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Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part five: 2016-2017

Discussion in 'Asia - General' started by Chlidonias, 14 Oct 2016.

  1. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I had a bit of a long travel-day getting from Phong Nha to Ninh Binh. In my original plans I was going to be stopping halfway at Vinh, from where I would go west to the Pu Mat National Park on the border with Laos. There are northern white-cheeked gibbons at Pu Mat and of course I wanted to look for them, but my bank balance is lower than I had anticipated it being at this point in the trip so I dropped that park from the route. Pu Mat is home to the only remaining sustainable population of this species of gibbon but even so they have mostly been hunted out from the more accessible areas, now mainly being found in the rugged mountains along the border. The chances of seeing gibbons there is probably remote, but if I still have enough money after finishing off the more northerly areas then I may get to head back down.

    With Pu Mat out of the plan, I had to instead go direct from Phong Nha to Ninh Binh (which is pronounced Neeng Beeng, incidentally). From Phong Nha I caught the local B4 bus to the townlet of Hoan Lao (on the way back to Dong Hoi) where I stood on the side of the road until a Hanoi bus rolled on by. From here to Ninh Binh took eight and a half hours. One of the annoying things with catching buses from the roadside is that you don't know what the fare is - you have to just accept whatever the driver or conductor says it is. The other day I caught a bus from outside Bach Ma to outside Dong Hoi. It took about three hours or so and I got charged 200,000 Dong. The bus from Phong Nha to Ninh Binh, almost three times the travel-time, cost me 250,000.

    The bus dropped me in Ninh Binh, but on the highway which is on the other side of town from the bus station where the budget accommodation is. The motorbike-taxis there wanted 200,000 to take me across town, which immediately went down to 100,000 when I scoffed at it, and then almost as quickly dropped to 50,000 then 40,000 then 30,000 when I started to walk away. This last price is actually the correct one - I asked a nice police-lady on the other side of the road - but I have this thing where I don't mind bargaining but if someone starts off with a ridiculous rip-off price because you're a tourist then I won't let them have my money at all. I'll find someone else who isn't so greedy.

    I had found out beforehand that the "best choice" of the budget hotels is the Queen Mini Hotel, so that's where I went first. If it wasn't what I wanted there were several other choices nearby. It was okay though, and a room for US$8 is cheap enough - although I still don't understand why so many hotels quote in US Dollars when they only accept Vietnamese Dong as payment.

    The reason I was at Ninh Binh was to visit the Van Long Nature Reserve, about 20km outside town, which is home to Delacour's langurs. Like the Hatinh langurs these are monkeys which live on limestone outcrops. Unfortunately for all the species of "limestone langurs", the outcrops are often their only refuge because the forests which once spread across the land between the outcrops are now entirely gone, converted centuries ago into rice fields and farms. The langurs now tend to be isolated from one another in small populations, unable to move between mountains as they used to, and vulnerable to hunting. The Delacour's langurs are now critically-endangered with less than 250 animals left in the world.

    As with the Hatinh langurs the best time to try to see Delacour's langurs is morning or late afternoon. However due to the unusual topography of Van Long I suspect you could see them at any time of day because the outcrops aren't on land but rather surrounded by wetlands. They are like mountains in water, and the viewing is done from boats. So the langurs would be most easily seen on the cliff-faces where they sleep but even in the middle of the day I think you'd be in with a good chance. Of course you want to maximise your chances, so morning or afternoon is still the best option.

    It was too late to go to Van Long when I arrived in Ninh Binh (it was already 5.30pm when I got off the bus), so I went the next morning instead. At the hotel the owner had told me a motorbike-taxi to Van Long would be 200,000 one way or 300,000 return. This seemed kind of expensive given that it's only a half-hour ride out there. So after an early breakfast I walked to the bus station around the corner and found a guy who would take me there and back for 100,000. Back at the hotel I got the owner to check with the guy to make sure he hadn't misunderstood what I wanted but he had understood fine. However I wasn't sure how long I'd be out there so we agreed on 150,000, which was still half the price the hotel had quoted me. (For what it's worth, renting a motorbike for the day would have been 100,000, but petrol is extra, and I reckon I would have got completely lost trying to get to Van Long on my own because there were no road-signs with it labelled as far as I saw).

    The ticket for the nature reserve was 80,000, which I think is 20,000 entry plus 60,000 for the boat. The boat itself is a shallow oar-powered bamboo thing - almost a raft - made watertight with a thin layer of concrete inside. The lady on my boat knew exactly what I wanted to see. Vooc (pronounced "vok") is the Vietnamese name for doucs, but at Phong Nha I had discovered that it seems to be the name for langurs in general because the Hatinh langur is vooc Hatinh. I told her I was after vooc and she responded with "monkey!" Totally bilingual we are.

    It only took about fifteen or twenty minutes to find the langurs. First I saw just one, sitting up near the top of a cliff, but soon it became apparent there were several more amongst the trees growing on the rocks. All up there may have been twenty or so individuals. Whereas Hatinh langurs are entirely black apart for white sideburns, the Delacour's langurs have bright white hind legs and lower back, rather amusingly making them look like they are wearing tight trousers. Also really noticeable was how long and thick their tails were in comparison to most monkeys.

    There was an unfortunate haze in the air which wasn't apparent to the naked eye but it sure was through binoculars and the camera lens. None of the photos were sharp, irrespective of whether I used auto-focus or manual-focus. I did get some photos I liked though (out of the 200-odd I took!), especially after some of the langurs came right down near the water.

    My lady boat-rower seemed very excited about seeing the langurs although she probably sees them every day. I think she was excited for me seeing them really. The Delacour's langur is the 50th species of primate I have seen in the wild in Asia, and there are few species which would make a better milestone than this one. I had been told and had read that the boat-ladies do the hard-sell for big tips but mine didn't even ask. I gave her a tip anyway, which is uncharacteristic of me, but I was in a good mood.
     
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  2. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    one of the Delacour's Langurs (more photos in the Vietnam Wildlife gallery).

