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')."