Brief Guide to Ten (10) Common Birds of Chiang Mai

We got to know a number of birds pretty well after our two and a half month stay in Chiang Mai. I'm only a casual birder so we were dependent on bird books and the internet to identify most of these.

The pictures are from my pocket Canon Powershot so most are just good enough to help you identify the birds. Since I have the pictures, I thought it might be nice for visitors to Chiang Mai to have a brief guide to some common birds they might see or hear. We were in Chiang Mai from early February to late April, so I can't guarantee these birds are all around or sound the same at different times. Regular visitors to this site have seen most of the pictures and videos as they came into being. But here they are all gathered in one post.

#1. Red Whiskered Bulbul


This is one of the easiest to spot because of its distinctive black crest and because it is so common. It's a red-whiskered bulbul. You can see it better in the video below. From the Honolulu Zoo:

The Red-whiskered Bulbul has a distinct red ear patch, and red tail coverts. Both features are very distinctive from other birds. This bulbul averages seven inches in length and can weigh from 23 to 42 grams. The birds are brownish above and white below their stomach region from birth until an age six months. The head is black with a pointed crest and there is a red patch, the "whiskers", behind the eye. The beak is slender and notched. Their nostrils are ovalshaped, and have bristles. The legs and toes have little strength and are usually short. The wings are short and rounded and the tail shape varies from rounded to squared. Immature bulbuls resemble adults except that they lack the red marking on the head.

And for better pictures, check here, and here.


#2. Racket Tailed Drongo

The racket tailed drongo has a number of different calls. One call is on the video below. The long trailing feathers give it away.

From Wikipedia we learn:

The species is well-known as a very accurate vocal mimic, and according to Goodale and Kotagama (2006) appears to learn its alarm calls through interactions in mixed-species flocks. This is quite unusual, as avian vocal mimicry has hitherto been believed to be ignorant of the original context of the imitated vocalization (parrots are known to use imitated human speech in correct context, but do not show this behavior in nature). This drongo's context-sensitive use of other species' alarm calls is thus analogous to a human learning useful short phrases and exclamations in a number of foreign languages.

#3. Black Drongo

A black drongo's tail is more forked and doesn't have the long trailing feathers. For more see www.oiseaux.net.

#4. Greater Coucal

You are more likely to hear than see this bird. It makes a deep toop-toop sound. It's faintly in the background of one of the videos below. It also has a long tail. You can see clearer pictures at nagpurbirds.org.

#5. Magpie Robin
The magpie robin is also pretty distinctive with the white streak on the black wing and white underbelly.

#6. Common Myna

Common Myna.

#7. Spotted Dove

You can hear the spotted dove coo-coo-cooing on one of the videos below.

#8. Pigeon

Pigeon landing.

#9. Scarlet backed flowerpecker. These are tiny and move around a lot. But the red head and back are good tips this might be what you are seeing flitting in the leaves. For much better pictures go to pbase.com

#10 Koel

In this video you can hear the dove and bird #10 the koel (this is a great collection of Thai birds, the koel is in the first row), and one of many calls of the racket-tailed drongo. I did manage to see a few koel, but never managed to get a picture. They're not easy to spot unless they fly, but their voices are very distinctive and very common, at least during the time we were there. You can also see a greater coucal's fuzzy silhouette with its long tail. These are pretty big birds, maybe two feet long,



In this video you can see a red whiskered bulbul, a greater coucal, and a black drongo. You can hear the coucal very, very faintly in the background when the bulbul is on. There is a comment when it starts - put your cursor on the light grey dot on the blue playbar (I know, what's a playbar? I'm trying to figure out a simple way to describe the line that shows where you are on the video. There are two such comments on the first video too.)

