Birding in Thailand, April 2024, part 1: Around Bangkok and Kaeng Krachan

Hello and welcome to our birding trip to Thailand. Thailand is a strange shaped country and can be split into roughly three zones. The north is mountainous and forested. The centre around Bangkok is lower altitude and has some great national parks. The south is tropical dominated by mangroves sharing habitat with Malaysia and Indonesia. Since we visited Thailand before this trip we decided to mainly visit the south and also some of the central sites that we didn't see last time. In this video we'll explore the sites around Bangkok and Khang Kra Chan National Park. We don't normally like to sit in hides too much but we made an exception here. There's a fantastic hide just outside the national park where we sat for a few hours. It's really easy to get great photos of the common species. The real reason to come here though is special birds that are very difficult to see elsewhere. The first special to arrive was the eastern hooded pitta, followed closely by a grey peacock pheasant. Yet we came back to this hide in the evening for the most amazing bird they have, the pharygilous partridge. That night we went to visit a local hotel where owls are a speciality. They've discovered that a pool of water will attract bathing owls at night. This collared scops owl was a speciality there. The next day we went right to the top of Khang Kra Chan peak. Unfortunately it's quite difficult to see ratchet-tailed tree pie now but we were lucky enough to see one. and like the video if you did and we'll see you in the next part.