    [​IMG]
     
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  3. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Vietnam Primate Update
    (Lifers are in bold)


    CHUA HANG
    Indochinese Silvered Langur Trachypithecus germaini - 1 of 25

    TA CU MOUNTAIN
    Crab-eating Macaque Macaca fascicularis
    Black-shanked Douc Pygathrix nigripes
    Annamese Silvered Langur Trachypithecus margarita - 4 of 25

    CAT TIEN NATIONAL PARK
    Southern Buff-cheeked Gibbon Nomascus gabriellae
    Rhesus Macaque Macaca mulatta - 6 of 25

    SON TRA PENINSULA (DANANG)
    Red-shanked Douc Pygathrix naemeus - 7 of 25

    BACH MA NATIONAL PARK
    Stump-tailed Macaque Macaca arctoides - 8 of 25
    *Annamite (Northern Buff-cheeked) Gibbon Nomascus annamensis - call only

    PHONG NHA-KE BANG NATIONAL PARK
    Hatinh Langur Trachypithecus hatinhensis - 9 of 25

    VAN LONG NATURE RESERVE
    Delacour's Langur Trachypithecus delacouri - 10 out of 25


    See this post (#256) for the full list of Vietnamese primates:
    Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part five: 2016-2017


    RECAP: so far on this trip I've seen 10 out of the 25 primate species in Vietnam. Of the species through which ranges I have passed, I have seen 10 out of 20 species (so, exactly half). The two lorises I really don't expect to see at all, and I've only had the chance for spotlighting at Ta Cu and Cat Tien anyway. Northern Pig-tailed Macaque was probably seen at Cat Tien but I didn't get a clear view (but I saw it in Vietnam in 2015, so I'll count it on a final Vietnamese tally). Grey-shanked Douc was a big fat no, and I am now north of its only range. Annamite Gibbon was missed in the Mang Den area (for the same reason as Grey-shanked Douc) but I heard them calling at Bach Ma for what it's worth. I thought I would see Assamese Macaque at Son Tra (or Bach Ma, or Phong Nha...) but did not - hopefully I will see it somewhere else. I didn't even bother looking for Southern White-cheeked Gibbons or Indochinese Black Langur at Phong Nha-Ke Bang, and I didn't stop at Pu Mat National Park as intended so Northern White-cheeked Gibbon and Indochinese Grey Langur also went entirely un-looked-for.

    Of the remaining five species the only one I have even a small chance of seeing is the Francois' Langur and even that one is probably slim. I may end the trip on just ten species (I guessed at twelve, so not far off) - but I still have chances to see Assamese Macaque and maybe Indochinese Grey Langur. The two lorises are still possibilities as well, but I'm not crossing my fingers.

    If I count Northern Pig-tailed Macaque (only a "maybe" for this trip but definitely seen on the 2015 trip) and the "heard-only" Annamite Gibbons at Bach Ma, then I'm on twelve species for Vietnam.

    ...........................................

    And, repeating this from earlier for interest's sake (but updated), here are the primates I have seen on this trip in the order they were seen. Bold ones were lifers. As noted earlier, Delacour's Langur is the fiftieth Asian primate I've seen in the wild.


    Peninsular Malaysia:
    1) Siamang Symphalangus syndactylus
    2) Dusky Langur Trachypithecus obscurus (and also later in Thailand)
    3) Sunda Slow Loris Nycticebus coucang
    4) Crab-eating Macaque Macaca fascicularis (and also later in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam)

    Borneo:
    5) Southern Pig-tailed Macaque Macaca nemestrina

    India (part one):
    6) Rhesus Macaque Macaca mulatta (and also later in India part two and Vietnam)

    Sri Lanka:
    7) Tufted Grey Langur Semnopithecus priam
    (and also later in India part two)
    8) Toque Macaque Macaca sinica
    9) Purple-faced Langur Trachypithecus vetulus
    10) Grey Slender Loris Loris lydekkerianus

    India (part two):
    11) Bonnet Macaque Macaca radiata
    12) Nilgiri Langur Trachypithecus johnii
    13) Black-footed Grey Langur Semnopithecus hypoleucos
    14) Lion-tailed Macaque Macaca silenus
    15) Southern Plains Grey Langur Semnopithecus dussumieri
    16) Chamba Sacred Langur Semnopithecus ajax

    Thailand:

    17) Banded Leaf Monkey Presbytis femoralis
    18) White-handed (Lar) Gibbon Hylobates lar

    Cambodia:
    19) Pileated Gibbon Hylobates pileatus

    Vietnam:
    20) Indochinese Silvered Langur Trachypithecus germaini

    21) Black-shanked Douc Pygathrix nigripes
    22) Annamese Silvered Langur Trachypithecus margarita
    23) Southern Buff-cheeked Gibbon Nomascus gabriellae
    24) Red-shanked Douc Pygathrix naemeus
    25) Stump-tailed Macaque Macaca arctoides
    *Annamite (Northern Buff-cheeked) Gibbon Nomascus annamensis - call only
    26) Hatinh Langur Trachypithecus hatinhensis
    27) Delacour's Langur Trachypithecus delacouri
     
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  4. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Endangered Primate Rescue Centre

    I visited the Endangered Primate Rescue Centre at Cuc Phuong National Park yesterday. I'll cover this as a post here, although potentially I can later split it into a thread of its own - however it's not really a review but rather just some observations.

    The centre houses Vietnamese primates confiscated from the illegal trade and can only be visited as a guided tour which costs 60,000 Dong (about US$2.60, UK£2.10, or €2.50). I went at around 3.30pm as this is when they are fed, so a visit later in the day seemed like the best option. Unfortunately the lady taking me around didn't seem that interested in being there and also didn't have enough information (and some things she said were plainly wrong). While I was taking photos of the Cat Ba Langurs in the second cage we saw, she got impatient and said she'd take me right round first and then just leave me there alone so I could take photos as much as I wanted. The Germans in the room near mine said their guide was useless also.

    Only a presumably-small part of the centre is able to be viewed, basically along two paths. A lot of other cages were visible in the non-show areas, in which I could see Red-shanked Doucs and gibbons. There are also Slow Lorises here (I think Bengal and Pigmy) but these can't be seen on the tour because they are asleep. The cages are really basic - not too small but certainly not large, concrete-floored, with bamboo and pole beams for climbing. There is also a large "natural" enclosure in which animals are held "wild" before being released into the Cuc Phuong National Park (for those species which are native to the area - she said there were four species in there but the only ones I saw were some Delacour's Langurs).

    The cages are set back from the paths and cannot be approached (or, rather, you aren't allowed to approach them). I'm not sure how Maguari managed to get such good photos - all of mine have wire mesh in the way!

    The lady said there were 15 species at the centre, but this was also the number on the posters and other material so I'm not sure if this is just a standard number they still use or if it is current. Certainly she said that they don't have Black-shanked Doucs "because they are from the south, so when we get them here they get sick and die".


    Species on view:

    *Cat Ba Langur Trachypithecus poliocephalus - one cage held three (or four?) including a younger individual, and another held two I think. There may have been others off-show.

    *Delacour's Langur T. delacouri - three in one cage (I think the lady said these ones couldn't be released), and others in the "natural" enclosure for release.

    *Hatinh Langur T. hatinhensis - LOTS of them, in at least four or five cages. They were breeding too, with four newborn orange babies. The groups also contained several Indochinese Black Langurs ("T. ebenus") which are just a colour-morph of the Hatinh Langur. Visually they look identical except the white facial markings are absent, and apparently they are genetically indistinguishable (says IUCN). One of the babies was with a black langur.

