Khao Yai - first full day

On Tuesday 14^th we birded in the park and saw three of Khao Yai’s top four birds – Siamese Fireback, Coral-billed Ground Cuckoo and Banded Kingfisher (but not Blue Pitta). In fact we had luck all day and found other targets such as Great Slaty Woodpecker and White-crowned Forktail.  The day ended with some successful owling including a very cooperative Brown hawk Owl. We added 30 species to our trip list including 30 year birds and 21 lifers. My year’s tally reached 372 species and 51 lifers.

Great Slaty Woodpecker

Brown Hawk-owl

Oriental Pied Hornbill

Great Hornbill

In Thailand

 On Monday June 13^th I flew to Bangkok for a week long birding trip in south central Thailand. I had provided a list of target birds to WildBird EcoTours and my guides Par and Roy met me at the airport. We drove for 90 minutes before birding in a lowland secondary forest area around a military camp where the highlights included Asian Barred Owlet and Green Bee-eater. Driving past some wet areas we added more birds including Lesser Whistling Duck, Asian Openbill, Greater Painted-Snipe and Long-tailed Shrike. We then drove to our lodging in Khao Yai National Park, passing an Asian Elephant on the road on the way in! We saw 50 species that day including 39 that were new for the year and 20 lifers. My year’s tally reached 342 species with 30 lifers.

Indochinese Bushlark   

Black-collared Starling

Paddyfield Pipit

Long-tailed Shrike

On the way to the airport!

I picked up four species for the year on the SkyBus en route to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal at the airport. This took my total for the year to 305.

Cattle Egret

White-breasted Waterhen

Around Bangsar

Ahead of my big trip, I stayed around Bangsar and played with my new point-and-click camera adding 4 species on Saturday, ending the day on 300 for the year and then adding one more on Sunday, including a surprising Purple Heron at the kolam on Lorong Maarof. (301 on June 12th)

Common Myna

Purple Heron

Peaceful Dove

Part Two

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Friday June 10th and added 5 species for the year en route from KLIA to Bangsar and another 5 species sitting on the swing in the front garden. (In fact I had seen one of the latter, White-vented Myna, between planes in Hong Kong!). This took me to 296 species for the year.

Asian Glossy Starling

Javan Myna

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

End of Part One

A short trip up the San Francisco Peaks yielded two new birds for the year so that I had 286 species for the year on June 1st. A short trip to Cave Springs on June 2nd and to Logan's Crossing on June 4th yielded nothing new although David managed to find a few new species. He headed back to the UK with 219 species from his trip here - and added 5 more in Charlotte, NC between flights. I did add Band-tailed Pigeon as a state bird for the year out in Koch Field on June 4th.

I am about to leave on international travel,with 246 state birds and 286 species for 2011.

May Recap

As expected May was a good month for my year list. With semester over I was able to get out more, and with my friend David in town we did some chasing to both southern California and southeast Arizona.

We had 158 species in the week long California trip. I hadn't birded in California for a long time and had no idea if I had seen California Towhee or Oak Titmouse before. They had been split from Canyon Towhee and Juniper Titmouse in the intervening years and my old records had been lost. I counted California Thrasher as a life bird when I may have see it before but the two swifts -Vaux's and Black - were definite lifers for me. I made a strategic error on the trip going after birds at the southernmost part of their range (Yellow-billed Magpie, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, White-headed Woodpecker, Tricolored Blackbird), all of which are much easier further north and all of which I had seen before anyway! I finished the trip on 253 species of which 50 had been seen in California.

After just a few days rest we set off again, this time to SE Arizona, seeing 121 species in 3-and-a-half days with some successful chasing of life birds. I found several of the birds first seen in California (Wild Turkey (Madera Canyon 26th), Swainson's Hawk (Willcox 27th), Semipalmated Plover (GWR 30th), Pacific Slope Flycatcher (San Pedro House 29th), Townsend's Warbler (San Pedro House 29th), Yellow-Breasted Chat (San Pedro House 29th), Rufous-capped Warbler (Roadside Rest 28th), Blue Grosbeak (Madera Canyon 26th) and Hooded Oriole (). So ending the month on 284 species, 243 had been seen in Arizona - just 7 shy of my year's target!  I am almost at my goal for state-birds for the year.


I added California Ground Squirrel, Merriam's Chipmunk, Harbor Seal, Western Gray Squirrel, Gray Fox, Desert Pocket Mouse, Merriam's Kangaroo Rat, Bannertailed Kangaroo Rat, Desert Cottontail, Eastern Cottontail and Brush rabbit to reach 27 mammals for the year. I added American Bullfrog, Red-spotted Toad, Western Fence Lizard, Eastern Fence Lizard, Zebra-tailed Lizard, Western Whiptail, Desert Grassland Whiptail, Sonoran Spotted Whiptail, Side-blotched Lizard, Yarrow's Spiny Lizard and Ground Snake to total 15 herps.

