The Feathered Gems of Cat Tien's Forest

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I eventually managed to drag myself out of bed early enough in the morning on not enough sleep, it being after midnight by the time I got to sleep. At least I had found the loris though! It would be annoying if I had no sleep and no loris!



Today was my last day at Cat Tien, I leave early tomorrow morning for Dalat since there's one bus per day which leaves at 6:30. My Cat Tien targets that I'm yet to see are pittas and partridges (which is entirely unsurprising) so I decided to focus primarily on the trails today as well as a bit of the Crocodile Lake road.



I started with the trails behind the captive animal area. I don't think I've mentioned that yet, but there are a few cages with some animals that are rescued or some such. This includes some sub bears, gibbons and macaques, with two animals that appear to be hybrid rhesus x pig tailed that I've heard about as a result of introduced Rhesus Macaques.



The mosquitos in the trails were rather horrendous, and there were lots of leeches as well by a) leeches don't transmit dengue and b) I am the Legendary Leech Whisperer or Crocodile Lake. I was fairly well covered though, wearing my one long-sleeved shirt, although the mosquitos still went for my hands and face. I much prefer short sleeves, but I even more prefer not having dengue. The attire of some of tourists, generally females, really does amaze me. It's like they got on the wrong bus and were expecting to be deposited at a the beach and when they found themselves in a rainforest in the leech and mosquito season, decided to just put some leech socks on and leave it at that. I'm concerned about wearing short sleeves, and you're really going into the forest in what is basically a bikini top? And it's not even fully in khaki. For shame. It occurs to me that the last time, apart from in bed, that I wore anything that was not khaki or camo print was in May.



Anyway, I spent ages being sneaky on the trails. There were lots of Shamas today, which are pretty cool but not really what I want. Then, to my shock, in the undergrowth about 6m away was a pitta! This was a Blue-rumped Pitta, my second most desired species at Cat Tien out of the three that occur (the others being Bar-bellied and Blue-winged) but since I'm not using tapes or hides, I hadn't really expected to see any so I'm chuffed with that one! It hopped around for a few seconds in closeish view, then flew off low. I stood around for a while being eaten by mosquitos and leeches to see if it would come back, but it didn't. It wasn't calling at all. I have a love-hate relationship with pittas. I love them when I see them, I hate them when I don't! (And it's by far most often the latter case!)



I soon found a likely reason why the pitta was about, when about ten minutes further on I stumbled across a bird blind. One of those black mesh constructions around a cuboid frame with slits to look and photograph through. This, presumably, is where bird guides put out seed and mealworms and bring birders to look for ground birds. I didn't happen to have any birdseed or mealworms on me today, but I figured with a hide and an area where birds are frequently fed, this would be a good bit of forest to look in. (Based on the condition of the hide and lack of vegetation around the feeding area, it was clearly being used. I got great looks at a Verbal Hanging Parrot feeding nearby, and a little further along the track until extreme sneakiness paid off as I was able to get quite close to a stunning male Siamese Fireback before it noticed me and shot off. Getting pictures of these ground birds without bringing them in to the hide by tapes/food would be pretty much impossible I think though. Even the Junglefowl, which are the most common groundbird at Cat Tien and the only one I've been seeing quite a few of, run off the instant they notice you. Such a high poaching pressure is, presumably, what is making all the birds extremely wary.



On the mammal front, some crashing in the trees materialised into a pair of Buff-cheeked Gibbons moving rapidly through the canopy, although they came into view at the same time as a mysterious brown bird which is very annoying of them.



The trail eventually came out to a large tree and around this tree was a group of tourists with their guide who asked me where I was going. Expecting to be told I shouldn't be in the trails and that I need a guide, I was all vague about where I was going so that they would let me just walk off, but it turned out that the guide was not a national park guide but a guide from some outside tour company, and they weren't sure of the way! It's always best do downplay what you're doing in forest's though because otherwise you'll be told to get a guide. Local guides seem to think that tourists will die instantly the moment they set foot in a forest without a guide. Never mind going around at night!



I birding the trails all morning and most of the afternoon, picking up a few birds. As I was walking back, I got a spectacular view of an Orange-breasted Trogon that landed on a branch right in front of my face and then, I kid you not, three metres further on around the corner in the middle of the path was... A Bar-bellied Pitta. Just amazing and unbelievable. I looked at it for a couple of seconds before it exploded up from the trail and into the undergrowth. I could still see it hopping though, about 10m away in the undergrowth. So I dropped my bag and got down on my hands and knees into the mud and leeches to look right along the ground level where it was remarkably clear and I could see it. The most stunning little green jem of the forest hopping along the ground, moving away from me. This was a male with the stunning green cap on the head. I crawled along the ground in the mud following it a bit, but after a couple of minutes he hopped completely out of view. So that's two pittas, entirely self-found with no guides, no tapes, no worms. How the f did I manage that? I only saw two species of pitta in my entire almost six weeks in Malaysia! And that's out of over half a dozen possible in Malaysia. I found two out of three at Cat Tien in half a day! Today is definitely one of those 'I love pittas' days.



