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25 May 2020
 Introduction
Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds is an area, well, the name says it all. It is a very beautiful area to drive around in. The area is 3 eBird hotspots, one General Area and two for two different sois. And as you drive around it is impossible to keep track of the two hotspots and I used the Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds (general area) hotspot. • Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds (general area) • Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds--Soi Praek Nam Daeng 10 • Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds--Soi Praek Nam Daeng 6 Fresh water area so the birds you see is very different from the birds you see in salt water habitat. I was here yesterday and I will go back today to have a look for the Indian Pond Heron and the Little Grebe babies. To skip the information and to go straight to the TRIP REPORT click HERE Guide
I usually don't use any bird watching Guide in / around Bangkok. But could be a good idea to have a Guide to help me identify all the birds I see. As it is now my eBird checklists are not very impressive as I can only ID half of the birds I see. Land transportation
 About 100 km from the Sukhumvit / Asoke intersection in DOWN TOWN Bangkok
You will need a car and if you don't have your own a taxi is a very convenient way of travelling. Depending on the early morning traffic it will take about 2 hours to reach Chao Samran. You rent the taxi for a full day and it will set you back with about 1500-3000 Baht (May 2020). To make sure that the driver understand you can show the below Thai Script: • Praek Nam Daeng, Samut Songkhram แพรกหนามแดง, สมุทรสงคราม Or show the driver a map. Click HERE for a map to Praek Nam Daeng, Samut Songkhram  Scan for map to Praek Nam Daeng
Get to Rama II Road on the west side of the Chao Phraya River and follow route #35. The road your going to is actually going south from Rama II road along the border between the two provinces Samut Songkhram and Ratchaburi. This is about 7 km before Rama II end merging in to Route #4 Turn off towards south from Rama II and you can enjoy birds and a beautiful landscape, end even if you're not interested in birds it is a nice drive to follow the dirt tracks along the fish ponds and paddies. Equipment
Canon 5D Mk. III + Canon 5D Mk. IV Canon EF 28-300/3,5-5,6 L IS USM Canon EF 70-200/2,8L IS II USM Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens Canon Speedlite 600EXII-RT flash Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II Panasonic HC-W585 video camera Sound recorder ZOOM H5 Handy Recorder Binocular Steiner Skyhawk 8x32 (Since May 2020) Weather / climate
Weather, I don´t know if Bangkok is the hottest capital in the world. But this is what they say and I have no reason to doubt this information because it is darn hot.  Bangkok, Thailand - Climate & Temperature
Pictures from www.climatemps.com
 Bangkok, Thailand - Climate & Temperature - Click picture for full size
Pictures from www.climatemps.com
References/Resources
Thai National Parks - About the National Parks in Thailand A very good web page - Do you know that there are still wild tigers, elephants, leopards, tapirs, gaurs, bears and many monkey species in many tropical rainforests across Thailand? Do you also know that around 10% of all marine species in the world can be found in Thailand? And the fact that Thailand is the best bird-watching destination in mainland Asia? National parks are protected areas of land because they have unspoilt landscapes and a diverse number of native plants and animals. There are 127 national parks in Thailand, of them 22 marine national parks. These parks offers a diverse range of flora and fauna, home to important population of endangered species. So now it will be easy to find out if there are any National Park close to you. Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) - The Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) is one of the oldest  organisations conserving birds and nature in Thailand and is the country partner of BirdLife International. BCST's role to the local community is to spread awareness about urban birds and reconnect people back to nature.
