A Spoonful of Thailand tour - Saltpans and Spoonies

Spoonbilled Sandpiper was one of the birds I most wanted to see in the world ever since I'd seen an illustration one in a book years ago. This enigmatic little wader is critically endangered with only about 300 suspected still left in the wild. Breeding in the high arctic areas of Russia it winters in coastal Southeast Asia with Thailand being one of the few places where it can be seen regularly in the winter months. Its a very rare bird with only a few turning up each year to winter on the saltpans along with tens of thousands of other migratory waders including Tibetan Sandplover Greater Sandplover, Marsh Sandpiper, Broad-billed Sandpiper, Nordmann's Greenshank and Asiatic Dowitcher.

For years I'd been planning a trip around visiting our daughter and family in Australia but had never got round to doing anything about it. When I heard Alan Davies and Ruth Weaver  were planning a trip earlier this year I enquired more about it - see here for more details about their company 'Birdwatching trips'. I've known Alan for quite a few years and he quickly replied to my expression of interest. With a visit to see our Australian family planed immediately after Christmas the birding gods aligned when Alan gave me the dates . It meant I could keep Jan happy by attending a couple of days of the Australian Open Tennis in Melbourne and fly directly to Bangkok whilst she flew home to the UK. I signed up!

Arriving in Bangkok several days before the official tour began I made my way to the Eastin Thanin Golf Resort Hotel that we were all meeting at. I'd visited Bangkok a few times with work over the years but had forgotten how busy the airport was and how bad the traffic could be during rush-hour. After the dry heat of Australia the humidity hit me like a hot wet flannel. With Alan arriving with Marc Hughes later that day we'd have a full days birding locally before the tour officially started.

Settled into our very comfortable rooms we birded around the resort grounds  - although we weren't allowed on the golf course! Oriental Magpie Robins seemingly sang from every lamp post and squabbled around the gardens whilst painted Storks flew overhead and Streak-eared and Yellow-vented Bulbuls came down to the swimming pool to drink and Blue-tailed beeaters sallied over the golf course.

Blue-tailed
Beeeater

Oriental Magpie Robin

Star bird though was a magnificent Orange-headed Thrush found by Marc in a quiet location between a pond and some houses just on the edge of the resort. A scarce bird this was only the 4th one to be seen around the Bangkok area this winter period and gave prolonged views.

We also took a taxi out to an area of cultivated fields where we'd seen a report of Yellow-breasted Buntings but we couldn't find any but did find a flock of Golden-headed Weavers as well as adding Zitting Cisticola and Spot-billed Pelican to the fledgling trip list.

The official tour started on the 20th of January and wit heveryone now arrived we met up with our guide, Jay, expert 'fixer' Jab and our two drivers early morning to head down to the salt pans at Khok Kham where a Spoonbilled Sandpiper had been seen as recently as the previous day. At this point I was feeling a bit apprehensive but I needn't have worried. As we pulled up the saltpans were teeming with birds but we spotted two distant photographers hunkered down intently looking at something. Alan immediately picked up a single Spoon-billed Sandpiper in his 'scope and the relief was almost overwhelming. 

Once everyone had seen it distantly we moved it a bit closer taking in th spectacle of thousands of migratory waders. And there it was. In all its odd-shaped bill glory. One of the most enigmatic and rarest birds on the planet and a bird at the top of my most wanted bucket list. 

An amazing and moving experience knowing that this little bird is still critically endangered despite the International efforts to try and halt the population decline.

Back to our hotel for the night, before exploring the saltpans at the Pak Thale Nature Reserve the next day, Alan, Marc & I set off to explore the nearby beach where we found the only White-headed and Malaysian Plovers we saw of the trip! 

An amazing end to our first full day of the tour.

Lake Anderton, Chiltern

This lake, a couple of minutes drive from the house, is stocked with fish for kids to catch and I'd promised our grandson I'd take him fishing whilst I was here.  Given that most of the local water sources have dried up we called in on the way back from a trip to the shops. Sadly the lake is almost completely dry but the remaining water had attracted a huge number of waterfowl so I took the opportunity to go back with the camera. 

I'd seen Yellow-billed Spoonbill at this site previously but today there were 7 and they'd been joined by two Royal Spoonbills.

Royal Spoonbill

Yellow-billed Spoonbill

Among the spoonbills, Australian Ibis, Straw-necked Ibis, White-necked and Pacific Herons was a solitary  Australian Pelican dwarfing everything around it.

Straw-necked Ibis

The few patches of water were teeming with other waterfowl with Maned Duck and Pacific Black Duck being the commonest with a few Grey Teal among them. 

With all the birds congregating in the limited open water available it was a good opportunity to study Dusky Moorhens that were sharing the space with introduced European Coots.

On my previous visit I'd seen some small waders distantly on the muddy margins around the island in the centre of the lake and today, with the binoculars,  I could see they were Black-fronted Dotterel. 