Sierra Vista

On Sunday, David and I started the day at San Pedro House with the wind blowing strongly, walking along the river from the bridge, around the lake and back we had a good morning's birding without finding anything of great note. Our next stop, Ash Canyon B&B did not disappoint and we found Lucifer's Hummingbird and Scott's Oriole despite feeders swinging 60 degree arcs due to the wind. We ended the morning with a short stop at Ramsey Canyon to get Magnificent Hummingbird.

A visit to Sweetwater at the end of the day proved fruitless - with the Harris Hawks apparently gone due to changes at Roger Road -with the winds still blowing and air quality poor. The Catalinas were obscured by a dust haze.

 I ended the day with 6 new birds to reach 284 for the year.

Acorn Woodpecker

The Nogales Loop

On Saturday, David and I did the Nogales Loop - Paton's, Roadside Rest, Patagonia Lake and Kino Springs on the way south, Pena Blanca Lake, Rio Rico and Continental on the way back. We set off  with a long list of target birds and spent a long day in the field with mixed success.

There are three Arizona birds that I consider my Holy Grail - Five-striped Sparrow, Buff-breasted Flycatcher and Northern Beardless Tyrannulet. With California Gulch requiring a high clearance vehicle and the list serve's only posting of Buff-breasted Flycatcher having similar requirements, I went after the tyrannulet at Patagonia Lake (Nutting's Wash) to no avail.The wash was very interesting with Wild Tobacco growing everywhere. In fact I managed a lifer! I had never added Dusky-capped Flycatcher to my list because of its similarity to two other Myarchus flycatchers but I had been listening to calls on my iPod for a couple of days and I recognized the call. In a effort to convince David, I played the call while in the field and the bird landed on a perch just a few feet away. Technology! This was my 10th lifer (and 10th state bird) of 2011.

After getting some easy birds at Paton's and dipping on Thick-billed Kingbird at Roadside Rest, we went to Kino Springs and had Black Vulture, Black-bellied Whistling Duck and Gilded Flicker within a few minutes of arrival. The next stop was to add Least Grebe to my state list (number 11 of the year) before driving to Rio Rico to see many whistling ducks and ibis in the flooded fields and then Continental to find Rufous-winged Sparrow.

I ended with 9 new birds for the year to reach 278 for 2011.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

Willcox and Mount Lemmon

Mount Lemmon

On Friday David and I began with another bird chase. A Gray Catbird had been reported from a private yard in Willcox and we drove to Max Jarrett's house to easily add my 9th state bird for the year. [A report noted that the barn owls that I had seen at Lyle Leslie's house on March 19th had fledged three young.] While in Willcox we then visited Cochise Lake, finding Scaled Quail but no out-of-the-ordinary waders (shorebirds) and then St David's (dipping on Mississippi Kite) before heading back to Tucson.

After a break we headed out to Mount Lemmon which yielded our two target birds - Yellow-eyed Junco and Zone-tailed Hawk - but otherwise was a little disappointing.

I added 6 birds for 2011 to end on 269.

Scaled Quail

Madera Canyon and Night Birding

On Thursday, David and I started a short trip to SE Arizona with a 4 hour visit to Madera Canyon. An ultra rare bird, a Fan-tailed Warbler, only the 8th Arizona record had been seen on Monday and after parking at Proctor Road, we hiked we went straight to the spot opposite the Kubo. A half-dozen others were already in place and after staring into the gully for 30 minutes we were rewarded with the bird at street level only 20 feet or so. (My 8th lifer of the year.)  I also had a few more year birds in the area including a Swainson's Thrush, a long overdue State bird for me - the 7th for 2011.

We had spent Wednesday evening looking for reptiles around Wickenburg and between there and Madera Canyon we stopped off at Rio Salado and drove through the Santa Cruz flats with little to report except for my first American Pipit of 2011 off Pretzer Road.

Our day did not end with Madera Canyon as we had to pick up David's passport - left behind in Flagstaff ad take to Tucson by friends - at the La Paloma resort in Tucson's Catalina foothills. We arrived in the area around 9:30 but could not find the place instead finding a Common Poorwill - the second lifer of the day (9th for the year; 8th state bird) - in a deserted car park! I also had my first Lesser Nighthawks of the year during, what turned out to be, an unplanned spell of night birding.

I ended the day adding 10 year birds to end on 263 species for the year.