The Logo Dated back to 1986 when BCST was then a loosely-formed “Bangkok Birdwatching Club”, the Oriental Magpie Robin (Copsychus saularis), or “Nok Gang Ken Baan” in Thai, has been chosen to represent the organisation. There are two sites covering Thailand and I have used them many times. These two web pages are actually everything you need for your birding adventures in Thailand. All the information you need about all the birding spots. Click on the map and then select your spot and you will have maps and everything you need to know about the areas. They have put a lot of jobs in to their web pages, North Thailand Birding and thaibirding.com A must to visit before you go bird watching in Thailand. www.norththailandbirding.com - A one stop only for all your birding in Thailand thaibirding.com - Nick Upton's one stop only for all your birding in Thailand. Use both www.thaibirding.com and www.norththailandbirding.com and you have a winner. Some of the maps on www.norththailandbirding.com are way better than Nick Upton´s, while some of Nick's maps are much more detailed. So I have found that if I use both the web pages for information, well, nothing else needed. PBase/Peter Ericson - Peter Ericson, a guy I thought was from USA because of his family name. I met him at Lat Krabang Paddies in May 2020 and turned out that he was Swedish. Anyway, I have used his excellent page PBase since 2016 as help to ID birds by the help from his beautiful bird pictures. Here you can also find information about birding tours. He is also having a Blog - Thaibirds and more with interesting information. Bangkok City Birding - A lot of interesting birding stories and information on this bird watching blog by David Gandy. Bangkok-based patch-worker in Suan Rot Fai, a large park close to the city's famous weekend market. He have recorded 150 species on his patch since 2008. As one of the only big green spaces in the city, “SRF” acts as a real magnet for migrants during spring and autumn, and holds a healthy selection of "sibes" during the winter months. ebird - Find birding hotspots with bird checklists from all over the world Avibase - is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 25 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information for 12,000 regions, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages  www.oiseaux.net This web page is also excellent for identifying birds. There is information and range maps for many many birds from all over the world. This page is almost guaranteed to give you any answer you have about any bird in the world. Cloudbirders - Read birding trip reports from all over the world Fatbirder - Linking birders worldwide... Wildlife Travellers see their sister site: WAND  Fatbirder is a fantastic web page with information from, I think every country in the world. My first stop when I plan for my bird watching trips. There is information about locations and guides, well, pretty much everything you need to know. Sometimes this is the only place I need to visit to plan my trip. BirdingPal - find a birding Guide around the world   And the web page you cannot live without. I have been around the world looking for birds. I usually have a Guide, but sometimes it is not possible to find a Guide. So, well, I have lost count on how many times I have had help to ID birds at BirdForum. Joining this forum have been very very good for my bird watching experience. www.birdforum.net ClimaTemps.com is the place to learn about the worlds climates with more than 4000 locations documented. Each aspect of the climate is represented using colour enhanced tables and professional graphs so that data can easily be compared by switching between locations in different tabs in your browser. “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson”
 A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson. New edition updated with 76 species since previous edition “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig” Nick Upton at www.thaibirding.com wrote “This quite excellent book is packed full of quality illustrations and written information on 1251 species recorded in Southeast Asia” I bought this book for bird watching in Thailand, but it goes for all over SE Asia I have been very happy with the “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson” But I had a fire in my condo 2019 and I needed to buy a new book. I was looking for the “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand and South East Asia by Craig Robson” as I liked the book. But this book is not available anymore so I had to buy the “A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand” by Craig Robson. What a disappointment this was, using the pictures in the book didn't helped to ID any birds. “Birds of Thailand” by Uthai Treesuconand Wich'yanan Limparungpatthanakij
I met Peter Ericson, a famous bird watcher and he recommended the “Birds of Thailand” by Uthai Treesuconand Wich'yanan Limparungpatthanakij. I bought the book as soon as the book stores opened after the Wuhan virus. And I am very happy with the book and I have managed to ID some birds using the book.  This new field guide will help you identify all 1049 species to have been recorded in the country to date, including the 20 species endemic or near-endemic to Thailand. -Taxonomy follows the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. -Detailed texts covering status, habitat and behaviour, age, sex and geographical variation, voice, and confusion species. -Almost 2200 illustrations covering all species and distinctive subspecies, birds in flight, males and females, juveniles and non-breeding plumages, where appropriate. -QR code for each species, linking to the Internet Bird Collection gallery of photos, videos and sounds. -More than 1025 full-colour range maps for all species other than vagrants. -Well-marked subspecies groups receive full accounts, and the distributions of subspecies breeding in the region are clearly mapped. -Local species name and local conservation status included. I like the book, but I miss the picture index. Places to visit
Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds
Praek Nam Daeng is, well, never heard of it. The eBird hotspots is the only thing I can find about it. Mostly known for the area where they caught 400 monitor lizards back in 2013. The story was in Coconut Bangkok  The area is full of fresh water ponds so the area have a lot of birds associated with fresh water ponds and rice paddies, a beautiful habitat. Close to DOWN TOWN Bangkok and easy accessible. Well worth the time to come here to look for birds and the farmland landscape. There are 3 different eBird hotspots at Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds: • Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds (general area) • Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds--Soi Praek Nam Daeng 10 • Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds--Soi Praek Nam Daeng 6 I use the Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds (general area) as I can go around without thinking about the borders between the hotspots. And it is not easy to keep track of the hotspots driving around on the dirt tracks between the paddies and ponds.  eBird hotspots Praek Nam Daeng, Samut Songkhram
Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds (general area)
Take off from RAMA II road and get up on the dirt road driving south. And there is a lot of dirt track so I recommend the use of a GPS as it can be very easy to get lost and to find the way back to RAMA II road. You will drive along water for most of the time as even the rice fields are full of water until harvest. Not much traffic on the dirt roads so it is kind of easy to park along the roads if you want to get out to walk around.  Off the highway and we drive along a canal
 Follow the dirt track along a canal
 Follow the dirt track along a canal
 Drive along rice paddies
 Drive along rice paddies
 You never grow tired of the landscape,
especially when there is a chance for a bird to POP up  Drive along rice paddies
 A bridge
 Many dirt tracks in the area
 Drive along rice paddies
 Fish farms
Bird checklist
I never use any bird lists, but since I try to make it in to Cloudbirders. A very helpful site when planning your birding trips. But they ask for a bird checklist, and if I use their service, of course I want to contribute as well. My two first bird watching trip reports was rejected by Cloudbirders. So I started to take ideas from the reports I found on Cloudbirders. So I have started to use bird lists, eBird generate one for me and I can post it on Cloudbirders. I will post my birds on eBird and on my different “BIRDS THAT I HAVE OBSERVED” pages. Full Thai list updated to the taxonomy, nomenclature and sequence of the IOU/IOC World Bird List. The complete checklist, including Thai names and synonyms, can be downloaded in Excel format - Thailand Bird Checklist. - Version 8.2 (2018) - found at www.norththailandbirding.com Check lists can come in handy to find out the local name of the bird etc. And Avibase have a list with pictures and sounds, excellent! So I will post bird checklists here and if my Guides provide me with checklists I will also post them here.   Phetchaburi bird checklist from Avibase, click HERE - eBird version 2019 taxonomy Avibase is providing you with bird checklists from all over the world. And I´m impressed by their web page. Select country and area and you get the bird checklist. Like the PDF files I got from Avibase on the links above. You also get the checklist with pictures and sounds. The best part is that you get the local names of the birds and the online checklist gives the names in English plus the language you have selected. But it seems like the PDF cannot handle some alphabet. For example the Japanese language so it is blank in the PDF checklist. But it worked excellent with Swedish. But you get them in the local language on the online version. Bird list
I only list birds I have got on picture on my list of OBSERVED BIRDS. But since I started using eBird I have changed a bit. I list all the birds on the eBird checklist. See the DAY TO DAY report in the itinerary below. And you can visit my list of “Birds I have seen in Thailand” ONLY BIRDS I HAVE ON PICTURE. Trip Report
Praek Nam Daeng
25 May 2020 and we leave my condo just after 6 o'clock and we are steering straight toward Praek Nam Daeng. The taxi driver thought that we would do the same trip as yesterday, but I explained that we will only visit Praek Nam Daeng today to look for bird babies and the Indian Pond Heron. We leave route #35 a few km before we reach rout #4 and I start my eBird map as soon as we are off the highway at 07:19. After hundred meters or so we leave the paved road to get on a dirt track. The same track where I had seen the Purple Herons and the Cotton Pygmy-Gooses when I was here for the first time. We spotted the Cotton Pygmy-Goose couple after a minute and the Purple Heron took off not long after we had arrived, the bird never gave me a chance to get any good pictures.   Cotton Pygmy Goose / เป็ดคับแค
