Khao Dinsor: the Premier Site to Observe Migrants in the Orient? To view the attached document, click here.

Autumn is a season which means close to nothing to people in Thailand. After all, continental Thailand only has three seasons (dry/summer, cold/winter and rainy) and in the peninsula we are cursed to have only two of those three. For birders in the kingdom however, autumn has a whole differnt meaning; we celebrate it with gusto!

To us, October signals the beginning of our own special season: migration season!

Yep, it’s that time of year again and the venue for this year’s festival is Pencil Hill in Chumporn. Khao Din-Saw (as the locals call it) will be hosting its annual autumn Raptor Watch Festival in October and all birders are welcome to attend.

Entrance to the venue is free of charge and it should be a great time to get to know other birders from Thailand and around the world, as well as brush up on those raptors (which can sometimes be a real hassle to identify). Many birders agree that the raptor family is perhaps one of the hardest families of birds to ID due to the constant change of plumage due to wear and tear, and with all the best raptor specialists flocking in from around the country (and around the world) this is a rare chance to learn from the greats in the field of birdwatching; an opportunity that should not be passed up!

The main organizer of the festival is Mr. Chukiat Nualsri, a well-known local birder actively involved in the conservation of birds in Chumporn and a key member of the annual Raptor Watch Project. Other key members likely to attend include Dr. Robert “Birding Bob” DeCandido from New York and Dr. Chaiyan Kasorndorkbua, head of the Thai Raptor Group.

For those who have never heard of the Raptor Festival or may not know what it entails, Dr. Robert and Mr. Chikiat offer this concise explanation of the program including a brief history of how it all came to be, entitled “Khao Dinsor: the Premier Site to Observe Migrants in the Orient?” The document is available in PDF format and will require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.

Ian Dugdale’s trip to Hala Bala helped to finally put and end to a lot of speculation which I had been harboring over the past year or so.

While it is easy to regret no being able to join in on a trip of a lifetime, I was very thankful that Ian was able to photograph a Reddish Scops Owl in Hala-Bala. You see, I had a picture of a Reddish Scops Owl as well, but for the longest time, I doubted if it really was the Reddish. -Why?

-I took the photo of the bird perched in a mango tree in my yard. –And I live in Phuket town, NOT Hala-Bala National Park.

-So how did the bird get here?

I really can’t say, all I know was there was an owl calling for three nights in a row sometime last year and I finally got so upset with this bird disturbing my sleep that I got up at 2 AM and went to investigate. After finally photographing the bird, I sent it to various birders, among whom were mentionable personalities such as Dr. Phil Round, Peter Ericsson and Nick Upton. There was a lot of discussion and some said it looked like it could be a Reddish (juvenile perhaps?) and others thought it was a darker variation of the Collared.

In my mind there was a 90% certainty of what species of owl was as it seemed to respond to the call of the Reddish (does any owl respond well to taped calls?) and looked like it as well. However, there are some burning questions which are crying out to be answered: How did this bird end up in Phuket? –Where does it live? –How many are left in the wild? Such a rare species cannot be passed off easily and this sighting demands an explanation, one I cannot offer.

Since the beginning of construction on a road through the Muang Chao Fah area in recent months and the destruction of much forest and marshland in the surrounding areas, the owl has disappeared, only showing once in March this year for less than 10 minutes. I cannot say if I will ever see the bird again.

However, now with Ian’s photo to use as reference, I’d like to again bring out my old photos from the archives and see what the birding community might have to say about the two.

This morning’s headline news was the discovery of the breeding site for a critically-endangered species, the Large billed Reed Warbler. See the article reprinted from Yahoo! News by Reuters.

This find is a great boon for ornithologists who have only recently rediscovered this specimen after a 120 year period of silence. No doubt Dr. Phil Round, the man who trapped this bird in his working plots in Laem Pak Bia back in 2006 is overjoyed at this announcement. (I doubt he is packing his bags for a trip to Afghanistan, but who know?) Perhaps this will open the door for more birders to visit this remote and volatile region and may help aid in the discovery of other “lost” species in the future.

Reading this article gives me hope that one day, another of Thailand’s “lost” specimen will also be rediscovered in a remote area of a foreign country. The White Eyed River martin has been “lost” to science for many decades now. God forbid we should have to wait 120 years before we see it again, but perhaps it is hiding out in some remote location in China, perchance? There is credence that such a bird may have once been spotted there as various pieces of artwork have surfaced which portray a bird with striking similarities.

All of this is pure speculation but when something as good as this happens, one can only dream that one day, better things will come to pass.

“World’s least known bird” found breeding in Afghanistan

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Researchers have found in Afghanistan the first known breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler, which was dubbed in 2007 as “the world’s least known bird species.”

Researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Sweden’s Gothenburg University said they had found the breeding area in the remote and rugged Wakhan Corridor of north-eastern Afghanistan that has escaped the worst effects of war.

They used field observations, museum specimens, DNA sequencing, and the first known audio recording of the species to find the birds and verified the discovery by capturing and releasing almost 20 birds, the largest number ever recorded.

A preliminary paper on the finding appears in BirdingASIA, describing the discovery in Afghanistan as “a watershed moment” in the study of this bird.

The first specimen of the large-billed reed warbler was discovered in India in 1867 but the second find was not until 2006 in Thailand.
“Practically nothing is known about this species, so this discovery of the breeding area represents a flood of new information on the large-billed reed warbler,” said Colin Poole of WCS’s Asia Program, in a statement.

“This new knowledge of the bird also indicates that the Wakhan Corridor still holds biological secrets and is critically important for future conservation efforts in Afghanistan.”

The find came after Robert Timmins from the WCS was conducting a survey of bird communities in the area.

The Wakhan Corridor has escaped the worst effects of the long years of war suffered elsewhere in Afghanistan since the December 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union. The corridor, populated primarily by Wakhi farmers and yurt-dwelling Kyrghyz herders, is also home to snow leopards and wild Marco Polo sheep.

Timmins heard a distinctive song coming from a small, olive-brown bird with a long bill which he taped and later discovered to be a large-billed reed warbler.

The following summer WCS researchers returned to the same area and used a recording of the song to bring out others and catch almost 20 birds for examination.

The WCS said it is currently the only organization conducting scientific conservation studies in Afghanistan, the first such efforts in over 30 years, and it has contributed to a number of conservation initiatives in tandem with the Afghan government.

It helped produce Afghanistan’s first list of protected species, an action that has led to a ban on hunting snow leopards, wolves, brown bears, and other species.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)