Birding at Doi Inthanon, North Thailand - 3rd day

12/1/2008 - 3rd day birding at Doi Inthanon

Times flies today mark as the 3rd day of our birding at this "Birding Heaven". During winter due to the drastic temperature difference from the town center and the Mountain, their local also likes to takes advantage to have their weekend holiday up in the mountain. As we are staying at the Electrical Government Authority staff's accommodation during our stay and their staff wish to have our chalet to night, we have to to check out today. After breakfast at about 6:30am we line our baggage with not valuable contents at EGAT with the help from our van drivers. After hand back to them the 2 bungalow keys we head to KM37.5. This place is usually refer to the 2nd checkpoint. The jeep trek trail seems to have good quality of birds in the recent sightings recorded at Uncle Daeng restaurant. Someone found a fruiting fig tree at about 600m and they saw Purple Cochoa, Green Cochoa...etc..etc. We park our vehicles outside the milestone of 37.4. We waited for more lightnings before we enter to the jeep trail. At the entrance of this trail we have flocks of Grey-Checked Fulveta feeds on this fruiting trees. Silver-Eared Mesia, Golden Babbler also flocks in.

As the lightnings are more promising inside the trails we trek into this well mark trail. Through out the trail you would notice 100m, 200m, 300m, 400m,500m.... signboard. With this would enable birders to record at which junction they have the bird sightings. This trail the trees here is very tall and it has thick undergrowth. We heard birds call but yet could not sight them. A few of us sighted a small Babbler, but it's keeps hopping around those thick undergrowth. We have at least 4 person trying to trek down this small ground babbler but yet we could not make up our mind what spp cause none of us have a good view of it. This is one of the signboard that you would notice as you trek inside.

This is inside the jeep trek trail. This trail reminds me of some trail in Taman Negara. Good quality birds would be there but have to work very hard to see one cause the trees are tall and thick forest. Finally I found where is the fruiting fig trees but what a disappointment cause the tree is very high. I have to use my bino on a 180 degrees looking up, yes I saw alot of birds flock in and out around that area but I could not figure out what are there.
Outside this jeep trek I spotted this pair of Flavescent Bulbul. They perched very closely to each other. Noticed one of the bird use it's bill to scrub the other bird. The other bird just enjoy this intimate moments. I think this is called bonding behaviour.

This is another look of the Flavecents Bulbul feeding outside the 2nd checkpoint.

Black-Headed Sibia also feeds on this fruit

Finally one of the van driver came back from Chom Tom with Mam. She told me that she have collected all our baggage from EGAT and transfer them to Karen Eco-lodge as well as she pack along "kaw man kai" for us. We head to Haui Sai Lueng Waterfall to have picnic lunch while we can spend sometimes to do birding there. Chicken rice from chiangmai is very yummy maybe because it was wrapped with banana leaves.

Here we sighted.

White Capped Water Restart, White Wagtail, Scarlet Minivet, Artic Wabbler, Verditer Flycatcher, Grey-Capped Pygmy Woodpecker, Dark-necked Tailorbird, Great Iora, Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher, Black-naped Monarch, Common Tailorbird, Blue-Winged Leafbird, Asian Brown Flycatcher,Ashy Drongo, Greater Racket-Tailed Drongo, Grey Backed Shrike, Velvet-fronted Nuthatch, Little Spiderhunter, Red Throated Flycatcher. One of the members saw Speckled Piculet..

A few Velvet-fronted Nuthatch keeps circling this tree trunk.

This is the Grey-Capped Pygmy Woodpecker that resemble so much like the Sunda Pygmy. Sunda Pygmy are normally found at mangrove while Grey-Capped are found in the secondary forest. I have the Grey-Capped as my neighbourhood therefore I do managed to ID them here

As we have travel all the way to Chiangmai for birds, we also like to do some twitching. No doubt Haui Sai Lueng Waterfall birdlife is very good from morning till about noon time. Maybe it would be active again from 4pm but it looks like most of the birds here can be sighted in Malaysia. After some rest we head down to KM23 to another Jeep Track Road. There is a big river down the valley along the Jeep Track Road. We heard White-Capped Water Restart.. Here we wait..and wait for birds but hardly any interesting character turn up except Ashy Drongo, some warblers. We called end of our birding day at about 6:30pm.