17FEB17: Thailand Day 2 -King's Project (Part 5 of 5)

His Majesty King Bhumibol was beloved by all. He always kept his promise to Thai People - the promise that he would reign with righteousness for the benefit and happiness of the Thai people.   One of his many great achievements was the establishment and implementation of his Royal Projects.  Here is a link to a page that describes the Projects. 

The King's Project we visited is the Environmental Research and Development Project at Laem Pak Bia. For a full description, visit Nick Upton's ThaiBirding.com for a comprehensive description of the area.

We arrived at the entrance and Na worked out the details of our entrance. Thank you Na!  As Na was doing this, Rick walked the gardens towards the impoundments.  When we met up with him, he said he had a White-breasted Waterhen run across the road.  Nice!  One of the first birds that we saw was a Spot-billed Pelican - sort of a surprise for us all. It was on the water and then got up, circled, and left the area.  I was able to get a few shots off of this large pelecanidae. 

Spot-billed Pelican in flight

The place was nice in the late afternoon.  Egrets and Pond-Herons were everywhere.  Asian Water Monitors prowled the grounds, and there were shorebirds - not huge numbers, but an interesting variety.  One bird that I really enjoy is Spotted Redshank.  I saw the long staying bird at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary (Massachusetts) on 04AUG90.  This species is a sharp tringa and there were several of them here:

Spotted Redshank

Spotted Redshank

Spotted Redshank

We also had a Temminck's Stint and a Pin-tailed Snipe:

Temminck's Stint

Pin-tailed Snipe

Asian Water Monitor

One of the main reasons we came to this location so late in the day was to experience the evening flight of birds going into the mangroves to roost.  Rick indicated that he had large numbers of several species coming into roost back in February 2013.  Here is a comparison:

        Date       BCNH  BTBE  BLDR  WSST

08FEB13       55        800    1800     460

17FEB17      275       330     1200      55

Here are a few pics of the Black Drongo and Blue-tailed Bee-eater.  Difficult because it is after sunset and getting flight shots of birds in the dark is, to put it mildly, challenging.

Black Drongo flying to roost in the mangroves

Blue-tailed Bee-eater flying to roost in the mangroves

Then the real treat started.  Rick indicated that after the birds went into the mangroves to roost, out would come thousands of Lyle's Flying Foxes.  For those who have never heard of them, they are huge fruit bats the size of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.  We had heard them earlier in the evening and Rick said he smelled their guano.  But seeing is believing.  First one, then several, then hundreds of these giant bats came out of mangroves to go inland to feed.  It was a wee bit unnerving to have these giant mammals flying over our head at about 250' but it was exhilarating.  I tried (and failed) to get decent shots of these mammals in flight in the dark.  

Lyle's Flying Fox leaving mangrove to feed

 After that show, we drove the dirt roads of the Project, I was hanging out the truck window, and we flushed a nightjar.  We left it at nightjar sp.


We settled in for the ride back to the Sun Hotel and that's when my flu started to sink in...