Bang Pra Non-hunting Area

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The next day we were leaving Bangkok, however none of the rest of my family would get up early and there was nothing I could do in the early morning so I was forced to have another lie in – the second of two for the whole trip. Although I would have chosen to have been up at sunrise birding somewhere, I did sorely need a rest at this point. Once we were up and had breakfast, we headed to the next place that we were staying which was a two night stay in the Bang Pra/Khao Kheow Zoo area. Despite a somewhat later start, we made it to the accommodation before midday with time to spare and I would probably have been able to visit the aquarium in the nearby town of Bang Saen but it was a Monday and the aquarium is closed on Mondays so I didn’t have the opportunity to visit this aquarium – hopefully I didn’t miss anything too amazing.

After checking in and having a late lunch, we went to visit the nearby Bang Pra lake which is a very large lake that has the Bang Pra Non-hunting Area around it where I wanted to go birding. Again, I got a lot of my information from the thaibirding.com website, however when it comes to facilities the description on that page is no longer accurate because the entrance area has been largely developed as a birding site with a small official entry fee to get in and a proper car park and what appeared to be a camping ground with toilet blocks at the entrance. That day I had about 4 to 5 hours of evening birding around Bang Pra and I saw quite a lot because there is a large diversity of habitats there. The place is a very large water-catchment lake which is fringed by grasslands, some of which are flooded, and the grasslands are further fringed by forest but rather than dense rainforest-type vegetation it quite open in the understory with a dense canopy. In many ways the area reminded me of Lake Nakuru (excluding the cliffs around the edge at Nakuru) in Kenya with a similar kind of forest but with trees that are closer together.

When I started birding that day, it was still quite hot with the sun still high around 2PM so I started by birding in the shade of the forest. The most notable birds were Hoopoes – loads of them – and I saw more out in the grassland areas as well. There were various other birds in the woodland as well like barbets and there were signs about some of the birds with the hoopoes mentioned as well as Spotted Owlets which I didn’t manage to spot. Quite an interesting thing that I noticed here is that the trail leading out was signed as the ‘Birding Trail’, not bird watching or bird trail but using the word birding which is often only used by birders themselves who usually don’t like being called birdwatchers for whatever reason. I don’t think they get many people visiting here though, I wonder if anyone has ever stayed at the campsite and I imagine the only people visiting are the occasional birder and I didn’t see anyone apart from locals while I was there.

Once the sun had lowered a bit and I had birded the forest area, I headed along the birding trail out into the grassland and open lake area. There were a few (domestic) water buffalo grazing around as well as some locals fishing but there were absolutely loads of birds as well ranging from water birds to open country grassland birds to reed/marsh birds and a few forest birds could be seen flying in and out of the forest. There were to many cool birds to name them all, my big year post from this day can be seen here 2017 Big Year and in addition to the new species seen there were lots of species I had seen already on the trip including ridiculous numbers of Asian Openbill Storks, hundreds, maybe thousands, as well as a couple of noticeably much larger and more impressive Lesser Adjutant Storks (apparently the adjutants originally escaped from Khao Kheow Zoo but are now a wild self-sustaining population and they could be found naturally wild in the area as well). Also especially exciting were the birds of prey and great views of Racket-tailed Treepies.

As well as all the wild birding, I also got a view into the back of a private government-run waterbird breeding centre. There is no public access to this place (I tried), but the centre backs on to the non-hunting area and a number of aviaries can be seen from the birding trail. The species I could see in here were Painted Stork, Lesser Adjutant Stork, Black-necked Stork (presumably the Asian subspecies which I had not seen before) and most excitingly and conveniently in the most easily visible aviary from the path was Greater Adjutant.

After the birding as it neared sunset, I left Bang Pra where as I was walking through the forest area on the way out I saw a Berdmore’s Ground Squirrel (there were also loads of Variable Squirrels in the trees) and some White-crested Laughingthrushes. After dinner, we went back to the accommodation where I had a look around at night with a torch because the owner said there were owls but I couldn’t find any and there were dogs barking nearby so I stopped and went to bed.

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