 Purple Heron
There is a lot of Jacanas and White-breasted Waterhens in the ponds. Pack on the paved road and we drove for 100 meters before we turned off the paved road again. I see one Purple Heron but I think it is the same bird that took off earlier. There were two more Purple Herons so that makes it three in total. I have not seen any Grey-headed Swamphens in Thailand for many years. But here was a couple on a nest and it was very nice to see them even though the picture opportunity was less than slim as they were standing in the grass. I was lucky and I got to see the Indian Pond Heron again and I managed to get some pictures to upload to eBird. I also spotted a Greater Cuocal, no good picture, but enough to see that the eye was red and enough to ID the bird.  Asian Openbill
 Grey-headed Swamphen / นกอีโก้ง
 Indian Pond Heron / นกยางกรอกพันธุ์อินเดีย
 Indian Pond Heron / นกยางกรอกพันธุ์อินเดีย
 Greater Cuocal
 Little Cormorant
 Cattle Egret
 Cattle Egret
  Eurasian Tree Sparrow / นกกระจอกบ้าน
 Eurasian Tree Sparrow / นกกระจอกบ้าน
 Eurasian Tree Sparrow / นกกระจอกบ้าน
We drove around looking for birds, no Little Grebe babies today. We searched the ponds but no luck, they were pretty much empty except for the first ponds we visited in the morning. They had been full but the remaining of the ponds had been empty. I don't know where the birds are. But I doubt it very much that the babies have grown adult overnight and suddenly have left flying away. I spot a group of Eurasian Tree Sparrows and we stop so I can get a few pictures. They were hanging around in the front of a house along the road. We end up on a dirt track with two holes in the field next to the track. There were water flowing in the holes from the fields and the holes were full of Little Egrets and Javan Pond Heron. And they were making “craw craw” noises and I would have loved to record the sounds. But there was a motor driven water pump pumping water to the fields a few meters away so recording would have been impossible.   Little Egret / นกยางเปีย
 Little Egret / นกยางเปีย
But I managed to get a sound recording of one Eurasian Tree Sparrow a little bit later on when we passed the bird sitting in a tree next to the road. Not very good, but I was happy for the recording. We approached the tree with the weaver nests in the corner of one field. There were many Asian Golden Weavers and I managed to record one of the males sitting in the tree next to the road. There was a little back ground noises but the recording was OK. Eurasian Tree Sparrow / นกกระจอกบ้าน singing for me
Listen to the Eurasian Tree Sparrow
Sound from www.xeno-canto.org
  Male Asian Golden Weaver / นกกระจาบทอง singing for me
 Male Asian Golden Weaver / นกกระจาบทอง singing for me
Listen to the Asian Golden Weaver
Sound from www.xeno-canto.org
Sound from www.xeno-canto.org
 There was a lot of Scally-breasted and Chestnut Munias in the field around the tree with the nests as there had been yesterday. There were also the Common Cormorants in the trees like yesterday. Yesterday there had been 100 ++ birds. Today I estimated the count to about 30 birds in the trees. We continued along the field until we reached the bridge that will take us to the road construction and the “Seven” ay route #4. But we turned right and we drove along the dirt track until we reached route #35 and we made a U-turn coming back again. This is the same road we arrived to the Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds the first time. Driving along the canal and we stopped to have a look at a female Plaintive Cuckoo sitting on the other side of the canal. Too far away for any good pictures bit I needed one to confirm the ID.  Looking at the Cuckoo and when the bird took of I put my head out from the window to look down at the canal edge. BOOM! A bird took off, a rail/ crake with chestnut coloured wings with black wing tip, about 50% of the wing. I bought a new bird book so I have my old bird book in the back pack. I looked in the book and it was a Schrenck's bittern but it came out as a Schrenck's/Cinnamon Bittern in eBird. We reach the bridge and it is time to call it a day and go to “Seven” before going back to Bangkok via Route #4 and #35. But I just wanted to check out the area ahead of us. So we continued straight instead of turning right to cross the bridge. I spotted a bird landing on top of a concrete pool on the other side of the wide canal. Looked like a sea gull and then it looked like a Feral Pigeon. I took my new binocular and I discovered that it was a Black-winged Kite. This binocular have already come in handy several times today. So it had been a very good investment. And the taxi driver had really been enjoying the binocular looking at birds.  Black-winged Kite
We had one Cinnamon Bittern flying over the canal when we were driving back towards the bridge. Reaching the bridge and we turned left driving to “Seven” where I will buy an ice cream before going back to Bangkok. And 40 species (+1 other taxa) seen today, a record for me going birding alone. So I was very happy with today's bird watching.  Today´s track at Praek Nam Daeng Marshlands & Fish Ponds
We left “Seven” driving back towards Bangkok, no birding tomorrow as they will come to work in my condo. I don't know when I have the next opportunity for bird watching. But I ended up with a free Wednesday and I called the taxi and we will go to the bird hide at Wat Tham Prathun. To find out if we see any birds, just click HERE.
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