Our Wedding Anniversary

Luna and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary today. To mark the occasion we took Benedict and Boo to Jay-on Restaurant where we ate some delicious food: fried snake head fish ("bla chon"), deep fried morning glory and some squid noodle salad, ("yum woon saen"). It was perfect. What can I say? I am so happily married and just adore my wife and my son just never ceases to amaze me. It has been a truly memorable year, by and large a very happy one and I hope and pray we have many more.

We have had a very pleasant break over the school holidays. We had a few days in Chumphon province, in the south of Thailand, watching raptors. I met up with an old friend Damian. Then back to Ratchaburi for Scott and Ya's wedding, Scott is Benedict's godfather and a teaching colleague. It was a beautiful service followed by a water borne reception on the Mae Klong River.

Next up we headed north to Chiang Mai with an overnight stop in Nakhon Sawan, in central Thailand. This enabled me to go bird watching in Bueng Boraphet, which is regarded as one of Thailand's most important waterbird locations. I met Mr Phanom, the local birdman and boatman and I must say he is a gem. We managed to see some White-browed Crake but alas I was unable to see my target species, Glossy and Black-headed Ibises. Mr Phanom told me they could be seen in the late afternoon. However the trip out onto the water was great and there was an abundance of birds, barn swallows virtually everywhere, lots of swamphens, drongos, lesser whistling duck,some darters, some spot-billed pelicans, cormorants and many other common species.

Our trip to Chiang Mai worked out very well. We took Boo with us and that was a great move as it meant Luna had help with Benedict. We stayed at the Lotus Pang Suan Kaew Hotel, an old favourite of mine. We paid 1500B per night via latestays.com and that included a decent buffet breakfast. I was impressed by latestays.com because we had a concern with our booking and we were able to speak to someone in Bangkok and get the issue sorted with a minimum of fuss. Recommended for this reason and for price.

The Lotus hotel has decent facilities including a swimming pool and due to the amount of stuff that accompanies Benedict the help of porters is important. Benedict had his first dip and was none the worse for being inadvertently submerged into the water. He is a tough little boy.

Some really interesting trips into Doi Inthanon and Doi Chiang Dao National Parks plus a new find, thanks to Nick Upton's Thaibirding.com site, in Huay Teung Tao, a large park area with a lake and trees and some rice paddies just outside of Chiang Mai. Plus lots of birds. New species included taiga flycatcher, black collared starling, white wagtail and pied bushchat. A big plus also is that the park has great facilities and you can eat delicious food in any number of lakeside restaurants.

Doi Inthanon, Thailand's highest mountain with an altitude of 2565 metres, was unfortunately covered in mist when we visited so visibility was very poor, but it was a great day out and the birds we saw were fantastic, the highlight probably being a hill blue fly catcher. There is a sealed road all the way to the summit. At the summit there is an abundance of beautiful birds including green tailed sunbirds, chestnut tailed minlas and dark-backed sibias. We just took it very easy as it was a lousy day, reminiscent in fact of being on the summit of Hellvelyn in the English Lake District in the sense that there the sheep are almost tame given the number of school packed lunches they get; on Doi Inthanon the birds will almost feed from your hands. Plus the mist and of course at that altitude it was decidedly cool. The highlight of the trip was the Wacharitan Waterfall, lower down the mountain, which was in full, thunderous flow when we stopped late in the afternoon. I look forward to returning here with more time in the future and perhaps maybe arrange to stay nearby so I can start early!

We had an enjoyable trip to Chiang Mai Zoo which boasts the first ever baby panda to be born in captivity. Unfortunately Lin Ping was sleeping when we visited but we saw her image as it was being relayed from her boudoir to TV monitors. We had a good look at her parents lounging around eating bamboo. Great fun. This zoo, thanks to Lin Ping, is probably Chiang Mai's most important tourist attraction. But it has a lot of other animals and birds too including a non-captive grey wagtail which I observed

wagging about an artificial waterfall in the tigers' compound!

I had a solo trip to Doi Chiang Dao, Thailand's third highest mountain at 2,220 metres. It is an impressive visual feast, about a 90 minute drive north of Chiang Mai. All I can say is I will be back. I drove up the Muang Kong road, a real hair raiser of a single track road, but it was a joy and plenty of birds, highlights being eurasian jay, dark sided flycatcher and grey headed canary flycatcher plus red-whiskered bulbuls in the wild; these latter birds are commonly kept in cages and are highly prized by Thais.

There were many glimpses of other birds but alas no definites and as I am learning it is very easy to get it wrong when it comes to identifying birds. I have been working on a raptor I saw at a distance perched on a tree but don't yet feel confident about calling it, so I won't! Here is a juvenile dark-sided flycatcher I snapped through my scope with a handheld compact camera . Please feel free to correct me if I have it wrong!

We had a trip to the night market and just had a very pleasant time and I met up with a few old friends. I think we will need to make an annual trip up north and I am delighted that Benedict seems to be none the worse for his experience. Of course Benedict is the star of the show, a real stopper. He really is a great kid with a fantastic, easy going, laid back attitude and he is making some very interesting noises.

The trip back was long but we stopped at Bueng Boraphet and Mr Phanom delivered. Sure enough the ibises arrived, majestically, as if by appointment on one of the islands to the west of the lake at about 17:20h. Mr Phanom had us in pole position to watch this amazing spectacle.

The island was already a hive of activity with flocks of black drongos and white shouldered starlings occupying the lower bushes with the higher trees occupied by asian openbills, little egrets, darters, cormorants, little heron, a couple of purple herons, grey herons, pond herons. The starlings were a truly vivid spectacle as they flew around en masse, their colours changing as they changed direction and the noise level was reminiscent of a David Attenborough documentary.

I was thinking where are the ibises when in they flew, more than 200 glossy ibises and they came in two strands from both directions and converged in the middle and then flew around for about 15 minutes before settling in the trees. Great views. And then I started thinking where are the black headed ibises and at about 17:45 about 60 flew in; they didn't fly around much and settled almost immediately into the upper tier of the trees. Wonderful birds to look at.

We had a setting sun in the west and in front of us a pleasure craft drifted by with a small party of saffron robed monks enjoying the spectacle and into the distance the sun glistened on the golden stupa of temple on a eastern hill top. Dream like stuff really. So well done Mr Phanom. What a pleasant way to break up the drive from Chiang Mai to Ratchaburi!

We made it home at 23.05 after a drive of 850 kilometres which began at 09.00. Good to be home. I think even Boo enjoyed herself.