Racket Tailed Drongo on a Stick

After hiding for most of two months, the drongos are now starting to model. Or maybe I'm getting smarter about when they are around. Or it's luck. In this video we finally combine a view of the drongo along with the drongo call - the loud, distinctive two beat almost electric tone. There's also a rapid chatter which we think, but aren't positive, is also drongo speak. Watch for the second drongo in the tree. For previous drongo shots link to the drongo label.

The Racket Tailed Drongo Shot

twenty or thirty times it calls

penetrating deep into my sleeping brain
it's not even light yet, go back to sleep.

several days now this morning racket
just out our window

today it is light
I groggily get up to see


Not the drongo call I know
My brain still in bed as I watch him
fly away


[Photos © whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com All Rights Reserved]

To hear this guy, watch the video here.

Racket Tailed Drongo Video, Finally For Real

Something was snagging up this video - either some audio, some frames from the video, or the final titling. I rebuilt the video piece by piece and saved it until it started balking again. So here it is. After the title you have to wait about 10 seconds to see the drongo fly by the first time (it seems much longer). But wait for the slow motion version of each shot, especially the second one. Then you can see the tails clearly. I cut out the stills, but you can see them in the previous post.

Racket Tailed Drongo Video, Finally

[Click the picture to enlarge it]

The racket tailed drongo is always followed by these two long tail feathers which seem to disappear just before there's a wider feather and then the end of the tail. There are several that fly around here, but they've been incredibly hard to catch with the camera. [Go here for an even better shot taken the next day.]

But persistence pays off. Here are two on video. It's all explained on the video. To hear the drongo's strange electronic call, listen to the end of the video here.

[I don't know what's happening. iMovie keeps crashing while it's trying to save the video. I need to remake it I think, but I don't have time now. I'll add it in later when I get it figured out.]

Black Naped Oriole

This one was really clear and easy to identify using the binoculars, but you couldn't tell in the photos. I wouldn't have known he was there if I hadn't seen him fly to the perch. In the upper photo, he's on the far left on the highest branch coming out of the side of the frame. He was there for all of maybe 15 seconds. I realize I've set up unrealistic standards, wanting to not only see the birds, but to photograph them too. Anon, I'm going to look into a camera like yours when I get back . My serious birder friend Dianne doesn't even have a camera. What you can't see in the picture are his bandit black stripes over his eyes, his other black markings on his tail and underparts, and his reddish beak.

And, coming soon, are pictures of the racket-tailed drongo in flight. These guys show themselves for five or ten seconds at a time. I finally figured out their flight path from our balcony - just a short opening - and knowing they were in the area, just kept the video camera on until they flew by. I'll try to edit the video tonight.

More Birds and a Squirrel

Today I saw the source of the strange bell like bird calls - a pair of racket tailed drongos flew by. It was them. But I couldn't catch them on camera. And the Koels were flying by in pairs as well. I guess it is spring.

And the doves. And for Anonymous, and Bird Anonymous, there's even a fuzzy shot of the coucal in the video with its tail. And audio of a racket tailed drongo at the end.

Morning Birds - Black Crested Bulbul

It's at times like this that I'm jealous of whatever camera Anonymous has at Bird Anonymous. But I've left my ancient pentax and telephoto lens at home because the Canon Powershot fits in my pocket and I can have it conveniently with me all the time. But still, times like this I wish I had a better camera. My pics here are only to help me document that I saw them and to help identify them and I leave the fantastic close ups to Anonymous and the lucky times a bird lands on my nose.

So, here are some sketchy shots from our fourth floor balcony of today's visit by the Black Crested bulbul. Also saw to greater racket tailed drongos fly by. Thought maybe they were the ones making the the two toned doorbell like call in the video. But a little googling got me to Dave Farrow's incredible pages on SoundSnap which have different calls for that drongo.

So turn on the video and listen to the bird calls while you look at the bulbul shots. And you can go here for some better shots of the black crested bulbul.







It's in the middle, just to the left on the branch in the middle of the tree. You can double click all of these to enlarge them a lot.

