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LaughingDove Goes Travelling - SE Asia and Australia

Discussion in 'Asia - General' started by LaughingDove, 19 May 2018.

  1. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I don't think I have ever had nearly as many leeches as you. Leeches are just horrible and I dislike them more than ticks or mosquitoes (even though leeches won't give you any disease.). But as you did not have a leech in your eye socket it isn't the worst leech story I have heard :p
     
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  2. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I've heard of a leech on the eyeball and a leech up the nose. Nasty things even if they are otherwise harmless.
     
  3. Brum

    Brum Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Something like this...
    (Warning, not for the squeamish!)

     
  4. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

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    The Legendary Leech Whisperer of Crocodile Lake

    (The title is tongue in cheek in case it’s not obvious enough – I’m not quite full of myself enough to unironically refer to myself as legendary)

    The lake was very cool first thing in the morning, it was shrouded in low mist with mist coming up from from the forest as well, and there were gibbons calling from the far bank. One of the rangers asked if I would like to go on a boat ride on the lake for an hour for 150k which sounded like a good idea. They don't use motorboats on the lake but instead have little plastic boats propelled by a paddle and we cruised around a bit along the lake edge as well as into the flooded forest area. It was nice to get a different perspective on the lake with the waterbirds and such visible from closer as well as some interesting forest birds like White-crested Laughingthrushed and a few different woodpeckers. A couple of large flocks of Lesser Whistling Ducks also appeared today that weren't here yesterday.


    After breakfast, two of the three rangers donned the full ranger gear and went off in a boat out across the lake to do rangery things and I birded the lakeside some more as well as bit along the trail. I had most of the day around the lake since I wasn't due to be picked up from the trailhead until 4.


    When I went along the trail to be all sneaky looking for ground birds, I decided that I couldn't be bothered with the leech socks. I am the leech whisperer after all. In about three minutes when I looked down I had seven leeches around my ankles, several crawling up my shoes and a few up my legs. Leech socks it is. The mosquitos were pretty bad too which is concerning given how prevalent dengue fever is at Cat Tien (and they were the sort of mosquito that carries dengue). When they go out to do their rangering, the rangers wear leech socks and are fully covered apart from their face and hands, which is probably it s good idea. I, on the other hand, wear long trousers but short sleeved shirts, and DEET only does so much. The thing about leech socks though, is that although they stop leeches getting at you, they don't stop then trying and then you end up working the a mass of leeches in your shoes. And they don't help with the arboreal leeches either of course, which are about. There was very little bird activity, but I did find an Orange-breasted Trogon and a super cool sneaky looking Oriental Vine Snake.


    As I was heading back about midday ish (I was going to walk slowly and sneakily for ground birds) a large group of British tourists arrived and I was rather entertained by how much they were fussing over the approximately three leeches between them that got around there leech socks and copious amounts of leech repellent. Each leech had to be eased off with much screeching and then little bits of paper and antiseptic wipes over each bite and the leeches themselves had to be touched only through tissues. I guess not everybody can be a hardcore leech whisperer like I am.


    Apart from a couple of brief periods of bird activity, the walk back was rather quiet. Much less successful with primate too with just one group of doucs. I did see another snake too, although I don't think this was a vine snake and it was teeny weeny and beautifully patterned. And I actually found two if those. It took me about three and a half hours to do the walk - a walk which is signed as taking 80 minutes - but as a result of my slow and sneaky walking along the trail, I found two bird species that I was targeting - an Indochinese Green Magpie and a Siamese Fireback. Not prolonged views of either, but I'm happy to have seen both species, each being my third green magpie and third fireback pheasant species of the trip. I also saw a Grey-faced Tit-babbler which is cool because it’s such a range-restricted species, although it’s not particularly exciting to look at.


    I'm pleased that I spent the night at crocodile lake, although it could have been done perfectly well as a day trip, spending the night there was a good experience. It was also not as expensive as I had heard because although I had heard that accommodation at crocodile lake was expensive, I got a no-frills room rather than one of the cabins for only 180k per night.


    I had about 20 minutes until the scheduled time for the car to pick me up and during this time I was entertained by a pair of Racket-tailed Treepies hopping in and out from a bush onto the road. While I was waiting I also removed my leech socks and found that one of them hadn't been totally effective because one leech had got in, drank its fill, and then got popped, leading to the bottom of the leech sock and my socks being soaked with blood. I'm the leech whisperer though, so it's no problem. Although it makes a right mess.


    The car came half an hour late which is slightly annoying but unsurprising and as with the way there, it was a very bumpy and slippery drive. When I got back, I had to do some washing of clothes - although I've been washing my clothes in the shower when possible drying arrangements and time meant it had built up - and then after dinner went to look for a slow loris.


    I decided that the best place to find a slow loris would be in the forest on the other side of the rapids, where I saw my first doucs. Wading across a river is the sort of thing that sounds like it would be dangerous at night, but I don't think it's any more so than in the day.


    Just before the rapids, I got an excellent view, and even some terrible record shot photos of, and Indian Giant Flying Squirrel scooting up an exposed tree and then sitting within the leaves. A much better view than on my first night. Not quite a walk away view, but it was a walk away from eyeshine that had gone right to the densest part of the tree and was now sat there, view.


