Waders

Friday we had to go to Lopburi, and as usual wherever we go the bins go as well, just past An Tong in Maha Rat District an extensive area of flooded paddies held a huge number of birds. I spent around half an hour trying to count the number of birds present and eventually got some impressive totals of waders with 3700 Black-winged Stilt, 1800 Marsh Sandpiper, 320 Wood Sandpiper, 75 Little Ringed Plover, 39 Grey-headed Lapwing, 22 Pacific Golden Plover, 18 Greenshank, 13 Temminck's Stint, 6 Common Sandpiper, 4 Spotted Redshank, Green Sandpiper and the odd unidentified snipe. Other waders could be seen well into the distance and remained uncounted and unidentified, the true numbers of waders in the area was probably considerably more than the above counts.

Black-winged Stilts
by Fred Rowe

Amongst the huge numbers of egrets and at least 2000 Open-billed Storks where four Painted Stork and two Black-headed Ibis. Also present were at least three Eastern Marsh Harrier, 2 Black-eared Kite, 20 Blue-tailed Bee-eater and amongst the many hundreds of hirundines 50 Red-rumped Swallows.

At Lopburi we visited a couple of temples situated in the limestone mountains, both temples we visited looked ideal for Limestone Wren Babblers despite a good look around i could not find any, but both sites will be well worth another look. At both temples good numbers of Chetsnut-headed Bee-eaters were present which was a little surprising along with two Blue Rock Thrush, Black-winged Cuckoo Shrike, 2 Black-naped Monarch and a Collared Owlet.