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12 August 2020
 Introduction
Lat Krabang, eBird hotspot Lat Krabang paddies is easy accesiable from Bangkok located just a little North-east of Suvarnabhumi International. It makes it a perfect bird watching destination if you have a few hours over when staying in Bangkok, 200 + checklists and 183 species observed as beginning of May 2020. So if you have a few hours with nothing to do there is really no excuse NOT to go there. Nick Upton had made an “virtual birding” video about Lat Krabang since the last time I visited the area. Nick Upton have a Youtube Channel Birding with Nick Upton and there are a lot of interesting birding videos. Click HERE to visit his channel. Birding Trip in Bangkok, rice field birds at Lat Krabang
It is Public holiday and my friend has the day off and we decide to go look for birds. We will start early morning at Lat Krabang before going to explore a few eBird hotspots in Chonburi. I had planned to go check out Khao Khieo and the below eBird hotspots: • Khao Khieo – Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary--Wat Pa Thammachat & Phuttha Sawika Meditation Center, Chon Buri • Khao Khieo – Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary--Wat Phra Thammachak, Chon Buri • Khao Khieo – Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary--Nam Chon Bureau of Monks, Chon Buri To skip the information and to go straight to the TRIP REPORT click HERE Guide
I usually don't use any bird watching Guide in / around Bangkok. But could be a good idea to have a Guide to help me identify all the birds I see. As it is now my eBird checklists are not very impressive as I can only ID half of the birds I see. Land transportation
You will need a car and if you don't have your own a taxi is a very convenient way of travelling. Depending on the early morning traffic it will take about 30-45 minutes to get to Lat Krabang. Taxi is about 150 - 200 Baht (May 2020) + toll. But you need a car to drive around the area so make a deal with the taxi driver, 1000 - 2000 Baht (May 2020). And of course, depending on your negotiation skills. To make sure that the driver understand you can show the below Thai Script: • Lat Krabang เขตลาดกระบัง Or show the driver a map. Click HERE for a map to Lat Krabang paddies  Scan for map to Lat Krabang paddies
Take the Bangkok - Chonburi Motorway (Route #7) and pass the exit to Suvarnabhumi and continue for about 3 km towards Chonburi and exit the highway. You pass one U-turn bridge and then another brige before exit. As soon as you have exit you make a U-turn under the highway. Turn left on the other side of the highway and follow the highway until you reach a bridge and turn right before the bridge and you reach a intersection. Turn left and drive under the highway and then left again and after a few meters you turn right at the 7 Eleven. Go straight for a kilometer or so and you are in the middle of the Lat Krabang paddies. Equipment
Canon 5D Mk. III + Canon 5D Mk. IV Canon EF 28-300/3,5-5,6 L IS USM Canon EF 70-200/2,8L IS II USM Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens Canon Speedlite 600EXII-RT flash Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II Panasonic HC-W585 video camera Sound recorder ZOOM H5 Handy Recorder Binocular Steiner Skyhawk 8x32 (Since May 2020) Weather / climate
Weather, I don´t know if Bangkok is the hottest capital in the world. But this is what they say and I have no reason to doubt this information because it is darn hot.  Bangkok, Thailand - Climate & Temperature
Pictures from www.climatemps.com
 Bangkok, Thailand - Climate & Temperature - Click picture for full size
Pictures from www.climatemps.com
References/Resources
Thai National Parks - About the National Parks in Thailand A very good web page - Do you know that there are still wild tigers, elephants, leopards, tapirs, gaurs, bears and many monkey species in many tropical rainforests across Thailand? Do you also know that around 10% of all marine species in the world can be found in Thailand? And the fact that Thailand is the best bird-watching destination in mainland Asia? National parks are protected areas of land because they have unspoilt landscapes and a diverse number of native plants and animals. There are 127 national parks in Thailand, of them 22 marine national parks. These parks offers a diverse range of flora and fauna, home to important population of endangered species. So now it will be easy to find out if there are any National Park close to you. Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) - The Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) is one of the oldest  organisations conserving birds and nature in Thailand and is the country partner of BirdLife International. BCST's role to the local community is to spread awareness about urban birds and reconnect people back to nature.