    *Indochinese Grey Langur T. crepusculus - formerly considered conspecific with Phayre's Langur T. phayrei (Maguari's photos from a few years back are labelled as "Southern Phayre's Langurs"). There were four of these magnificent animals, reminiscent of the Shortridge's Langur (T. shortridgei) I saw in Burma. My favourite species here.

    *Grey-shanked Douc Pygathrix cinereus - quite a few in several cages. They are actually nicer than the other two douc species, although that may be a factor of me not having seen them before.

    *Red-shanked Douc P. naemeus - in cages not closely viewable.

    *Southern Buff-cheeked Gibbon Nomascus gabriellae - the lady mentioned Buff-cheeked Gibbons and Golden-cheeked Gibbons. I'm not sure if this meant two different species (maybe including the Annamite Gibbon N. annamensis).

    *White-cheeked Gibbon - the lady just used this name, but said that there were two species in Vietnam. She didn't specify further, but from Maguari's and FunkyGibbon's photos in the gallery they have both Northern N. leucogenys and Southern N. siki.


    So that makes nine species. Ten if you include Indochinese Black Langur (although they clearly consider them to be Hatinh Langurs as they keep them together in breeding groups); ; twelve if you include the two Slow Lorises which I didn't see; thirteen if maybe they have Annamite Gibbons; fourteen if you include the Black-shanked Doucs which they apparently no longer have. I'm not sure what the fifteenth would be. Curiously there are no macaques, or at least none in the public areas. I wonder what happens to macaques when they get confiscated from poachers.


    I was particularly happy to see the Grey-shanked Doucs because I have tried twice to see them in the wild and failed. Seeing them in cages isn't the same but it's better than nothing. The Cat Ba Langurs were great because there's no chance I'll be seeing them in the wild. But most especially I was very happy to see the Indochinese Grey Langurs. There's a slim possibility I could still see these in the wild but I'm not holding my breath.
     
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  5. Maguari

    Maguari Never could get the hang of Thursdays. 15+ year member Premium Member

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    That sounds pretty similar to my experience, although our guide was better and they did have Black-shanked, just wouldn't let us see them! We saw 10 taxa (Red and Grey Doucs, Delacour's, Francois', Indochinese Black, Hatinh, Cat Ba and 'Phayre's' Langurs, plus the two white-cheeked gibbons) and labels for two more (the equally invisible lorises). Maybe Francois' would make the fifteenth of your list? I wonder if it's simply have had 15 taxa rather than have, but it's being misspoken!

    Their work certainly seems to be with langurs, gibbons and lorises - macaques do not get a look in at all.


    It's all about the lens - though in fairness, almost every shot I took there has visible mesh as well! :D
     
  6. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I didn't see Francois' langurs while there - they may have been in the off-show cages, or possibly masquerading as Hatinh langurs. Did you not see buff-cheeked gibbons? I kind of wondered why they were there instead of having been sent to the primate centre at Cat Tien.
     
  7. Maguari

    Maguari Never could get the hang of Thursdays. 15+ year member Premium Member

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    No, no gabriellae (not on show, at least).

    Meant to say, glad you had a successful time at Van Long - it's a wonderful place with fantastic monkeys. I know what you mean about Delacour's Langurs' tails - more reminiscent of a ruffed lemur than any monkey.
     
  8. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    thanks. It was nice finding the Delacour's langurs so quickly and seeing them so well, after the drawn-out search for Hatinh langurs at Phong Nha. They are actually very reminiscent of ruffed lemurs in general - some of my photos, if they were just glanced at, could easily be mistaken for lemurs. A strange sort of convergence.
     
  9. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    CUC PHUONG NATIONAL PARK, part one

    When I checked out of the Queen Mini Hotel in Ninh Binh I gave the owner a 500,000 Dong note, because that was all I had, and she pretended she didn't have change. Then she just stood there expecting me to just wave it aside and leave. But of course I didn't. She tried again to not give me change "because she didn't have any", but when I wasn't budging she went away and came back thirty seconds later with the right change. Then as I picked up my bags and left, the lady and her mother talked loudly about me (in Vietnamese, but the tone was obvious). I had heard that the further north in Vietnam you go, the more "rip-offy" the people get, and this is proving to be the case.

    I was on my way to the Cuc Phuong National Park. I knew I could get a bus from Ninh Binh to the village of Nho Quan which is about half an hour from the park, and then a motorbike the rest of the way; or I could take a motorbike the whole way. At the bus station a motorbike guy offered 200,000 for the trip, which I rejected, and he came straight down to 150,000. This wasn't too bad - he wouldn't come down to 100,000 - but I figured the bus-bike combo would be cheaper, even though the guy tried to somehow convince me that it would be more expensive because a motorbike from Nho Quan would cost 300,000. I'm not sure how he thought that ruse would work!

    As it happens the bus-bike combo is only marginally cheaper, but takes twice as long. The bus costs 25,000 and takes about two hours to get to Nho Quan. I knew a motorbike from there should cost about 80,000. There was only one motorbike guy where the bus dropped me off and he wanted 120,000 for starters, but we settled on 90,000.

    Arriving at the national park everything is super-easy. The ladies at reception are really friendly and helpful, and they speak good English, so everything can be easily explained and questions answered. The accommodation is cheaper than almost anywhere else I've been in Vietnam, with the basic rooms (i.e. a bed and a fan) being 100,000. The good rooms are 300,000 and the deluxe rooms are 600,000, but I have no need for goodness or deluxity. Renting bicycles and scooters is more expensive than it should be though, with mountain bikes rated at 120,000 for one day, 170,000 for two days, or 250,000 for three days; and scooters at 250,000 per day (scooters or motorbikes are normally around 100,000 per day, for comparison).

    In contrast to how friendly the reception ladies are, though, the people in the restaurant at the HQ speak little to no English and are very unhelpful. I thought maybe they just disliked me for some reason, but the German girls I befriended said "we thought they didn't like us". In any case, it wasn't much fun having to go there to eat and there weren't really any other options. Something I did notice was that if a group of foreign tourists came in with a Vietnamese guide then the restuarant people were very friendly to them (and also to the volunteer girls from the EPRC), but any foreign tourists alone, like me or the Germans, they treated us like we were wasting their time by coming in there.

    I was actually surprised how many tourists there were staying at Cuc Phuong. I'd heard that weekends get busy with residents of Hanoi coming for a break, and so I'd deliberately arrived on a Monday to avoid this, but generally speaking foreign tourists usually make day-trips to national parks. I mean, it's not crowded or anything, just busier than I expected. Unexpectedly, most of the foreign tourists are German or French. No Russians.

    Another thing that is very common here are the mosquitoes! There are great quantities of them, especially around the rooms and in the restaurant. Maybe that's why the restaurant owners are so grumpy, because they keep getting bitten.

