And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him, In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wonderous glory of the everlasting stars.

Banjo Paterson (1889)

Friday, January 21, 2011

Christmas Birding in Thailand - New Year's and Mae Ping

The last photos of the Thailand trip, with New Year's at Chiang Mai, which I think must be one of the best places to be at that time of year. Fantastic temples, fireworks and wonderful people.
















Only a little private party of a few drinks in our hotel room. As much as we wanted to go out, it was an early 4 am birding start on New Year's day.




The fireworks all over Chiang Mai were fantastic, including thousands of these paper laterns floating all over the city. It looked like thousands of UFOs had filled the sky!




An early morning with our new guide Nick Upton, hunting for Ashy-throated Warblers on Doi Inthanon. A long hard search, mainly due to hundreds of noisy Chiang Mai residents who go up there at this time of year, but we got it.





One of the lesser known but great birding locations is Mae Ping National Park.




Great birding with Silver-breasted Broadbills (lucky find for this time of year), Black-headed and Grey-headed Woodpeckers, as well as Blossom-headed and Grey-headed Parakeets.




A nice woodland where we got onto a rather hard bird to find in Thailand, White-rumped Falcon.












One last stop at a interesting temple complex north of Mae Ping and it was back to Chiang Mai for our long series of flights to get us back to Perth. Little did we know of the new adventure waiting for us, such as running across the huge Bangkok airport with our bags to make the next flight!


1 comment:

Bob Pelkey said...

I'll refuse to travel anywhere that is not accommodated by a non stop flight. So I may be restricted to reading great blog entries such as yours.