Rufous-rumped Grassbird!

On 30 May 2013 Jonathan Eames and I found a Chinese Grassbird (part of the former Rufous-rumped Grassbird) at a site in Pursat Province that we were checking for potential future conservation action. Although this is a first for Cambodia there are historical records from grassland in central Thailand and northern Vietnam, whilst there are a few modern records from southern China, Hong Kong and Myanmar. All the same it is the first record in Thailand/Indochina since 1923 (I think). I had been expecting to find this species somewhere in the Tonle Sap floodplain so was not entirely surprised.

Jonathan saw it first about a mile off, but it wasn't clear what it was, so we followed it up, soon seeing a large, long-tailed babbler flushing from in front of us. Some pishing brought it in, whereupon it was immediately obvious what it was, those lovely black and white striations on the nape wrapping round and hugging the bend of the wing made it immediately identifiable. We swore a bit and then Chamnan and Virak brought the car over so that Jonathan could get some great photographs. It sang on and off from the top of low scrub for about an hour. I got a sound recording. More details to follow in the December BirdingASIA - free with OBC membership - if you're not already a member then you should be!

Also on site were five male Bengal Florican, five Comb Duck and lots of seed eating birds, Red Avadavat, Asian Golden and Baya Weaver, plus two Lesser Adjutants.

Simon Mahood

15 JUNE UPDATE

Jonathan and I returned to the site with Ashish, Howie and the SVC guys. We had a great time and saw about eight Rufous-rumped Grassbirds in just a few hours before it began to pour with rain. Plenty of other good birds about: Bengal Floricans, three species of weaver, munias, lots of Openbill Storks with a few Painted Storks and a Spot-billed Pelican thrown in for good measure.

This is a really exciting site which unfortunately won't be accessible again until the next dry season...I'm looking forward to heading back in the winter!

Here are some of Ashish's photos from the day:

 

Simon Mahood

Other White-Winged Ducks

Greetings from Lisa Arensen. I do not have a beautiful photograph like Jeff--kudos to you, Jeff!

However, on April 13th, I saw a pair of white-winged ducks while with Ben Davis of ADRA, in a prospective ecotourism site in central Prea Vihear. To be precise, we were walking along Stung Bak Make, several miles from Ta Bos village in Sadou commune, Sangkhum Tmei district. The commune chief claims there are three pairs of white-winged ducks that roost along this quiet wooded river, but we can only confirm the one pair we saw. The area is dry deciduous forest with some evergreen patches, and we had hiked cross-country around five kilometres from the oxcart trail where we left the trail before we saw the ducks (at around noon). There is no trail that runs consistently along the stung/river, although there are resin tappers' and hunters' paths that wind in and out, so we had been coming down to the riverside intermittently as the terrain permitted. It had been a long hot morning, and we had actually given up on finding the ducks and were inspecting burned resin trees when we accidentally flushed a pair--they were quite close to us and we both got good looks at them as they flew away. We did not get a photograph, and neither of us has seen them before, but I feel confident that they were white-winged ducks, not simply because of habitat but also because of their large size, their white heads with dark spots, and their large white wing patches. Area villagers had reported that the tia brai roost on this river and that hunters hear them calling at night. Sadly, six of these rare ducks were reported as killed and eaten last year (this is an unverified number reported by the commune chief), and the commune chief remarked that ducklings are rarely seen. Local villagers hunt with dogs, so Ben suspects that this may be the fate of any ducklings, which I gather is also a threat to other white-winged ducks in Cambodia?

March 28th Mekong Ramsar Site, White-Winged Duck

A somewhat belated report.  This observation occurred during a survey of the Mekong Ramsar Site north of Stung Treng for WWF

At 7AM on March 28th I was walking away from camp to begin my morning walk/survey.  Flying rapidly towards me from the west, I heard an unfamiliar bird calling (a nasally honking whistle) about 20-30m above me.  I quickly readied my camera and managed to get one half decent shot before it had passed over.  It then flew across the narrow channel and into the flooded forest beyond.  It was goose-sized and I knew immediately that it was a white-winged duck, though I had never encountered this bird before.  I traveled across the channel and after searching for half an hour or so I observed it again, flying a few hundred yards to the east.  I then looped way around hoping to by-pass the bird and approach it from the opposite direction.  After walking 300-400m I headed back towards the pools and flushed a pair of Indian spot-billed ducks.  A few seconds later I saw what I knew was the duck, hidden amongst the shrubs.  I tried to get a photo but as I tried to get around the vegetation it flushed, disappearing far to the east.  For the next three hours I wandered around trying to re-locate the duck but to no avail. 

