U-Mong Creek Nature Walk, Chiang Mai

[Saturday Feb. 14, 2009, 9pm Thai time]
Behind Wat Umong (on the south side) is a Wildlife Reserve. There are some birds and deer in cages/enclosures, some picnic areas, and cabins. You can also take the nature trail that is maybe 3 or 4 kilometers round trip.

You can get there two ways.

First (blue trail thru Wat Umong on the map), if you walk through the Wat grounds to the fish feeding lake, turn right and follow the trail around the lake to the other side and then the road out of the Wat grounds. Turn right and go up the hill just a bit into the reserve.

Second, (White route on the map) if you stand at the main entrance to Wat Umong looking out to the street, turn right and right again at the three way corner. Then go until the houses on the right turn into an open country (well, it is fenced in) and the first road on the right has a sign that even says wildlife reserve in English as well as Thai. Go up this road (the one you'd get following first option above.) This road is no more than five minutes by bike from the entrance of Wat Umong.


Once into the reserve grounds, keep walking up the road. You can get to the trail head a couple of ways. We went up the road and then to the right past a place they put out food for the deer.

There were a couple of deer there feeding as we came up the unpaved road.

The trailhead is pretty clearly marked. There's another little sign - you can probably see it better if you double click on the picture - between the two trees on the right. (Tne one on the far right has two trunks veed).

Here's a view a little ways up the trail. There were lots of birds though not really close enough for my little Canon powershot. We did see a pair of black crested bulbuls - striking with their black heads and bright yellow bodies. We saw a large bird of prey circling high above, what I think are malkohas, with their long, long tails, a racket tailed drongo, and some others we couldn't identify. It's the dry season now and leaves were falling from the trees the whole way, which makes it a little easier to find birds in the trees.


The trail isn't too well defined, especially now when the ground is just covered with leaves.

This is thorny tree was about 8 inches in diameter.

And this little butterfly patiently held its wings open as I worked to get it in focus.

This is a nature trail and there are a few signs identifying trees like the one on the right of the picture. That was one way we were certain we were still on the trail. But this was the last sign we saw. The trail got iffier. Eventually we weren't sure if we were on the trail or not and I decided we needed to veer to the right and get down to the creek.

Somehow, as we went right, we found what was clearly the trail again.
It was luck. But it does appear that there is a fence around the reserve (there was one where the trail crosses the creek at the top) so possibly if we'd gone further up, we'd have hit a fence and there was a path along the fence at the creek. But no guarantees. Can you see that there is a trail there to the left of the tree on the picture above? This is near #3 on the map.

Here's J catching some zzz's where the trail crosses the creek.
There's a rock slope that is probably a nice waterfall in a wetter
season than now. Today it was a pretty shallow and mild creek.
This picture and the next several are at #4 on the map above.

The water in the creek was crystal clear. Can you see the shadow of the water spider? It's below and to the right of the center of the picture. It's a cluster of five little dots.

These are the same damsel fly, the one on the left is the true color,
the one on the right you can see more details. It's about 3 or 4 inches long.

For the most part, the many beautiful butterflies were impossible to capture with my camera. But this one was very cooperative and I was fast.

Each of these flowers is about 2.5 inches long.

And here's J showing how big teak leaves get.

And here we're back at the bottom and off the nature trail. This is at #5 on the map.

This sign says, basically, that wild animals of all kinds love life just like you.

And a few blooming flowers at the end of the hike.

This last flower wasn't really on the hike. I saw it on someone's garden wall on the way home. But if I don't stick it in here, where would I put it?