Khao Yai Day 2

I was up again at 6am with the audio recorder and binoculars. There were also groups of the school kids with binoculars and bird books. I found a little path into the jungle and put the recorder down and pressed the button. Just like the camera gets me to look at things differently than I would without it, the recorder had me focusing on the sounds. It was like a piece of music. All these different critters contributing in different ways. (We checked the tapes today in Korat and they are great. Too bad we didn’t learn how to post pod-casts before we left. If we don’t figure it out here, we’ll post some jungle sounds when we get back.)

When I got back, Joan was sitting on the bed, dressed, but wrapped in the comforter. We quickly got our stuff together and walked to have breakfast, stopping to look at the birds in the field. Red-vented Lapwings we’d seen at Bharatpur, swallows.

Our guide turned out to be a 64 year old retired park driver. He’d been at the park since it was brand new – the first Thai National Park, opened in 1962. He said there’d been lots of changes. In the old days no one came. They didn’t know about it. There were no roads. And they were afraid of the tigers. Now there are only 6 or 7 tigers left. We had an 8 km walk, which turned out to be more rigorous than most 5mile walks. Ups and downs.

Vine-like branches an inch or two in diameter looped around overhead, across the trail, and underfoot. A certain kind of palm has a long extension of the leaves that hangs out over the trail and is covered with little thorns looking for a shirt or hat to grab onto. But it is the dry season so the trail wasn’t muddy or slippery. There was also ample evidence that elephants had been on the trail recently. I’m not sure how they manage – it really is just a one person path. There was a concert of birds and insects all the time. At one point we listened to the gibbons howling and chattering away in the distance. We stopped to try to see the birds we could hear, but rarely succeeded because they were high up in the trees. At one ;point hundreds of butterflies lifted up from their resting places as we came by. We saw a couple of Greater Horn Bills. Our guide was delightful and I’m glad we had him. Speaking Thai really comes in handy, though people are so warm and hospitable it doesn’t really matter. And Joan’s Thai is really coming along well. Toward the end of the hike, we stopped at a small waterfall – a lovely little spot, with rocky outcroppings and there was a blue whistling thrush on the other side. Pak said in Thai it was a “Nok Ian Tham.” Nok is bird, Ian is the name of this kind of bird, and Tham is cave, where they like to hang out. Then up a little further to the bigger waterfall that was the destination.

I’d had a slight tightness in the back of my right heal when we walked over for breakfast. It never really hurt, though I was aware of it on the hike. But eventually, when we got dropped off where the food is, I realized I couldn’t walk without pain. In the little shop where’d I’d gotten the candles, they had small bags of ice cubes. When the girl heard why I needed the ice, she just took out a handful of ice cubes and gave them to me in a plastic bag. So I sat down with my leg on another chair, icing my heal. The lady at the info center offered to drive us back to the room since I couldn’t walk. It was another early evening.



Today [Thursday, March 8), my foot was slightly better – I could limp around in my sandals – but I wasn’t in any shape to do any more walking than necessary. Joan walked to the visitor center while I stayed on the porch and enjoyed the jungle symphony in the cool morning air. The visitor center lady drove up to get me at 9am and we spent the morning on the bird watching deck at the visitors’ center. The birds are really hard to spot, but sitting there for several hours I began to see them. Familiar ones – a drongo, not sure which kind. The black crested bulbul. And a few others I couldn’t quite identify. Being forced to just sit had its advantages. The driver picked us up at 11:15am and drove us all the way to the bus stop in Pak Chong, where the bus to Korat was leaving immediately. As we drove back down to lower elevations and then out of the park, I was really glad we stayed inside the park. Aside from the fact we didn’t have any traveling to do, the weather was so much cooler up in the park. And before long we were back at the Sima Thani where the front desk staff know us already. And soon I was on the bed with my foot on ice again and we watched the Woody Allen Aphrodite movie on Star TV. I wasn’t impressed. Watching birds on the deck at Khao Yai was much better.