The Logo Dated back to 1986 when BCST was then a loosely-formed “Bangkok Birdwatching Club”, the Oriental Magpie Robin (Copsychus saularis), or “Nok Gang Ken Baan” in Thai, has been chosen to represent the organisation. There are two sites covering Thailand and I have used them many times. These two web pages are actually everything you need for your birding adventures in Thailand. All the information you need about all the birding spots. Click on the map and then select your spot and you will have maps and everything you need to know about the areas. They have put a lot of jobs in to their web pages, North Thailand Birding and thaibirding.com A must to visit before you go bird watching in Thailand. www.norththailandbirding.com - A one stop only for all your birding in Thailand thaibirding.com - Nick Upton's one stop only for all your birding in Thailand. Use both www.thaibirding.com and www.norththailandbirding.com and you have a winner. Some of the maps on www.norththailandbirding.com are way better than Nick Upton´s, while some of Nick's maps are much more detailed. So I have found that if I use both the web pages for information, well, nothing else needed. PBase/Peter Ericson - Peter Ericson, a guy I thought was from USA because of his family name. I met him at Lat Krabang Paddies in May 2020 and turned out that he was Swedish. Anyway, I have used his excellent page PBase since 2016 as help to ID birds by the help from his beautiful bird pictures. Here you can also find information about birding tours. He is also having a Blog - Thaibirds and more with interesting information. Bangkok City Birding - A lot of interesting birding stories and information on this bird watching blog by David Gandy. Bangkok-based patch-worker in Suan Rot Fai, a large park close to the city's famous weekend market. He have recorded 150 species on his patch since 2008. As one of the only big green spaces in the city, “SRF” acts as a real magnet for migrants during spring and autumn, and holds a healthy selection of "sibes" during the winter months. ebird - Find birding hotspots with bird checklists from all over the world Avibase - is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 25 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information for 12,000 regions, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages  www.oiseaux.net This web page is also excellent for identifying birds. There is information and range maps for many many birds from all over the world. This page is almost guaranteed to give you any answer you have about any bird in the world. Cloudbirders - Read birding trip reports from all over the world Fatbirder - Linking birders worldwide... Wildlife Travellers see their sister site: WAND  Fatbirder is a fantastic web page with information from, I think every country in the world. My first stop when I plan for my bird watching trips. There is information about locations and guides, well, pretty much everything you need to know. Sometimes this is the only place I need to visit to plan my trip. BirdingPal - find a birding Guide around the world   And the web page you cannot live without. I have been around the world looking for birds. I usually have a Guide, but sometimes it is not possible to find a Guide. So, well, I have lost count on how many times I have had help to ID birds at BirdForum. Joining this forum have been very very good for my bird watching experience. www.birdforum.net ClimaTemps.com is the place to learn about the worlds climates with more than 4000 locations documented. Each aspect of the climate is represented using colour enhanced tables and professional graphs so that data can easily be compared by switching between locations in different tabs in your browser. “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson”
 A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson. New edition updated with 76 species since previous edition “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig” Nick Upton at www.thaibirding.com wrote “This quite excellent book is packed full of quality illustrations and written information on 1251 species recorded in Southeast Asia” I bought this book for bird watching in Thailand, but it goes for all over SE Asia I have been very happy with the “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson” But I had a fire in my condo 2019 and I needed to buy a new book. I was looking for the “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson” as I liked the book. But this book is not available anymore so I had to buy the “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand” by Craig Robson. What a disappointment this was, using the pictures in the book didn't helped to ID any birds. “Birds of Thailand” by Uthai Treesuconand Wich'yanan Limparungpatthanakij
