Today it was time for a visit to the West side of Doi Lang.
I settled at Poomanee hotel as usual. I like to support them as they are integrated with a hill tribe village and bring in young people to give them working experience outside of their normal dwellings. There is a restaurant which has Thai food but also a lot of the food is influenced by their cultural difference. And now they sport cold beers as well, so how to refuse?
My goal for Doi Lang was mainly to reconnect with mountain species. There are so many passerines up here and their vocalizations are not easy to remember. Doi Lang runs along a mountain ridge with absolutely no tourists. A few birders, some military personnel and the odd Thai Yai (people living on the Burmese side) would come by.
It didn’t take long to see Mrs Hume’s Pheasant, Giant Nuthatch and a bunch of other cool birds.
I did have a secret wish of seeing White-spectacled Warbler as it would be a new one for my Thai list. The bird was found around New Year but I didn’t make it up here until now.
There are 3 subspecies of the taxon and this one has a yellow broken eye ring. Well, these birds from the ‘Golden Spectacled Warbler’ syndrome all pretty much look alike unless you have very sharp eyes or get a good picture. They are best IDd by their different contact calls.
Doi Lang has a section of about 500m of deciduous broadleaf forest. The rest is mixed broadleaf with pines and scrub. Along this stretch there are many small birds and bird waves.
A long story short. I was blessed to happen to be up the mountain at the same time as Ayuwat and his parents. Ayuwat is one of the few local experts on warblers, he is young and very sharp.
So, with his help it didn’t take all that long to find the bird. It was actually singing, in contrast to the other ones from the same complex: Grey-crowned, Marten’s and Bianchi.
I started out by recording the sound as it was darn hard to see any details with the bird being backlit, too far away and very active.
Persistence paid off and eventually I managed some shots of the bird as it crossed the road and no longer was backlit.