    Much nicer than the mosquitoes are the butterflies. There is a white species here which flies in streams instead of clouds. No matter how many there are, they only fly in single file in swooping lines. Along the road into the centre of the park there are hundreds of them, all heading towards the HQ. Occasionally there would be a black or an orange butterfly which had got sucked into their stream and so just flies along with them. Here and there you will see the white butterfies pouring down from the treetops like a waterfall, and then just above the ground they turn and flow along the roadside. They really are amazing to watch.

    On the first afternoon I tried some birding along the road but it was so hot that there was nothing about. I only saw three species of bird but all three were noteworthy in their own ways. The first was a flock of grey-throated babblers which were the first I'd seen this year. Second was a pair of olive-backed sunbirds which in the local north Vietnamese subspecies have white bellies so look pretty different to those elsewhere; especially the female is very distinctive - if the male hadn't been there I'm not sure I would have picked what she was. The third was another very common Asian bird, the common tailorbird - except this one was at its nest. Tailorbirds are so-called because they stitch leaves together into a purse and then fill it with nest material. I've seen hundreds of tailorbirds but never a nest. This nest was in more of a roll shape, the bird having simply folded under the edges of a large leaf and sewn them up, and unfortunately the position of this nest meant that I couldn't get photos of it - it would have just looked like an ordinary leaf. Still really cool to see though.

    At 3.30pm I went to the Endangered Primate Rescue Centre which houses Vietnamese langurs and gibbons confiscated from the illegal trade. See the preceding posts for what I wrote about the centre.

    There is a Botanical Gardens at the HQ and all visiting birders go there as a morning activity, so that's what I did too. The gate is kept locked for some reason so you need to ask at reception for the key. They only have one key but they gave it to me the night before so that I could go in at dawn. Although I was in there at 5.30am when the sun came up there wasn't much activity from the birds until 6.30am, and even then most species were ones I'd seen everywhere else so it was a bit of a wasted effort. Some crow-billed drongos were the first of the trip though. I'd been imagining the gardens to be, well, a garden, but in fact it is just a rough concrete path through secondary growth forest. It does look like it used to be a proper Botanic Gardens, with a few labels still visible and some obvious exotic trees, but now it is completely swamped in jungle. From the single paved path there are the remnants of older side-paths but they are mostly buried in undergrowth now.

    After a late breakfast I headed up along the main road into the park. It was late morning, about 10am, but still there were not really any birds around. I did see a small Asian mongoose as my first Cuc Phuong mammal, and the 105th mammal of the trip. At noon I returned to the HQ for lunch without really having seen much at all. Later I found out that it was 36 degrees that day, which probably explains things! I went to sleep for the rest of the day.

    I was going to cycle to the Bong Substation in the morning and stay there a couple of nights, but a rainstorm came through in the night. Bong is in the centre of the park, which should be the best place for finding whatever animals are left alive here, and the accommodation is the same price as at the HQ (albeit with no electricity). However it wouldn't be much fun cycling 20km in the rain so I postponed it and stayed at the HQ another night. I did go walking along the road though, under the cover of an umbrella. It was much cooler today and there were a lot more birds around, but they were all very common species, almost all of which I had seen dozens of times just in Vietnam alone. Probably the most interesting was ratchet-tailed treepie. No mammals were seen, not even a squirrel. The streams of white butterflies were also absent - they must only like sunny weather - but so were the mosquitoes which was a blessing.
     
  10. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    CUC PHUONG NATIONAL PARK, part two

    I had been staying at the HQ for three nights which was longer than I had wanted. The forest in the vicinity is not the best and the birds are just common species. The centre of the park, at the Bong Substation, was where I really needed to be. So on the fourth morning I got a mountain bike from reception and set off. The weather was nice and cool, looking like it might start raining although it didn't until late afternoon, so it was good for biking.

    It is 20km between the HQ and Bong. On the way there I thought it was pretty evenly split between uphill and downhill. Undulating would be a good descriptive. I walked the bike up several of the uphill sections. However what I found on the return journey three days later was that it was almost entirely downhill back to the HQ. There were three sections I walked up, but even including those the total amount of pedalling wouldn't have amounted to more than a few hundred metres, and generally that was only because sometimes the road flattened out just enough to stop me coasting from one proper decline to the next. It took half the time to get back to HQ as it did going to Bong, and it probably would have taken about a tenth of the time if I didn't have to have the brakes on for most of the way so I didn't build up too much speed. The road is very winding and only as wide as a bus - it was Sunday when I was going back and there were regular buses and jeeps coming up from HQ.

    Nobody at Bong spoke any English, but in contrast to the HQ restaurant everybody here was extremely friendly and helpful. I liked staying here much better. There are rooms right beside the restaurant but the cheap ones are about five minutes walk further along the road. The restaurant and the rooms next to it have generator-electricity for a few hours at night, but the cheap rooms don't unless there are more than a few people staying there. There were a couple of people staying at the rooms by the restaurant each night but none in the cheap accommodation where I was, even when the weekend came around.

    I'm not one of those people who stays in the jungle and then complains there are spiders and lizards in the rooms but, yeah, there were some big spiders in the rooms! And the mosquitoes were even more numerous than at the HQ area which is saying something. I haven't had a lot of trouble form mosquitoes on this trip. I tend to forget the bad bits like insects and heat once I move on, but I do remember plagues of mosquitoes at Bukit Fraser back in October. Here they were much worse, a veritable curse. I got so many bites I fully expect to be coming down with haemorrhagic dengue in the next week.

    Once you get about four or five kilometres from the HQ the forest gets much nicer and denser. There weren't a lot of birds seen along the way - I was too busy cycling up hills! - but I actually saw some mammals, with two red-bellied squirrels and a maritime striped squirrel in a tree full of thick-billed pigeons. Fork-tailed sunbird was a lifer for me also.

    After putting my bag in my room I went back to the restaurant for lunch and met some German girls (the two from the HQ, plus another group of three). They were going off round the loop trail which is here. I chose to walk along the road to look for birds. I saw some pretty birds I'd seen elsewhere, like sutan tit and scarlet minivet, but nothing too interesting. I went back to the restaurant when it started raining. I met the girls later in the afternoon and found they had seen a silver pheasant on the trail! Grrr.

    There are 135 species on the park's mammal list but I think you'd have to be incredibly lucky to see anything larger than a squirrel during the day or a civet by night. Everything else has either been poached or has hidden in the deeper recesses of the forest. There are still lots of birds around, but they too are very difficult to see. Most days I was only seeing about ten or fifteen species total, and something like 95% of them were ones I had already seen elsewhere on this trip.

    Night-time is when you could expect to see something more interesting. There are all sorts of civets here, including Owston's palm civet; ferret-badgers, including the newly-discovered Cuc Phuong ferret-badger (known only from a couple of confiscated animals); two species of slow loris; pangolins; some small cats; and various other critters.

