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.)

Swinging Bulbul and White Rooster

I pass this rooster, and his friends, every day when I ride to the office.

And I caught this red whiskered bulbul from our balcony enjoying this swing. He came back for a second round.

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.

Catching Up

Well, catching up never happens, but rather than worry about getting things up from Friday, I'll just put up some stuff on today and let the other stuff get up when I can do it.

My bike ride to the office is a delight. I pass a couple of wats (Buddhist temples) and more or less rural areas even though we are in town. A few noodle shops, mostly homes of various sizes and styles. I'll try a video one day soon. You've seen some of that in the house hunting post. The weather has been cool - down into the sixties at night - and the humidity low so it's been comfortable. I stopped here for breakfast this morning.

The office is getting empty. There's a meeting in Lampang, neighboring province, and others are going to Bangkok. I've been getting into the office close to 9am the last two days and today I was the first one there, so my 10am arrivals weren't all that bad. So hardly anyone is around this week which is good since J comes tomorrow morning. Everyone is gone so I was wondering how I would pick her up. But Grib came by today and offered to pick me up to get Joan. Since no one was there - at least in my organization, there are other people from the other organizations - I left early and went back to the market I'd been in last night. Most of the shops that had household stuff were closed last night. Today I did fine and got some of the things I wanted before Joan got here - hangers, a pair of plates, bowls, mugs, and fork/spoon/knife sets, a pot, and flowers. Actually they look like much less than when I bought them. But there are two bunches of mums, a bunch of orchids, a bunch of roses, and a clump of fragrant gardenias, and a jasmine bud necklace. I cleaned things up this morning and when I got the hangers home hung up Joan's clothes that I brought along.

Poor J is somewhere between Tokyo and Bangkok. And won't be here til tomorrow morning.

Tonight the AJWS volunteers in Chiang Mai are meeting tonight at the Hindu temple. There's something going on and then vegetarian Indian buffet afterward. I'm going to see if I can get an electric burner on my way, so we can do a little cooking in here.

Here's a view from the bedroom. The living room view is similar. I've seen already a lesser (I think) coucal and a red whiskered bulbul (the link has a great photo) and another bulbul like bird that had an red/orange chest and white neck. I couldn't find anything like it in the book.

I can sit at my desk here and be bird watching. At night we have interesting bird sounds. I recorded some, but realize I lost it. But that one has been back each night. We also get roosters crowing out there from about 4am on and sometimes the neighboring dogs get yappy. But it hasn't been disturbing for some reason. I saw a bunch of roosters around the closest wat this morning when I rode to work.

And I've learned there's another word for organic. This one basically means 'safe from poison".

Enough, I quick nap and then off before it's dark. I brought a rear bike light from home. I called Sak at the bike shop about buying a new one tonight on the way to the temple, but he's playing tennis, but he said to call on the way back, maybe he can open the shop for me. That's Thailand.

Baan Orapin - Chiengmai Bed and Breakfast

Riding the bus from the Lao border to Chieng Mai, back in Thai cell phone range, I called Grib to tell her we were on our way and in the conversation she recommended we stay at Baan Orapin. Their website calls it a 'boutique' bed and breakfast. "Boutique" is tacked on to all sorts of fancied up for Western tourist magnets in Thailand and Laos. In fact one could call Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos, a boutique town with its world heritage site designation, but that's another post.

Baan Orapin is an old Thai family compound. A large house with other buildings in a walled in garden with large old trees in a beautiful flowering garden. Here's a ripe jackfruit - yes that's how they grow. It's a little bigger than a football. Yes, it looks something like a durian, but it's not.






On a tiny two laned, sidewalk-less street just east of the Menam (River) Bing, what was obviously once a quiet Soi (side street off a main street), Baan Orapin is an island of old Thailand, quiet, green, relaxed, just off the busy hustle and bustle of modern Chiengmai.


We missed the new swimming pool by a couple of weeks. That's our room just behind the black curtain next to the pool.

The Arizona educated owner, is trying to keep his family compound viable as a bed and breakfast, maintaining the old house, and building a few guest houses on the property. The rooms - you can see them in the link above - were beautiful Thai style with Western style bathrooms. This is not your run of the mill hotel where everything is like any cookie cutter hotel in the world. It's a chance to be back in a touch of the old Thailand that is quickly disappearing. And while it was one of the more expensive places we stayed on our trip at 1700 Baht per night, that still comes out to under $50 per night. He said he's trying to keep the prices reasonable, that the pool won't raise the prices. The local competition is too tight.




And in the early mornings, before breakfast in the old house, I got to look at the various birds also enjoying the garden. Here's a red whiskered bulbul, a fairly common Thai bird, particularly in Chiengmai. I left this picture fairly big so if you want to see the bulbul, click on the picture. He's near the top of the picture to the right slightly, left of the main branch, above the green leaves.

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.

Birding at Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur

Dianne, here's the list for you. Much of what the park is famous for is missing because water has been diverted for irrigation for farmers. So the wetlands are mainly drylands. All the waterfowl that usually stop off here from Siberia (cranes) and from Africa are elsewhere because there are no wetlands here.

We went out the first evening from 3-6 and saw:
jungle babblers
Rufous tree pie (This was one I caught a picture of at JNU)
Lesser Golden woodpecker
Scops Owl
Coucal
Red vented Bulbul
Bromely starling
While breasted watrhen
White cheeked bulbul
spotted owlette
Rosering parakeet (they are actually all over India)
white throated kingfisher
chip-chip (need to look up the right spelling)
plain plenia (again need to check spelling)
Indian Roller (Blue Jay)
Orange headed ground thrush - well, I saw it, and the guide identified it as a Siberian visitor that is rare, but I couldn't really tell what I saw

Some animals that day were antelope, spotted deer, Indian soft shelled turtle, and a golden jackel (very cool, the last one)

The next day we went from 6:30-9:30am. We didn't see a lot of new ones, but went looking for and found:
a long tailed night jar
dusky hawk owl

Both were amazing. The owl more so because we really went chasing it. We saw a glimpse, then it flew away. We found it again and it flew away. And once more. The parakeets and crows were harrassing it. Then the guide found it again and it just sat there staring at us as we stared back in the glasses. He was incredible - those big yellow eyes.