Full Day at Khao Yai

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The next morning I got another advantage of staying in the national park which was that I could be out birding properly at sunrise relatively easily so I started at sunrise generally walking the 4km between the bungalows and the headquarters but taking various detours going down some trails and things in the forest along the way. I saw quite a few interesting birds around and I also found a bird wave with lots of small birds flying around that added a fair few to the total. Another particularly cool thing seen was a group of very pretty Scarlet Minivets flying around that really are attractive little birds and there were lots of Black-naped Orioles too. With the help of a friendly park ranger who offered a lift in the back of his pickup for part of the way down the road, I made it to the headquarters area around 8 for breakfast and then did some of the trails around the headquarters. It seemed that by this time most of the bird activity had already died down and it was quite quiet though I did see a couple of cool things like Puff- and Stripe- throated Bulbuls as well as a Jerdon’s Baza and a funny Black Giant Squirrel sitting just near the headquarters making a lot of noise at everyone going past for seemingly no reason. I also saw my first leech of the trip. I think it’s surprising that I hadn’t seen more before this point.



For the rest of the day I birded along various trails and areas of the national park following some recommended areas from thaibirding.com as well as generally just going around to places that looked promising. Much of the birding was extremely difficult and for long periods of time there was absolutely no bird activity at all but of course that is unsurprising given that the heat in the middle of the day is not conducive to birding and I was looking along trails in the forest itself rather than along the edge on roads and open areas which is much more difficult especially as I’m not experienced enough with Thai birds to know the calls. I was hoping to see some of the Khao Yai specialities like Blue or Eared Pittas, Coral-billed Ground-cuckoo etc. I didn’t find any of those, but things like Dusky Broadbill, Common Green Magpie, Asian Fairy-bluebird, and Golden-crested Myna were pretty cool to see. In the middle of the day walking along the trails I did see loads of reptiles though including lots of skinks of a number of species and two different Draco species but I managed to miss a crocodile that my brother and father who walked ahead at a non-birding pace saw. Apparently there are two introduced hybrid crocodiles along a section of a river that we walked along, though I was obviously paying too much attention to Slaty-backed Forktails rather than looking out for crocs.



In the evening we went to an old golf course that presumably (hopefully) was cleared before the area became a national park where there were a few more cool birds seen like junglefowl and leafbirds and some other things before doing another night safari after dinner. Before going to the old golf course area was a funny incident when we tried to go down a very small poorly marked trail into the forest but as we were going down, the whole place suddenly started crawling with hundreds of leeches all waving their heads around and starting to crawl towards us. It had suddenly become very overcast and even more humid which probably drove the leeches out. At this point we decided to leave to find somewhere with fewer leeches since none of us had leech socks and birding over a carpet of writing leeches (maybe a slight exaggeration) isn't super-fun. Though at least I had proper boots so didn't get leeched, not everyone else was so lucky.



After the evening birding though was the night safari. There are two rounds of night safaris each day, one from 7-8 and the other from 8-9. The previous day I had done the first time, but for my second (and last, because this was my last full day in Thailand) night safari I wanted to try the later session. I think the people at the HQ were a bit reluctant to book the second session but they did, and I think we were probably the only vehicle out at that time because aside from a couple of cars finishing off as we were starting, I didn’t see any other night safari cars that night. Of course we saw the Malayan Porcupines and Sambar again which are really common, but maybe as a product of it being later there were also some civets about and I saw both Large and Small Indian Civets. Another quite exciting thing was a whole herd of elephants at a salt lick including some young ones so that was cool to see in addition to the single one the previous day (though that was a much closer view) and it was only after a little while watching the elephants that I noticed that there were also some Gaur further back. One final particularly exciting sighting was near the end of the night drive when I spotted and the spotlighter/guide person also saw a Bengal Slow Loris in a tree by the road as we were driving through the dense forest itself. Unfortunately the driver didn’t see that we had seen something so I only got to look at it for a short time as we drove past (quite slow driving of course) which was a little bit frustrating particularly as a slow loris is such a cool thing to see. Other than that though, I don’t really have any complaints about the night safaris at Khao Yai which I wasn’t expecting considering all I have heard about them is how awful they are.





After the night safari I went around the bungalow area spotlighting to try and see if I could see anything but I just saw some nightjars hawking overhead and a few Malayan Porcupines before stopping for the night.

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