    It had stopped raining before dark which was good. I didn't know what the condition of the loop trail was like so for the first night I tried my luck spotlighting along the road. I wasn't sure what to expect, given the amount of wildlife left here, but I saw three mammals. First up was an unidentifiable rat which whirled down the trunk of a small tree in a corkscrew fashion and disappeared into the undergrowth. The next mammal was much more obliging - a hairy-footed flying squirrel in the canopy of a big fig tree, which once the light went on it simply sat there and stared. This was exciting for me because I have only ever seen the giant flying squirrels (of three species) - I can never seem to find the smaller ones - and this particular species is considered very rare in Vietnam. Looking on Google Images the "sitting on a branch and staring at you" technique seems to be normal in this species.

    I didn't see anything else along the road, but back at the accommodation area I picked up some eye-shine over by the abandoned swimming pool. The animal was moving round a lot as I hurried over there, but I got a look at a vague shape before it departed. From the size and pale colour I thought it must be a masked palm civet, but I wasn't too confident about it. The next night I saw a pale grey domestic cat in the forest by the restaurant which confused things. On the whole I think it probably was a masked palm civet but there's enough doubt to leave it as an unknown.

    Given that the German girls had seen a silver pheasant on the loop trail, I made that my route for the next two days rather than birding along the road. The start of the trail is just by the restaurant but the end is by the cheap rooms where I was sleeping, which meant I could easily do it in either direction. The loop is about 7km in total and takes around three hours. A lot of the day-visitors just go as far as the "thousand year old tree" and then return the same way. The forest here is great, growing all around and over limestone outcrops and boulders. It really lets you see how the country looked before all the farming and towns destroyed it.

    I did the trail each morning starting at about 6.30am with Oreo cookies for first-breakfast and then second-breakfast at the restaurant around 10.30, and then went back around again in the afternoon around 2pm after lunch. Sometimes I'd do it in one direction and sometimes in the other. Birding was very difficult with long stretches of nothing. On the first morning I saw four or five red-headed trogons, and then not a single one at any other time I was on the trail. Some birds were always present, like yellow-browed warblers, striped tit-babblers, white-bellied erpornis, and puff-throated bulbuls. There was an Asian barred owlet near the exit of the trail every day. Other birds were seen only once or twice, even if they should have been common, like Mugimaki flycatchers, orange-flanked bush-robin, black-browed and rufous-throated fulvettas, and grey-throated babblers.

    My second night at Bong was pretty worthless in terms of spotlighting. I was going to go around the loop trail, thinking it would be perfect for civets and ferret-badgers, but there were an unbelievable number of fireflies out and about. The previous night there hadn't been any, possibly on account of the rain earlier in the day, but this night their lights were everywhere. This might not sound like an issue - and it is very beautiful - but their lights look like eye-shine. Even the fireflies off to the side where the torch isn't pointing distract you because you are so focused on seeing eyes. I did see some real eyes near the start of the trail, but they turned out to belong to the domestic cat I mentioned earlier. I have never been spotlighting somewhere with so many fireflies, and in the end I just gave up.

    On the trail late in the morning of the third day I could hear a loud long whistle from the thickets in a small valley, followed by grunting noises. I couldn't imagine what this was - the whistle sounded like a bird, but the grunting sounded more like macaques or squirrels - and I couldn't see anything from the path. I spent quite some time wandering back and forth trying to figure out where the closest point was. Eventually I chose a spot and crept down through the undergrowth, trying to avoid stepping on anything which would make too much noise, like sticks or land-mines. Something bright white showed up ahead, and I got the binoculars on it in time to see a male silver pheasant stalking through the jungle.

    One of the mammals I was hoping to see at Cuc Phuong was the inornate squirrel. It's not a very exciting name, and it's not really a very exciting squirrel - it looks very similar to the grey-bellied squirrel found further west in Asia - but I wasn't going to be seeing it anywhere else except north Vietnam. I'd seen quite a few red-bellied squirrels while here, and diligently checked every one through binoculars to make sure the belly was red and not grey, as well as a maritime striped squirrel and (very briefly) a black giant squirrel. At one of the rest points on the trail, where there are some seats and rubbish, I came across a squirrel clinging to a sapling. It was right at eye-level and only about ten metres away, but I used my binoculars anyway to make sure. Grey belly. It was an inornate squirrel, the only one I saw. I'm not sure if one inornate squirrel versus fifteen or so red-bellied squirrels is a genuine reflection of their relative abundance or just down to random chance. The squirrel clung there looking at me, in a perfect spot for a photo. Of course as soon as I carefully started raising my camera the squirrel "chuck"-ed in alarm and ducked down into the bamboo. I expected it to then reappear up one of the nearby trees but it simply vanished.

    I had been going to return to the HQ that afternoon and then the next morning head on to Hanoi, but the silver pheasant and inornate squirrel implied that I might see some more good stuff if I stayed for longer. I had seen a Dremomys ground squirrel the previous morning which was gone too fast to identify to species, but I figured it had to be one of the ones I hadn't seen yet, and another night of spotighting certainly wouldn't go amiss, so I decided to stay a third night.

    With that decision made, in the afternoon I was back on the trail instead of on my bike. It was a good decision too, because while I didn't see any further birds I did see another ground squirrel and this one I got to see well enough to tell that it was a Perny's long-nosed squirrel. I have to say, trying to see terrestrial animals in forest in karst country is very difficult! They only need to move a couple of feet and they simply vanish amongst the rocks.

    A few posts back I commented on the non-flying squirrels I have yet to see in southeast Asia (this post, #312: Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part five: 2016-2017), and the inornate squirrel and Perny's long-nosed squirrel were both on there. If I reduce the field from all of southeast Asia to just mainland southeast Asia then I now only have four species to see. (Instead of 25 species - narrowing your field is a totally legitimate scientific technique to make your results look better).

    I was determined to make the most of the last night at Bong, so at dusk I was heading into the exit end of the loop trail. What I encountered was swarms of mosquitoes. There had, as mentioned before, been loads of mosquitoes all day every day, but generally there were none at night. This was the first time I had come across them when trying to spotlight here. During the day they are a menace but at least you can see them. At night you're just flailing madly at nothing but the whining noises. I retreated to the road where the mosquitoes were absent.

    This wasn't a loss really, because when walking a tiny mouse went hopping across the road, almost under my feet. It was so small I actually thought it was a frog. Fortunately when it hit the leaf litter at the side of the road it stopped and started to forage, completely ignoring the torch-light (I had a red filter over it). It was the tiniest and cutest mouse I'd ever seen. If it hadn't been for the mouse face I would have thought it was a shrew by the size and the way it was searching amongst and under the leaves. I looked it up later and it was a Gairdner's shrew-mouse, a name which manages to get in both "shrew" and "mouse"!

