Friday, Feb 26 - Birding in Khao Yai National Park

Up at 4:45 and met for a quick breakfast before loading up into the vans at six in the dark. We entered the park and drove through dry deciduous forest of scrub and bamboo and into cool evergreen dense jungle. We immediately began seeing wonderful birds flocking in seeding bamboo like the Vernal Hanging Parrot, a tiny stubby-tailed green parrot with a bright red bill! We worked our way further uphill and saw an Oriental Pied Hornbill, a large bird with an ornate large bill. We also saw baby Pig-tailed Macaque monkeys, a very pretty red Barking Deer, and an enormous 3-foot turtle!

Our leaders, Dion Hobcroft, an Aussie, and David Bishop, a Brit, both of whom live near Sydney, are really amazing in their ability to spot birds high in the tree canopy and get their telescopes right on them, and to pleasantly discipline us so we all share the views of the birds, best seats on the buses and are quiet!

At one PM we pulled over to the side of a narrow road where a row of stools were set up and our amazing chefs (husband and wife team who were chefs in Japan) had a great spread set out of spicy coconut shrimp soup, rice and chicken curry, with papaya for dessert! We returned to the hotel for a two hour siesta (your loyal blogger took advantage of the time to download photos and post an entry…rest??).

At four we all met and got onto the vans to return to the park for more birds, and met at six for another delicious dinner and waited until dark when we climbed onto open jeeps for a night drive.

David had a powerful spot light that he shone on trees, road and grassland. Nocturnal birds and mammals eyes glow when hit by a light, so suddenly there would be two glowing rubies and then we could see the shape of a Sambar Deer, or golden eyes of a large owl. We screeched to a halt to see a Reticulated Python stretched across the entire width of the road! His brown and emerald patterned back almost glowed as he slowly left the warmth of the pavement! It started to get quite cold which was a novelty. We returned to the hotel at ten and unfortunately missed seeing giant porcupines or elephants but we were tired and happy nevertheless.

Immediately collapsed into bed!