Jeff Schwilk
harpagornis26@yahoo.com
orniphoto.com

 

Chi Phat list

This is the Chi Pat list of Colin Conroy, a visiting birder:

"I have done two lists as there are two very different habitats:- proper forest which I visited for one morning (most of which was spent on a boat trip up a tributary of the main river), and the more open, scrubby/secondary area around the village of Chi Phat (a roughly circular area about 13km in diameter, easily visible from Google Earth).

The first list seems fairly short - mainly this is because I couldn't ID a lot of calls that I heard and lots of small stuff was zipping across the river, never to be seen again.

List 1: Forest proper - (mostly in the order I saw them) visited on 16th March 2013, am

Greater Racket-tailed Drongo

Common Kingfisher

Asian Palm Swift

Green-billed Malkoha

Wreathed Hornbill (pair seen - another hornbill seen later was not identified)

Crimson Sunbird - 1

Vernal Hanging Parrot

Black and Red Broadbill (1 male seen perched on a post in river)

Black-naped Oriole (1 yellow oriole seen presumed to be this species)

Chestnut-winged Cuckoo (1 adult seen very well in bushed on riverbank)

Pompadour Green Pigeon (1 seen - only this species seemed to fit)

Blue-bearded Bee-eater (1 seen very well, twice)

Chestnut-headed Bee-eater

Crested Serpent Eagle 1 (identified later after discussion with birders resident in Cambodia)

Dollarbird (1 seen well, several others glimpsed)

Black-capped Kingfisher 1

Little Heron

Green Imperial Pigeon (several seen in flight)

List 2 Rest of Chi Phat area 15th-17th March 2013

Oriental Pied Hornbill 1

Great Hornbill 1  - Both Hornbills seen flying overhead, from moving motorcycle, and without bins, on journey from Andong Teuk to Chi Phat on the 15th March

Red-breasted Flycatcher

Asian Brown Flycatcher

Brown-backed Needletail (3 seen very well skimming low over water and drinking)

Hill Myna

Striated Swallow

Barn Swallow

Chestnut-headed Bee-eater

Green Bee-eater

Blue-tailed Bee-eater

Germain's Swiftlet

Yellow-vented Bulbul

Streak-eared Bulbul

Common Kingfisher

Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker

Common Tailorbird

Olive-backed Sunbird

Spotted Dove

Greater Coucal

Asian Palm Swift

Cattle Egret

Little Egret

Puff-throated Babbler

Striped Tit-babbler

Crested Tree-Swift

Asian Koel

Green-billed Malkoha

Little Spiderhunter

Rufescent Prinia

Common Iora

White-rumped Shama.

Regarding Chi Phat - I would definitely recommend a longer visit there, with a couple of days spent in the forest (they do treks of various lengths and would probably be willing to do tailor-made treks). The set-up is pretty good (and cheap), and very well integrated into the local community, but it is mainly geared towards back-packers rather than birders - I couldn't find anything out about birds there from the internet before I went, and very little of any sort on the internet (their website has some pics of hornbills on but some are still incorrectly labelled despite me telling them about it a few months ago), so I was surprised to find quite a lot of back-packers there, and even more surprised to learn that it gets a good write up in the Lonely Planet Guide, and is in Lonely Planet's top ten ecotourism sites in the world. They really need to do some bird ID training for local guides and to have some lists up of species that can be seen (even once I was there no-one could really tell me what birds I might see, apart from 'hornbills and Silver Oriole')."

Phnom Tamao (PP Bird Club Outing N°2)

On 16 March, ten birders from the PPBC harvested no less than 59 species during a morning birding in the secondary forest around Phnom Tamao despite a not-so-early start and an overcast sky.