I met Peter Ericson, a famous bird watcher and he recommended the “Birds of Thailand” by Uthai Treesuconand Wich'yanan Limparungpatthanakij. I bought the book as soon as the book stores opened after the Wuhan virus. And I am very happy with the book and I have managed to ID some birds using the book.  This new field guide will help you identify all 1049 species to have been recorded in the country to date, including the 20 species endemic or near-endemic to Thailand. -Taxonomy follows the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. -Detailed texts covering status, habitat and behaviour, age, sex and geographical variation, voice, and confusion species. -Almost 2200 illustrations covering all species and distinctive subspecies, birds in flight, males and females, juveniles and non-breeding plumages, where appropriate. -QR code for each species, linking to the Internet Bird Collection gallery of photos, videos and sounds. -More than 1025 full-colour range maps for all species other than vagrants. -Well-marked subspecies groups receive full accounts, and the distributions of subspecies breeding in the region are clearly mapped. -Local species name and local conservation status included. I like the book, but I miss the picture index. Places to visit
Lat Krabang paddies
 About 32 km from the Sukhumvit / Asoke intersection in DOWN TOWN Bangkok
eBird hotspot Lat Krabang paddies and this is a world famous birding spot. And I qoute Peter Ericson: “Lots of wetland birds as well as scrub dwelling critters.” And I actually met Mr. Ericson while birding at Lat Krabang paddies, his 99th time at Lat Krabang paddies. It is a beautiful area, even if you have the SE Asian problem “garbage” It is very nice area to use your car driving along the dirt tracks and you really are able to get close to the birds using the car as a hide.  It is beautiful around Lat Krabang
Bird checklist
I never use any bird lists, but since I try to make it in to Cloudbirders. A very helpful site when planning your birding trips. But they ask for a bird checklist, and if I use their service, of course I want to contribute as well. My two first bird watching trip reports was rejected by Cloudbirders. So I started to take ideas from the reports I found on Cloudbirders. So I have started to use bird lists, eBird generate one for me and I can post it on Cloudbirders. I will post my birds on eBird and on my different “BIRDS THAT I HAVE OBSERVED” pages. Full Thai list updated to the taxonomy, nomenclature and sequence of the IOU/IOC World Bird List. The complete checklist, including Thai names and synonyms, can be downloaded in Excel format - Thailand Bird Checklist. - Version 8.2 (2018) - found at www.norththailandbirding.com Check lists can come in handy to find out the local name of the bird etc. And Avibase have a list with pictures and sounds, excellent! So I will post bird checklists here and if my Guides provide me with checklists I will also post them here.   Bangkok bird checklist from Avibase, click HERE - eBird version 2019 taxonomy Avibase is providing you with bird checklists from all over the world. And I´m impressed by their web page. Select country and area and you get the bird checklist. Like the PDF files I got from Avibase on the links above. You also get the checklist with pictures and sounds. The best part is that you get the local names of the birds and the online checklist gives the names in English plus the language you have selected. But it seems like the PDF cannot handle some alphabet. For example the Japanese language so it is blank in the PDF checklist. But it worked excellent with Swedish. But you get them in the local language on the online version. Bird list
I only list birds I have got on picture on my list of OBSERVED BIRDS. But since I started using eBird I have changed a bit. I list all the birds on the eBird checklist. See the DAY TO DAY report in the itinerary below. And you can visit my list of “Birds I have seen in Thailand” ONLY BIRDS I HAVE ON PICTURE. Trip Report
12th of August 2020 and my friend and his son come to pick me up at 6 o'clock and we are soon on our way to Lat Krabang where I start the eBird app at 06:50. Driving along and we notice how the vegetation have grown since we were here back in May. So it was not easy to see the birds in the dense vegetation.  Female Asian Golden Weaver
 Female Asian Golden Weaver
 Pond Heron in almost full winter plumage
 Red Avadavat
 Scaly-breasted Munia
 Yellow-bellied Prinia
 We drove along the dirt track and I was lucky to spot something red behind the vegetation. My friend put the car in reverse and we discovered one male Red Avadavat. We got out of the car and the bird took off before we could get any good pictures. My friend was very happy to have seen the beautiful bird. We reached the fish farms and we made a U-turn and drove back to the paved road. We continued towards east on the paved road that are lined with ponds and we pass Egrets and Herons. We were soon spotting Little Grebes in one of the ponds. We stop and we are soon discovering that there is 4 babies as well. So it was mostly water birds spotted along the paved road. Of course, Asian Golden Weaver everywhere. I spotted on Plain-backed Sparrow. I thought it was a Eurasian Tree Sparrow. I had a picture, very bad, but I could see that the birds was yellowish and thus a Plain-backed Sparrow.  Little Egret
 Little Grebe / นกเป็ดผีเล็ก
 Little Grebe / นกเป็ดผีเล็ก
 Little Grebe family
 Little Grebe family
