Morning in Khao Yai and End of the Trip

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For my last morning in Thailand I had another opportunity to do some early morning birding in Khao Yai National Park and I had managed to persuade my dad to get up for sunrise to drop me off at a part of the park around 10 minutes drive away (the Pha Kluai Mai campsite) so I could do some early morning birding around there and along the trails and the roads nearby to add a few more species to my Thai list for the end of the trip.



There was quite a lot seen around here in the morning, particularly compared to the lack of birds in the heat of the day yesterday when I visited this same area. There were a lot of small birds around such as flowerpeckers and flycatchers and I got fantastic up-close views of Green-billed Malkoha, Green-cheeked Barbet and Oriental Pied Hornbill that were not very scared of people. The hornbill in particular was very showy staying right out in the open to the point that it could pass as a tame bird. There was also a Green-imperial Pigeon that I was pleased to see and just before leaving the campsite area I got a very close view of a White-handed Gibbon swinging around and the staying for a while in a tree overhanging the road just out of the campsite. I spent a couple of hours around here in the morning and then also spent a little while walking down a track near to the bungalows area by myself where I saw lots of Common Flameback Woodpeckers and a very cool Black-and-buff Woodpecker as well as a Besra (bird of prey) before I had to get back to pack in time for us to leave.



We then checked out at the HQ and started the drive back to Bangkok and to the airport, though still within the national park I got a nice view of a Wreathed Hornbill flying across the road and we took a different route out of the national park so I got to see some new parts. On the drive back to the airport there were quite a few signs that Songkran - the Thai water festival and new year - was happening with some people throwing water some mad drivers and some highly decorated parade vehicles but this was pretty much the only time that I noticed that Songkran was happening at all. We got to the airport in the late afternoon for our Air China flight with a short stop of a couple of hours in Beijing back to Warsaw.





So that was my Thai trip! I hope you have enjoyed these posts and I will soon be uploading some pictures that I will probably embed in this thread to keep everything in one place and easy to view. Overall I am extremely pleased with how the trip went and I saw a lot more than I was expecting with over 270 bird species, 27 mammal species and 23 reptile and amphibian species. I saw lots of species that I really wanted to see and although I missed a few things that I wanted to see like Banded Leaf Monkey, Brown Hornbill, Velvet-fronted Nuthatch etc. I’m very pleased with what I saw and I saw lots of things that I wasn’t expecting. Not bad for my first wildlife watching trip to Asia!

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