock of Golden Weavers, Amur Stonechat, Plain Prinia and a Yellow Bittern.
It was now time to start heading towards Kaeng Krachan, we wanted to be able to bird a bit en-route and not arrive after dark. It was not an especially long drive and so were able to take our time and make a few stops. Firstly a large quarry which had lots of Swifts circling it, some of which were Asian Palm Swifts, as well as our first Siamese Pied Starling, and closer to Baan Maka, a final stop at Huai Phak Reservoir added Bronze-winged Jacana, White-breasted Waterhen and a big flock of Asian Green Bee-eaters.
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