    A bit further on, the hairy-footed flying squirrel was perched in the same tree as the other night. There wasn't anything else along the road, and at 9pm I was back at the exit end of the loop trail. The mosquitoes had all gone. I did the entire trail, coming out the other end at half past midnight, without having seen a single vertebrate. There were lots of interesting invertebrates though, including land crabs, millipedes, carnivorous snails, huge moths, little tarantulas, and a giant centipede.

    The standard walk around the loop the next morning added a little group of eye-browed wren-babblers to the list (the only other species seen on the trail that morning was a couple of striped tit-babblers). Then I went back to the HQ where I stayed one final night before catching a bus to Hanoi the next morning.
     
    Last edited: 21 Apr 2017
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  11. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    With no new (or any) primates seen at Cuc Phuong for a Vietnam Primate Update, and nothing falling out of my shoes for a DavidBrown Shoe Fauna Alert, I have decided to bring back the FBBird Pheasant Tally in honour of the silver pheasant I saw.


    FBBird Pheasant Tally

    1) Blue Peafowl Pavo cristatus
    2) Sri Lankan Junglefowl Gallus lafayetii
    3) Grey Junglefowl Gallus sonneratii

    4) Kalij Pheasant Lophura leucomelanos
    5) Red Junglefowl Gallus gallus
    6) Grey Peacock-pheasant Polyplectron bicalcaratum
    7) Germain's Peacock-pheasant Polyplectron germaini
    8) Silver Pheasant Lophura nycthemera
     
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  12. DavidBrown

    DavidBrown Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Have you ever met anyone who has seen a pangolin or any of these other nocturnal species while casually touring national parks, or do you have to be a field biologist doing intensive study with daily effort, camera traps, etc. to see them?

    Also, is big spider tourism a thing? Does anybody travel to Vietnam or SE Asia primarily to see big spiders?
     
  13. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I've never met anyone who has seen a wild pangolin in Asia. As far as I know they are imaginary. When you read older reports they could be found just by walking roads at night, but that's not so likely any more.

    Civets are commonly seen (depending on species of course - some are more common/likely than others). Porcupines and lorises are commonly seen. Wild cats are seen by lots of people.

    Basically you just need to put in the hours at night and have a heaping dose of good luck. Spotlighting is a lot harder than day-time animal-watching obviously, because you have a very narrow field of view compared to your 360 degree day-time views, and nocturnal animals are simply more timid and easily-scared-away than a lot of diurnal species. And then there are some places where it is "difficult" spotlighting because of the presence of things like elephants or domestic dogs.

    The returns on spotlighting are less than day-time animal-watching, but the animals are more special because they are just harder to find and you never know what you're going to get. Some nights you see nothing, other nights something great.

    Casual tourists aren't going to see anything though, because they aren't out there looking. On night drives in national parks they are always happy with sambar and muntjac.
     
  14. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

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    @DavidBrown may be interested in my slightly different experience with seeing nocturnal animals in a similar way to typical tourists in Khao Yai National Park as discussed at the end of this post and this post including civets, a small cat, and a slow loris. I think most casual tourists who do look for wildlife at night are mainly wanting to see elephants (and the topic used for polite conversation when booking a night tour with the people running it is seeing elephants).
     
  15. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    some national parks in Asia are quite well-suited for night drives - basically you need a lot of open or fairly-open country because the animals will be more obvious to the passengers, and you also need a good population of the animals. It helps, from the passengers' perspective, if the animals are also large recognisable species. Looking for forest animals (which is most of the smaller species really) is best done on foot, although it does depend on the forest - night drives in Sabah and Sumatra can be very productive.


    Khao Yai in Thailand is good for larger animals like ungulates (mainly sambar and muntjac) and elephants, and porcupines are usually seen. Small carnivores are more random. But there are a lot of species in the park, so anything could be seen.

    Cat Tien in Vietnam is good for deer (sambar and muntjac) and gaur. Smaller animals may be seen but, again, are random and the drivers aren't looking for them.

    The night drives at Taman Negara in Malaysia go through an oil palm plantation which is pretty reliable for leopard cats (lots of rodents amongst oil palms) and they see slow loris there quite frequently apparently.

    Night drives in the parks of Sabah always sound fantastic, and there are brilliant species to see. Things like clouded leopard are often seen. I've only been on the one at Danum Valley, but I didn't see a clouded leopard. Other good sites are Deramakot and Tabin, but you need your own vehicle or to be on a tour; Danum's ones are organised by the park.

    Way Kambas in Sumatra does night drives (through outside sources, not by the park itself I think) and clouded leopard are seen there quite often too.

    At Sigiriya in Sri Lanka I went on a night drive on which I saw a rusty-spotted cat among other small mammals.

    In India almost all the national parks and reserves prohibit entry at night, and night drives are not something you can do normally. I only went on one while there, at Sariska Tiger Reserve, where the drive takes place outside the park. Indian crested porcupines were common, and apparently they see striped hyaenas regularly. If other parks allowed night drives the results would probably be fantastic because India does have a lot of wildlife.

    (EDIT: I forgot I also did a couple of night drives at the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, looking unsuccessfully for striped hyaenas and Indian foxes)
     
    Last edited: 11 May 2017
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  16. Giant Panda

    Giant Panda Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    The oil palm plantation has now been cleared, so the drives are even more depressing. You lurch around this rugged, barren landscape, with the other vans looking like martian rovers in the distance. I don't think loris are frequently seen, although a mammal-watching acquaintance spotted one on an electricity line. Leopard cats remain abundant, however.
     
  17. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    ah, that does sound ... um, not great. I was sceptical when originally told about lorises because I certainly wouldn't expect to see them in palm plantations, but a friend of mine saw one on power lines while on the drive. So I think they see them "regularly" (whatever that may mean) outside of the plantation along the road when coming or going.
     
  18. Giant Panda

    Giant Panda Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Your friend (or their son) didn't post a trip report on mammalwatching, did they?
     
  19. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    nope, this would have been in maybe 2013 or so.
     
  20. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    TAM DAO


    To get from Cuc Phuong National Park to Hanoi, there is a very handy bus direct from the park HQ at 9am. It even goes right past the entrance road for the Van Long Nature Reserve on the way. The "real" fare - if going from the nearby town of Nho Quan to Hanoi - is 80,000 Dong, but if you buy the ticket at the HQ it costs almost twice as much, at 150,000 Dong. However I think the bus only comes to the park if there is someone to pick up - otherwise you would have to make your own way to the bus station in Nho Quan by motorbike or taxi, so 150,000 is actually cheaper than it would otherwise be.

