First Kaeng Krachan Day

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After arriving in the dark last night, I was keen to get up to see the grounds of Kaeng Krachan, so I was up just before sunrise to look around. The grounds of Baan Maka are very nice with a pond covered in lotus flowers and of course lots of birds as well as two species of squirrels. I think most of the species I saw around the grounds are pretty common, but they were all exciting for me (again, see the big year list which is yet to be posted). I birded around the grounds of Baan Maka for about an hour and a half until I could get my family up to have breakfast to go to the national park because today I would be going around the national park in our hire car with my family. There were quite a few nice birds seen on the way up, and seeing the first Junglefowl was very cool (though these turned out to be common).

It was a bit late by the time we got into the National Park and we got to the lower campsite around 10 so it was already a bit hot, but there were some nice birds there that I enjoyed seeing like barbets and woodpeckers and there were huge numbers of butterflies, as well as a particularly exciting bird which was a great hornbill flying overhead. The rainforest and the landscape was nice too. After looking around this camp we headed up the first part of the track that goes up to the second campsite. This is not paved anymore, and it is supposed to be up and down at specific times, but we were told by someone at the reception office that we could make it to the first stream that you have to ford (and also no one was paying attention to the up and down times). The birding along the road was extremely difficult because of the density of the rainforest, and it was quite hot and humid. Actually, so hot and humid that some of the ink transferred from one page of my bird book to the other side. I did nonetheless manage to spot some nice birds though so that was fun. I did see a group of Dusky Langurs which was a very nice thing to see, but other than that the only mammal seen that day was a single macaque and I was expecting to see more. So we just generally birded around the lowland part of the national park for a while before leaving in the evening, and I saw quite a number of birds.

We got back to Ban Maka just after dark and after dinner, I went out for some proper spotlighting along the dirt road that leads to Baan Maka off the actual road to look for nightjars and owls. I went quite a way along this road and after a while the torch got quite hot which was very unpleasant and I think that’s the most I have ever sweated. But I did hear lots of owls I think both scops and brown hawk owls and I saw a number of Large-tailed Nigtjars so that was good.

Tomorrow I am due to have a day in Kaeng Krachan National Park with a bird guide and a 4x4 so I hope to see some high altitude specialities and some of the harder to spot birds with my mum who will go birding with me while my brother and father go to the beach at Hua Hin.


Note: this is again posted a day late and again I haven’t read through it so apologies for any errors. Assume the latter in all subsequent posts while I’m in Thailand.

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