 Little Grebe family
 Little Grebe family
 Little Grebe family
 Plain-backed Sparrow
 Bronze-winged Jacana
 Today´s track at Lat Krabang paddies
We left Lat Krabang getting up on the Bangkok - Chonburi motorway driving towards Chonburi. First stop was the eBird hotspot: Khao Khieo – Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary--Wat Pa Thammachat & Phuttha Sawika Meditation Center. You pass two mountains covered in forest on your left hand side passing Chonburi. These forest covered mountains caught my interest ever since I passed them the first time several years ago. I was thinking tigers, elephants and excitements. There are a few eBird hotspots in the area and today was a good day to explore some of them. Leave the motorway and get up on road #344 when you reach Chonburi. Drive towards east on road #344 until you reach Ban Buen, quite a big city. Take off when reaching road #3138 and drive south east of the mountains, or the back side as I use to call it. If you are going to explore the hotspots, start in the south and drive north. Otherwise you will have to drive three times the distance due to U-turns etc. Driving north and it is just to leave the road going in the to “jungle” A little bit after having left road #3138 driving west toward the forest the landscape turns in to a beautiful “country side” and there are birds. We left the road crossing a small bridge over a small creek and we were at the Meditation Centre.  Entering Phuttha Sawika Meditation Center
 Turning left after the bridge driving towards the Meditation Center
 Open area east of the Meditation Centre
The Meditation Center was like a hotel and no sign of any birds and we left. Instead of turning right to cross the small bridge again we continued straight. We reached an open area with hunting Bee-eater and we also spotted a White-throated Kingfisher flying across the road in front of the car. Leaving and we turn right after having crossed the small bridge and we drive to the end of the road, a parking at the temple. We make a U-turn on the parking and we leave the temple parking in the forest. We walk around the pond and there are one Little Egret and several Cattle Egrets.   Approacing the end of the road and the temple
 Pond between the temple and Meditation Center
 Pond between the temple and Meditation Center
 Today´s track at Khao Khieo Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary--Wat Pa Thammachat & Phuttha Sawika Meditation Center
We left the hotspot driving back to road #3138 and we turn north and we have to make a U-turn to go back south. Then another U-turn to go back north to leave the road to drive to the eBird hotspot: . So now you understand why I recommend to start in the south and go north on the east side of the mountains. We left the main road and we drove through the farmland. There is a building or something looking like a temple. Turn right after the temple and we end up in a forest. And there is supposed to be a water fall if you continue on the road. A lot of birds that I could not ID in the dark forest and the eBird list don't contain many birds.  Passing a palm oil farm
 Passing a palm oil farm
 Farm land
 Driving throgh the forest
 Driving throgh the forest
 Today´s track at Khao Khieo Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary--Wat Phra Thammachak
Back on the main road and we turned north and then a U-turn to get south again. Last U-turn driving north and we leave the highway driving west on a dust road. Industrial area on the right hand side and farm land on the left hand side. Vegetables growing in rows and I spotted two Indochinese Bush Lark. I ID the bird as Australasian Bush Larks but I was helped to get the correct ID on birdforum.net, a very nice idea I had to join the birdforum. I have had so much help from them with bird ID's and other matters regarding birding.  Indochinese Bushlark
 Indochinese Bushlark
 Starting to drive up the mountain
 Starting to drive up the mountain
 Green Bee-eater
 Green Bee-eater
It starts to go uphill when the farm land come to an end. We drive through a lush landscape and dense vegetation. Not so easy to see the birds that we can hear. By the time we reach the temple area it turns dark and it looks to start to rain any second. We turn around and we spot 4 more Indochinese Bush Larks down at the farm land. We spot the White-rumped Munias in a bush at the industrial area before we reach the highway.   Today´s track at Khao Khieo Khao Chomphu Wildlife Sanctuary
Nam Chon Bureau of Monks
We drive back to Bangkok and we order pizza. The reason for us to go back early is that I have an LG technician coming to have a look at my washing machine. My next birding will take me to the Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park across the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. This is the place for my very first bird watching adventure back in 2015. Click HERE to find out if I see any birds at Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park
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To www.aladdin.st since December 2005
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