Unexpected was a Lesser Adjutant seeming settled there (zoo offspring perhaps). Regular Tamao treats were Chestnut-capped Babblers (thriving in this bamboo-shrub habitat, with at least two building nest a few hundred meters from each others) and Common Hoopoes also up for the show.
Other good forest species were:
* a male Spot-breasted Woodpecker
** heard-only Puff-throated Babbler
*** several females and one male Red Junglefowl, to the great pleasure of all present
**** Stripe-throated Bulbul (together with 3 other bulbul species)


The regular open country birds and pond dwellers were present, as well as Indochinese Bushlark and Pintail Snipe.
Territorial and agitated Red-wattled Lapwing strongly indicated breeding too, and then a bird was seen dipping its belly in a pond, betraying nesting was indeed ongoing.

Photos by Senglim / Report by Fredbaksey

P.S. Thanks to Senglim for the organization, and wishing you keep up the bird outings.

Phnom Khieu in Pailin

I had the chance to visit Phnom Khieu with a kru khmer friend (who is not yet a birder, but might become one) on February 26th, and bird from half past seven to noon. Below is my list, and below that a bit of information on the mountain. All of my photos were terrible, so I won't inflict them on you...

1. calling, great coucals (2)

2. greater racket-tailed drongo (7 or 8)

3. black drongo

4. stripe-throated bulbul

5. black-headed bulbul (2)

6. black-crested bulbul

7. green-billed malkoha (at least 6)

8. large niltava

9. pr. Asian brown flycatcher

10. red-rumped swallows

11. barn swallows

12. ochraceous or puff-throated bulbuls

13. scarlet minivet (2 pairs)

14. ashy minivets, small flock, 4-5

15. hill myna

16. leafbird, pr. blue-winged

17. oriental honey-buzzard, dark morph

18. verditer flycatcher (2)

19. grey wagtails

20. pr. buff-breasted babblers, small flock

21. pr. Taiga flycatcher in early breeding plumage

22. pr. crested goshawk (according to Rob, when I described the circling raptor's strange puffy white feathers at the top of its tail and vent)

 

Phnom Khieu, Green Mountain (literally, Blue Mountain, but blue and green are used interchangeably in Khmer) is just east of Pailin city along National Highway 57. The waterfalls that Khmer holidayers head towards are marked by a large billboard on the south side of the highway, and are 7.3 km from the dirt entrance road off the highway. There is a small entrance fee per vehicle and per foreigner. The dense mountain range Phnom Khieu is part of may well be the last large patch of forest around Pailin. Nearly all of the land along the national highway has been cleared of forest in the three years since my last visit to Pailin, mostly for cassava plantations. It is roughly a kilometre up an increasingly steep and winding road up the mountain from the resort's entrance--nearly all of our birding was done along this forested road, which falls away to valleys on the right and is crossed by streams twice before ascending to the Khmer resort, a restaurant and a series of wooden shelters along seven small waterfalls. A tempting footpath leads up the side of the mountain beyond this resort. The locals said it eventually leads to some artisanal gem mines. We took this path for about a kilometre up the mountain before returning to the springs. That said, I would not recommend birding along this path, as there is a strong possibility that landmines remain in the area. This region was under Ieng Sary's faction of the Khmer Rouge until the mid-1990s and landmines were used to hinder civilians attempting to reach the gem mines. I very much doubt that all the mines have been removed. If anyone wishes to wander this trail, I advise extreme caution--as in, never leaving the rocky path for any reason.

Good birding to all,

Lisa Arensen

Prek Toal 20-23 February 2013

After the big duck I spent a few days working at Prek Toal. The pond herons were starting to become identifiable, this one is clearly turning Chinese:

Whilst this one is probably going to become a Javan:

Prek Toal supports the only breeding colony of Black-headed Ibis is SE Asia.

Look! I took a sharp photo! Juvvy Indian Shaggy:

Visitors to Prek Toal are legally obliged to take photographs of trees heaving with large waterbirds. Here are mine:

Simon Mahood