Thaibirds and more

Sharen and George requested a morning at some nearby city park. We opted for this little visited park in Samut Prakan. The park is surrounded in greenery, swamps, mangroves, banana plantations and in vicinity of the sea. Not a lot of people in the early morning gave us the advantage of being alone on the bird watching tower where we did the bulk of our birding. Some regular park birds showed but several species that otherwise are not easy in the city but more rural secondary growth showed. Several Greater Racket-tailed Drongos. 3 Black Bazas was a happy surprise. Several Black-naped Orioles and many Pink-necked Pigeons. Black-naped Monarch, Pale-legged Leaf Warbler, Black-winged Cuckoo Shrike were other good ones. Still, the Coppersmith Barbet managed to steal the show for my Karen and George as they simply couldn't get enough of it!                                          Black Bazas                                           Female Pink-necked Pigeon            

I had the pleasure of taking Karen and George Sherman for a day of birding to the prime birding area of Paktaley, Lampakbia and the paddies of Petchaburi. It  had rained massively the day before and when I met them at their hotel the skies were all dark with rain filled clouds. We bravely set off anyhow and amazingly enough didn't encounter any rains at all throughout the day. The salt pans were flooded though and it was impossible to walk the dykes. Thus we didn't have a real chance to look for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Karenn and George were easy to please anyhow and as we kept birding the fields and the pans we ended up with a day count of almost 100. Most of these birds were new for both of them. I managed to pick up a few pictures along the way and here are some of them starting with the quite numerous Black-tailed Godwit.      It isn't often I get a chance to get fairly close to Ruddy Turnstone but this one was quite co-operative.         The  Wo