After an hour and a half I'd had enough of the midday heat and with the temperatures hitting 40 C + I headed for the air conditioned car! 

Red - capped Robins, Bartleys Block

Bartleys Block is another local haunt of mine whenever we visit our family in Chiltern, Vic. Its part of the National Park and is an area of grassland surrounded by scrub and forest. It's a well known site locally for Speckled Warbler (see here ) and Turquoise Parrot ( see here and here ) - both of which  I saw briefly again today. My targets today were birds I'd seen listed recently on eBird - Superb Parrot and Red-capped Robin. I've seen Superb Parrot before but only distantly. Despite being relatively common I'd not seen Red-capped Robin locally.  

It's less than a 5 minute drive and I was on site by 7.00. It was still very hot even that early. Once again I was shocked at how dry everything was and dams that have been teeming with birds in previous years were bone dry.  

I found the robins in a scrubby area feeding avidly but quite flighty. Eventually they stayed still long enough for some photographs. Unfortunately they were moulting heavily and didn't look as pristine as usual.

My eyes were drawn to shapes in the sky and I was pleased to see a large flock of White-throated Needletails hawking high up for insects.

Other birds seen included Olive-backed Oriole, Satin Bowerbird and White-browed Babbler. The former two species were feeding on Mulberries left over from when the block was inhabited during the gold rush in the 19th century and was the site of a brewery until the early 20th century. The family sold the block in 1989 and it was incorporated into the Mount Pilot National Park. 

The babblers were doing babbler things... noisy foraging on the ground and flicking over dead leaves and twigs looking for invertebrates whilst keeping up a constant dialogue with other members of the family group. It was interesting to see the robins had a loose association with the babblers and pounced on insects disturbed by them from their perches

By 9.00 it was blisteringly hot and I left to get home for breakfast. The weather here has been incredibly hot. Australia is currently the hottest place on the planet. Theres a 'catastrophic' risk of bush fires and many are already burning. We've been out under a strict no fire control - no barbeques or homemade pizzas in the outdoor pizza oven. The National park is currently closed due to the fire risk so I've not been able to make a return visit to look for Superb Parrots.

Back to Australia

We left the UK on 28th December to come and spend time with our Australian family. I'm not sure what I prefer - the blazing heat here (reaching 45C) or the minus temperatures and snow back home. 

Everywhere is parched and the usual wet creek at the back of our daughter's garden is bone dry. The usual dams that retain water nearby are also drying rapidly so any standing water is a magnet for birds. 

The first couple of days were spent recovering from jetlag and getting acquainted with the local garden birds.  Red-browed Finches and Silvereyes are coming into the garden to feed and use the three bird baths that I ensure are filled daily. 

A few honeyeaters are visiting regularly with White-plumed being the commonest. Yellow-faced and New Holland Honeyeaters are also visiting but are much harder to photograph.

Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Star bird though was a distant flyover Little Eagle that I picked up being mobbed by a smaller bird of prey which turned out to be a Nankeen Kestrel. Little Eagle was new bird for my adopted local Australian patch.

Hilbre 19th December

A beautiful starlit sky guided me across to Hilbre in the dark. With an early tide I had to drive across early. With not much movement in the way of passerines this time of year attention has turned to trying to catch and colour flag Turnstone and Purple Sandpiper's as part of our ongoing study into winter site fidelity and movement within the Dee and Mersey estuaries. With very little substrate to use a whoosh net wader spring traps are used along the strand line where the waders tend to forage. 

As the sun rose and the tide flooded 1000's of Oystercatchers started congregating on the rocks between Middle Eye and Hilbre before moving t oroost on Middle Eye as the rocks got covered.

The low sun meant long shadows and this time of year the sun doesn't seem to rise properly before its setting again. The lights very flat and photographing birds quite hard they always seem to be backlit or in shadow. 

Before the  tide floods fully Brent Geese congregate at the north end and on the Whaleback, frantically feeding to make the most of the short days and exposed algae.Hearing family groups calling to each other is  lovely sound that invokes memories of my late dad taking us to Mersea Island, off the Essex, coast to see Brents when I was only about 9 or 10. 

As the tide rose higher the calls of the Oystercatchers complaining about getting flooded off their rocks filled the air and other groups of waders started moving past looking for somewhere to roost. Ringed Plover alighted briefly at the north end before flying off to find  a less disturbed spot to see out the tide.

A quick check at revealed 6 Purple Sandpipers roosting on a traditional rock ledge with another seen flying off towards Middle Eye with Turnstone. I never tire of seeing these plump little waders who travel vast distances from their arctic breeding grounds to winter around the rocky shores of Hilbre.

The three spring traps deployed were succesful with another Turnstone being added to the data base and given the flag AH. Less expected was a single Dunlin  - the first ringed on the island since 2013.

Another great day on the island and probably my last trip of 2025 as we're off to Australia to see our Aussie family just after Christmas. Happy Christmas everyone.