31st January 2012 - Final Day

Dawn at Pak Thale

by Paul Lee

Paul and Rose's final day saw us return back to Pak Thale and Laem Pak Bia to catch up with a few species we  had missed, first try was for Black-faced Spoonbills which had been reported over previous days flighting out to mangroves at dawn, after an hour and no sign and with light rain beginning to fall we headed back towards Laem Pak Bia to look for Nordmann's Greenshank. Heavy rain the previous day had risen water levels and made finding dry pans difficult eventually we located a large flock of Great Knot and amongst them 11 Nordmann's Greenshank a new bird for Rose. Also nearby were two Avocets and a cream coloured leucistic Black-winged Stilt.

Paul and Rose had seen a great selection of waders over the previous few weeks in Australia and Thailand and were keen to fill in a few missing species, so we headed into the nearby research project and quickly added Ruff, Temminck's Stint and Pintail Snipe to their list, which was now over 40 species of waders. Also in the research project several huge water monitor lizards were seen and in the mangroves lots of Golden-Bellied Gerygone were present. Needing to check out of our hotel we headed back towards Cha-am and again spent an hour wandering around scrub and a lake on the edge of town, new species seen included a Barred Buttonquail and Indochinese Bushlark.

Once checked out of the hotel we returned to the raptor watchpoint at Bang Nong Pha Li north of Phetchaburi. In overcast conditions and rain we were not hopeful of seeing to many large raptors, but after a couple of hours we had seen Greater-spotted, Steppe, Eastern Imperial and Booted Eagle and an unexpected Black-headed Ibis feeding with egrets on a flooded rice paddy. Late afternoon we returned to Bangkok, final birds of the day here were Yellow-browed Warbler and a Common Kingfisher. Rose and Pual went home happy having seen Spoon-billed Sandpiper and a total of 190 species during four days of relaxed birding.