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Being a shy and skulking bird of the reedbeds, the Black Bittern is evidently rather a tough one to find, especially out of the breeding season. With a dose of luck, we had one Black Bittern fly overhead (I got one ghastly ID photo) – evidently the typical observation experience for this species. But I guess you guessed that.
However, the typical birding experience for someone down here also includes a large menagerie of other species such as Orange-winged Parrot , Mitred Parakeet , Egyptian Goose and Nutmeg Mannikin. Their loud, descending whistles, gurgles and screeches are a common feature of parks and suburban neighborhoods in parts of Miami-Dade.
This map shows the distribution of the World’s bird species, based on overlying the breeding and wintering ranges of all known species. So, beside a lot of birds and the sunny sky, I want the coldest thing to experience year-round to be my beer. Thailand (925 / 948). Why am I here? And where all those birds are? The Afrotropics.
A lovely looking and distinctive sounding bird (so they say, I sadly have not seen one…yet), the Kirtland’s Warbler can only be found during its breeding season in Jack Pine forests 5 to 20 years old in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. At several points in recent history, Kirtland’s Warbler appeared to be on the verge of extinction.
In my experience, people eat more food they are familiar with than food that is unfamiliar. In my (fortunately rather limited) experience, Chinese karaoke singers adapt their singing based on the chosen song, the audience, and the amount of alcohol in their blood. They also eat more when together with other people.
Perhaps you don’t know it yet, but with more than 1000 bird species, palm-fringed sandy beaches, developed tourism infrastructure, moderate prices and political stability, Thailand is a country you definitively want to visit. Binoculars and a field guide, perhaps a scope and anti-leech hiking socks too. Everything else is secondary.
Gorman’s personal field experience informs much of the text and his total grasp of the field means he relates one research finding to another with narrative ease. I do wish that Gorman included more of his personal experiences and stories in the natural history tradition of ornithologists like Alexander Skutch.
On the way I managed to sneak in a manic day of birding in and around the capital of Thailand, Bangkok. I must confess I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, as the related Australian White Ibis is something of a trash bird in Sydney, but this species is extremely rare in Thailand or for that matter South East Asia.
I got to see a beautiful female and owlet on a trip to a secret nest location near Howard Prairie Lake (human-made nest structures have enhanced local breeding for these huge owls whose nest success is boosted to 83% on artificial platforms vs. 66% at natural sites). The experience, the place, and the bird combine to make this my BBOTY.
Insofar as they relate to other bird families, they are perhaps closest to the thornbills, another family that is mostly Australian but reaches as far as Thailand and Fiji. Outside the breeding season they may tarvel in large flocks looking for outbreaks of these bugs. That isn’t to say it’s easy, however.
My review copy (well, actually a contributor’s copy—more on that later) was waiting for me when I returned from the ABA birding tour of Thailand and Malaysia (more on that in a separate post) in early March. As I expected, there is a lot to talk about here. Range and Geographic Variation. in German, and a Labrador Retriever named Gellert.
Many a birding trip starts with a longish drive from the airport to the first birding site with these common roadside birds being the first taste you get of a country’s wildlife, and I feel that many bird trip reports, interested mostly in mega-rarities, gloss over the amazing experience this first drive can give.
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