    The bus gets to the Nho Quan bus station at about 9.45am, leaves there at about 10am, and gets to Hanoi's Giap Bat bus station at around 12.30pm. I had found out the night before from the internet that there is a city bus (#08) from the Giap Bat station to the Old Quarter of the city by Hoan Kiem Lake, where the cheaper accommodations are situated. It costs 7000 Dong, so considerably cheaper than a motorbike or taxi. From the lake I just walked around - for quite a long time - until I found a place that wasn't over US$20!

    I ended up at the Lemon Hostel where I got a room for 200,000 (about US$9). It is actually a hotel rather than a hostel (to me, at least, hostel implies backpacker dorms), but I think this is because they used to be called the Lemon Hotel - I had a look on Tripadvisor and there are a ton of really bad reviews from a few years ago. It seems to have either changed hands or picked up its game since then, and the (slight) name-change may be an attempt to distance themselves from the past. Their neon sign and their business card reads "Lemon Hostel: hostel and department". I'm not entirely sure what that means. Their usual rooms are, apparently 300-400,000. Mine was half-price because it was in a state of reconstruction with wires coming out of the walls and a lovely die-in-your-sleep fresh paint smell. Fine by me, though.

    From Hanoi my destination was a hill-town called Tam Dao. I was just going there for birds because there aren't really any mammals left there any more. To get there I had the information that I should take a bus from the My Dinh station to the town of Vinh Yen and then I'd have to take a motorbike costing at least 250,000 for the last 27km. However, luckily, when I mentioned Tam Dao to the staff at the hotel they said that bus #58 goes past nearby and that's the one I take to get to Tam Dao. I checked this new info out online and found a number of sites saying (albeit all simply repeating one another) that you can take city-bus #58 to Me Linh Plaza, then bus VP01 to a town called Vinh Phuc, and then bus VP07 to Tam Dao. It sounded much more lengthy (it took about three hours in the end) but also considerably cheaper.

    The #58 runs from Yen Phu, which is a sort of small highway through the city. This was less than ten minutes walk from the hotel, so I was already saving money from taking a motorbike to an actual bus station. The series of buses to take turned out to be accurate information, with the one minor omission from the internet sites being that you still need to take a motorbike after the last bus in order to get all the way to Tam Dao. Additionally the VP01 bus took me to the Vinh Yen bus station rather than to Vinh Phuc, which was better but also confusing because I thought I was somewhere else! The VP07 bus from Vinh Yen is labelled as going to Tam Dao but while it does go to a place called Tam Dao it is not the actual town of Tam Dao which is still another 14km further on. So I had to pay 100,000 Dong for the last stretch (all uphill, hence why it seems so expensive) - but it was all still much cheaper than my original option.

    Tam Dao is just a small village really, but being on hillsides it is sort of divided into separate sections. The central part of the town is obviously the tourist-zone, chock-full of fancy hotels and restaurants and nothing else. There are literally dozens of hotels crammed in everywhere, with even more under construction, but there doesn't seem to be any proper budget accommodation. The cheapest rooms I could find at any of the hotels were 300,000 Dong minimum. Interestingly, the ones which had rooms for 400,000 or 600,000 seemed quite willing to drop to 300,000 at a moment's notice, but the ones already at 300,000 wouldn't budge. The only one I found which came lower was the Suoi Ngoc Guesthouse (apparently aka the Tam Son Hotel) which let me have a room for 250,000. Naturally, that is where I stayed.

    When I said "the tourist-zone" above, I mean Vietnamese tourists. I feel like the only foreigners who come to Tam Dao are birders. I didn't meet any residents who spoke more than two words of English, although a few of the young Vietnamese visitors could speak it. Everyone is very friendly though, and it's a nice little place. I had expected it to be cool and drizzly, or at least foggy, especially given that it was raining when I left Hanoi, but instead it was hot and sunny and it remained that way for my entire stay (except the last night when a foggy gale came rolling through).

    Because the town caters pretty much solely to Vietnamese, the restaurants are somewhat ... zoological in nature. The first one I visited, to review their prices, had squirrels on the menu. Perhaps connected to this, the forest in the national park was notably squirrel-less. I briefly saw one red-cheeked ground squirrel and one Callosciurus (probably red-bellied, but it ran away too fast to ID it). I didn't even hear any squirrels calling, and normally that is a common sound in the forest even if you can't see them. Another restaurant had convenient animal photos next to the dishes' names - sambar, porcupine, bamboo rat, civet, ferret-badger, mouse deer, monitor lizard.

    .................................

    There are only two bird sites at Tam Dao, and both are within easy walking distance. In fact one of them (the TV Tower Trail) is right beside the hotel area, and the other (Tam Dao National Park) is just up the road.

    Because it was midday when I arrived in town I decided to go to the TV Tower Trail first and then I'd use the following two days for the national park. This trail isn't really a trail at all, just hundreds of stone steps leading to the top of a hill where there is a tv tower. Funny that. It is easy to find because the tv tower can be seen from every part of town.

    From the hotel I went to the old church (a good reference point - for the TV Tower Trail you head right along the road and for the national park you head left). Just follow the road around for a few minutes until the Cafe Legend where you go up the side-street to the Huong Rung Hotel. Next to this is a set of stone steps creating a short-cut up the hillside, and when you hit the road again you just follow the road signs going right for the chua (pagoda). A couple of bends further along there is a cluster of stalls by the road and this is the entrance to the "trail". About thirty metres up the steps is another set of steps on your left - this leads to the pagoda, while the main set of steps continues on up to the tower.

    Although the sun was quite hot, once on the staircase the temperature dropped to comfortable levels under the cover of the forest. However it was still the middle of the day, so birds were not exactly in evidence. The entire walk up the stairs the only birds I saw were a couple of mountain bulbuls. I could hear other birds but the forest is a mix of bamboo and broadleaf trees, so the undergrowth along the sides of the steps is quite thick and trying to see whatever birds were calling proved frustrating. On the way back down a surprise chestnut-winged cuckoo shot across the steps. This was only the second time I'd seen one of these, although the first time (at Kaeng Krachan in 2014) was a much better sighting. Further down a bunch of little birds scattering through the treetops contained black-chinned yuhinas, of which I got poor views. These were a lifer, so fortunately the next day at the national park I got proper views of them because the ones I got today were rubbish. And... well, that's it. Three species of bird in about three or four hours. Not the greatest start!

    .................................

    In the morning I discovered that Tam Dao is not an early-morning sort of town. In Hanoi the places to eat are opening as soon as it gets light because of all the people going to work or school, but here it takes a little longer. I needed breakfast and also food for lunch, so I didn't get started until after 6.30am. Fortunately it isn't far to the national park. From the church you walk a hundred metres to the Rex Diamond Hotel and take the right-hand fork. This leads to the park checkpoint after about a kilometre. There were lots of birds along the road, although the frustration from yesterday sort of carried over because the birds liked to congregate in bushes just behind the roadside bushes, meaning I was trying to see what they were through an additional layer of foliage. There were lots of Phylloscopus warblers - I could plainly see that, although the only ones I could ID to my satisfaction were Radde's and yellow-browed - as well as chestnut-crowned warblers, golden babblers, and a too-fast Zosterops. Oriental honey-buzzards were circling in the sky, black bulbuls and Stejneger's stonechats were about, and a greater coucal wandered across the road.

