17FEB17: Thailand Day 2 -The Dump (Part 1 of 5)

So I woke up this morning with a vicious head ache.  Oh oh...  We had set aside 4 days in the Pak Thale area to give ourselves the best chance of observing Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Nordmann's Greenshank, Great Knot, and Asian Dowitcher - the four target shorebirds for the trip.  We had scored the SBSA, GRKN, and ASDO the previous day so the pressure was a little off.  We decided that we would go to the dump by the Abandoned Building area, then bird the Abandoned Building area, then Wat Komnaram, grab some lunch, bird Pak Thale, then finally hit the King's Project.

The dump is along the entrance road to the Abandoned Building area.  It's not a big dump as dumps go but it had been playing host to 2 less common birds - Rosy and Brahminy Starling.  We weren't there 5 minutes and Rick had already located the Rosy Startling.  Bob and I hustled over to where Rick was standing and we were able to get great views and photos of two birds.  Rick had thought there might be 3 (he was right, we had three on a different day).  Not bad for a whopping 5 minutes of birding! Here is a pic of them.  

Rosy Starling

We birded more around the dump where we saw an out-in-the-open view of a Greater Coucal, stunning views of a Green Bee-eater - yup, it's green, 

Green Bee-eater

a couple of Brown Shrike,

Brown Shrike

and an absolutely adorable Indochinese Bushlark.  This little guy was singing his heart out for us for about 10 minutes!

Indochinese Bushlark

I love dumps and this place was no exception.  There weren't any gulls here but that's OK, we rocked the songbirds!  

Moving down the road to the impoundments of the Abandoned Building area....