At lunch, it's got to the point where I now always go to the same restaurant, sit at the same table, and order the same thing so that the people there don't need to ask what I want. This always happens when I'm at a national park type place where there's limited eating places (there are technically two restaurants at Cat Tien, one is really nice and has good food, the other is a less nice setting and seems to generally have run out of food) because I end up going to the same place and once I've found what I like, I just have that. I vary my diet with different drinks, and with lunch I had a Winter Melon (aka Wax Gourd) juice which is very distinctive tasting. I'm not sure if it's pleasant or unpleasant and I can't really describe the flavour.



In the afternoon, I walked along the road to the Crocodile Lake trailhead and did a few trails along the way too. Blue-winged Pittas apparently come out onto the road at this time of year. Wouldn't a three pitta day be awesome? Although given that I hadn't seen any on my previous walk or on the drive, I wasn't so hopeful. Germain's Peacock Pheasants also come out onto the road beyond the Crocodile Lake trailhead in the afternoons apparently, and it would have been nice to get a better view than the flushed one near crocodile lake.



It rained quite heavily for much of the afternoon, although I don't know why I keep mentioning this: it rains quite heavily for most of the afternoon most days at this time of year. I also discovered that the waterproofing on my right boot is, well, no longer water proof. My boots really have taken a hot on this trip, I bought them brand new especially for the trip and they're proper hiking boots, but they're reached the stage where if I was at home I'd definitely be buying new ones. I'll just nurse them through these last few weeks and junk them when I get back. And in terms of other things I'm nursing, my phone also won't charge properly and requires a lot of careful fiddling and placement of the charger to make it charge. You may recall that this is the second phone of this trip. Sigh. This trip certainly has been hard on my stuff.



Back to birding then, a Banded Kingfisher was a nice sighting. The Bornean from has been split which means this is new for the trip list. There was also a rather cute little flycatcher which appears to have been a Red-throates Flycatcher although they're winter visitors and I think it's too early. I'll have to check the pictures. I also saw an Indochinese Ground Squirrel run across the road at one point, which is a nice trip list. I hadn't bothered with leech socks for th road, so I ended up with a few leeches. I had to remove one every 15-20 minutes ish. One did end up in my pants again though which was annoying. I probably ought to think of some kind of 'in my pants' joke at this point but I can't think of one that's crude enough while also being witty in some way.



I heard a Bar-bellied Pitta calling in the distance, my first time actually hearing a pitta at Cat Tien despite me specifically listening put for those three calls, got a flyover of Oriental Pied Hornbills, and found a group of doucs which are such lovely primates that they're always nice to see. It felt quiet in general though. I know that probably sounds like a lot, but there seemed very low general bird activity of drongos and bulbuls and such.



I didn't want a long night of spotlighting, I've got my loris now and I've got to be up and checked out by 6 no ifs or buts because there's only one bus from here, so I stayed out on the Crocodile Lake road until dark and spotlighted back. I spent about 40 minutes scanning the section of road where I saw the loris yesterday to see if I might be able to find it again today. I didn't find it, although I think it was probably somewhere in the area. Unless it happens to be right by the road like last night, you won't find a pygmy loris at Cat Tien. I didn't see much of note, just some inidentifiable microbats and some medium sized megabats. I was only out in the dark properly spotlighting for just under an hour and a half though. That's a good length of time for spotlighting in some areas, at Sepilok in Borneo I was seeing heaps with less than two hours each night, but at Cat Tien spotlighting is slow and and difficult.



So overall in my five and a half days at Cat Tien, I ended up getting all of my target mammals and most of my target birds, missing out on only one of my top target Cat Tien speciality birds: the notoriously difficult Orange-necked Partridge so that really is very good. Cat Tien is a lovely place, and I very much enjoyed the six nights spent here. The poaching pressure is clearly high though compared to similar parks in other countries. And presumably Cat Tien is one of Vietnam's better protected parks. There are certainly lots of rangers! (Although I'm aware that there's probably some corruption there too). I don't feel like I 'need' any longer here, although I could happily stay here and relax and tease out a few more species. At 350k per night, the accommodation is not super cheap though.



Tomorrow, on to my second site in Vietnam (and the only other one I'll be visiting on this short two week Vietnamese sojourn), Dalat!



New birds:

Blue-rumped Pitta

Golden-fronted Leafbird

Lesser Necklaced Laughingthrush

Blue-throated Flycatcher

Bar-bellied Pitta

Banded Kingfisher

Red-throated Flycatcher



Mammal:

Indochinese Ground Squirrel

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