    It was too early for there to be anybody at the checkpoint building, the only greeting being from two barky dogs, so I continued on. The road turned from paved to gravel, and wound around the hills for a while before terminating at a parking area where there was a possibly-abandoned restaurant and a whole lot of rubbish. I spent some time watching for birds in the trees around this area, seeing my first chestnut bulbul, an elegant species which in Vietnam is restricted to East Tonkin. This part of Vietnam borders China, of course, so a lot of the birds found here were either completely new for me or were ones I had previously seen only on my Chinese trip a couple of years ago. There were also black-chinned yuhinas here, and a lot of hair-crested drongos.

    At the far end of the parking area there are three trails, although you almost need to be right on top of them before you can see that. The one on the left is an overgrown loop trail. The one on the right leads up to the top of the mountain named Tam Dao 2. The trail in the centre is the so-called Contour Trail (because it follows the contours of the hills) or formerly as the Water Tank Trail (because eventually it leads, I guess, to a water tank?). The Contour Trail is the one birders follow. Again, birding along here was a frustrating exercise. The understorey was very open, being mainly the stems of giant bamboo and the trunks of trees, but that meant that any birds you could see were usually flitting between bamboo way back in the forest. Most of them were just too far in for me to see what they were, even if they hadn't kept disappearing as they moved. The opposite problem was with the birds in the canopy of the trees, because I couldn't see them at all - between me and the tree branches there was a thick sub-canopy of bamboo leaves. I would get glimpses of birds flying between trees, but that was all, just glimpses. Reading trip reports, this difficulty in actually seeing birds in the forest here is common.

    I really didn't see much for the first hour or so, but later the trail left the thick forest and crawled around a much steeper hillside where the birds were easier to see. The slope was so steep that there were at least ten places where there was no longer any track, just gaping holes spanned by makeshift bamboo bridges. Annoyingly the better part of the morning had already passed by now, so the birds were less active. Still, the best birds in a long time were seen along here, firstly with a short-tailed parrotbill. I was trying to see what the bird in the undergrowth was, expecting it to be some boring warbler or common old babbler - but when this bird popped out into the open I literally gasped and said "that's a teeny tiny little parrotbill!" That's the good thing about birding alone - you can say anything stupid out loud and there's nobody around to hear it. The first time I was in Vietnam I saw grey-headed parrotbills at Mang Den and was amazed at their size, so much bigger than any of the parrotbills I had seen in China. The short-tailed parrotbill was the complete opposite, the smallest parrotbill I have ever seen. You should Google Image short-tailed parrotbill, it is a great little bird.

    Next on the "you have to Google Image this bird" list was the slaty-bellied tesia. Tesias are like feathered mice. They just scuttle around on the ground in the plants. I could hear this pair of birds rattling away with their annoying calls from amongst the plants covering the ground on a relatively open slope, and I could see the plants moving. I am useless at bird calls so I didn't know what was making all the noise, I was just waiting for them to show themselves. And when one did I was gobsmacked. Deep blue with a golden head glowing in the sun, it looked like some sort of South American manakin and I had no clue what it was. Then it changed position and I realised it was a tesia. In real life it does not look like its picture in the field guide! Absolutely amazing bird.

    The other birds seen on the trail paled in comparison, but included streaked wren-babblers, David's fulvettas, silver-eared mesias, a red-headed trogon, and a Siberian thrush. Walking back along the road in the late afternoon there were more birds, including lifers grey-backed thrush and brown-backed needletails. The golden-throated barbets here are unusual too, having white and yellow throats instead of pure gold.

    That trail was one of the best places for birds I've been in Vietnam, and I couldn't wait for tomorrow when I was hoping to see even more new species. Early in the morning I was on my way back. Oh what a day, I thought. What a lovely day. Then I got to the checkpoint where I was stopped. The guards there didn't speak any English, but "no" is pretty clear in any language. Were they saying it was too early to go in? That would have been nonsense because all visiting birders go in early. And clearly the park was open for visitors because I was passed several times yesterday by rangers who said nothing, and there had been Vietnamese tourists as well. The ranger at the checkpoint took out his phone which had a translator thing on it and showed me "Can not enter". I naturally wanted to know why. He showed me "It is illegal. Go to your home." What? "Forbidden by Vietnamese law." Huh? "Not allowed. Go to home." Buh?

    No amount of pointing at the National Park signs would convince him that I was allowed in, and after a few minutes they got annoyed at my persistance and so just ignored me. There's not much you can do when the other people are just talking to each other as if you don't exist, so I stormed back off down the road. There was only one way into the park so I couldn't even just side-step the guards. Halfway back to the town is a hotel in which four coach-loads of students were staying, and they were going to the restaurant on the other side of the road as I came past. I found a couple who spoke English and asked for their help in understanding what was going on. They quickly said I could just go up the road and go in the park. I said that the guards wouldn't let me in. They seemed confused and one asked the restaurant owner about it. She said something in Vietnamese and he said "oh..." - pause - then to me "you cannot go in because it is too dangerous."

    I have no idea what was going on but it reminded me irresistably of what I encountered in China, where foreigners would simply be refused entry because "it is too dangerous". I was really glad I had managed to get in there the day before, though, because without entry to the park then being in Tam Dao is utterly pointless for me. Making the best of a bad situation, I went instead to the TV Tower Trail where I saw, erm, not much of anything. Over two hours, there was one mountain bulbul, one silver-eared mesia, one Blyth's shrike-babbler, one puff-throated babbler, a couple of golden babblers, and a couple of chestnut bulbuls. Oh, and Finnish birder. He had arrived in town the previous evening and just like me had been refused entry to the park this morning. Now he had no clue what he was supposed to do here. He'd had his Vietnamese girlfriend with him, and yet still the only explanation they were given was "it is forbidden". I think it really is a foreigner thing, but I can't explain why because lots of birders go there.

    So tomorrow I'm back to Hanoi. It seems there is a mini-van straight from Tam Dao to Vinh Yen for 50,000, and then I can get another mini-van or bus from there to Hanoi. I'm not sure of the specifics because this was relayed to me via sign language and written-in-Vietnamese instructions by the owner of my hotel, but there are two times per day for Tam Dao to Vinh Yen, at 8.30am and 2pm. Presumably this means one can also get a van from Vinh Yen to Tam Dao as well, instead of having to use motorbike-taxis, but I've never seen this written on the internet.
     
    Last edited: 22 Apr 2017
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