    The rapids were surprisingly cold though, and I'm a little concerned about all my leech wounds around my ankles, but you gotta do what you gotta do. The lengths I go to to find animals... There were cool fish in the stream at night though, some loaches and things.


    Prior to heading out, I was feeling quite confident. 4km and wet, muddy feet later, I was feeling far less confident. The things about the Pygmy Slow Loris at Cat Tien I that some reports seem to have it really easily, while others don't find it at all. Even proper mammal watchers who usually find things, I don't think Jon Hall found one. But I seem to do well a slow lorises... I continued on for quite a while longer, stubbornly determined to find the loris, but eventually the road became too muddy for me to walk and look at the trees, I just had to have the torch on the ground to walk, so I turned back having successfully gone from bloody trousers to muddy trousers.


    Back across the rapids, I got an amazing view of two common palm civets chasing each other next to the path and then running across an overhead vine right above me really close. Too close for my camera to focus on in fact, a great sighting. And just as I was back into the HQ area itself, I was thinking to myself that it’s weird how I hadn’t even heard any owls around and then I picked up some owlish eyeshine in a line of trees across the main HQ lawn area. This turned out to be a Brown Hawk-owl which is cool. It’s always great to see a new owl, and this one sat in view nicely for quite a while. So, two more chances for that loris then…


    New birds:

    White-crested Laughingthrush

    Orange-breasted Trogon

    Shikra

    Indochinese Green Magpie

    Grey-faced Tit-babbler

    Siamese Fireback

    Brown Hawk-owl
     
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  5. FunkyGibbon

    FunkyGibbon Well-Known Member

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    So apparently the male gibbon in the family group that come and call to the captives is actually a released animal; if you get close you can see he has a badly maimed leg. His mate is wild though. This is all assuming I understood the guide at the sanctuary of course.
     
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  6. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    If it helps, I didn't find any Pigmy Slow Lorises....


    For the peacock-pheasants, if you want a better look than just a flushed one, they tend to come out in the late afternoon along the road past the Crocodile Lake trail (as in, keep going along that road past the trail entrance), and you can see them really well.
     
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  7. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

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    A Good Day: Plastered in Mud, Soaked in Sweat, and Stained with Blood.


    It was raining when I first woke up at dawn, which is weird because it generally rains in the afternoon, convectional rainfall and all that. It's been clear until 11 every other day in Vietnam. Anyway, it was 5:30 so I went back to bed. And then I didn't wake up until past 7! Shockingly late! Of course if it was anything other than birding, it be complaining about having to wake up so early.


    After breakfast, I decided that in order to do the grasslands area properly, I should hire a bike because it's quite a way. They charge 150k for 8 hours which seems very high, although again, that's only high relatively to local prices, as it's about £5. More than a bike cost me for a day on Pulau Ubin in Singapore though!


    Cat Tien seems quite well suited to bikes because it's totally flat (unlike Pulau Ubin which is rather hilly) the road through the grassland is quite long and good enough, and for birding purposes, in open country birding covering more ground is generally more effective that doing small areas thoroughly, like would be better in a rainforest.


    A flock of laughingthruses was entertaining in the bamboo forest before the grassland and very soon after I entered the grassland I flush a small quail from the grass just by the road which I watched fly over the grass a bit before completely disappearing. My first buttonquail! (Rather than true quails that are sometimes called buttonquails). This one proved to be a Yellow-legged buttonquail. There must be so many little quails and things totally hidden in the long grass!


    It took a little while to find my main target here, a Green Peafowl, but I knew they were here because I had heard one when I was here at night and after a couple of hours I found one with the help of one of the watch towers that look over the grassland. Beautiful bird, although this one wasn't out in thr open, presumably because it had already become quite hot in the sun. I probably need to get down to the grasslands at dawn to see them out in the open and get some pictures. (Although only just past 9 at this time, it was already really hot in the sun)


    A bit further on, as I was biking along, a dark patch in the middle of the road started to move. It elongated from a ball and then popped up on legs and a nose emerged. It was a Small Asian (Javan) Mongoose! It trotted off into the grass by the side of the road, but it didn't seem to have gone far, so a bit further along I stopped and waited to see if it would come out again. A few minutes later, a nose cautiously emerged from the grass, then the mongoose slowly walked out into the middle of the road, looked around a bit, and then crossed the road to the other side. It was really close, just a few metres away, and I had no difficulty getting some pictures as it crossed. Each time it heard the camera shutter, it would pause briefly and look around. Such a cute little mongoose! The last time I saw a mongoose was all the way back on my first day of the trip at Kuala Selangor near KL (that was a different species) which feels so long ago!


    Although the road remained good for a few hours of biking, it didn't stay so for the whole way. I reached the point where there were quite large patches of very boggy mud, and navigating these became challenging. Of course I could have walked the bike through those patches, but where's the fun in that? If I built up enough speed before getting to the muddy spot (of course looking for animals from a bike involves going quite slowly in general), I could generally force my way through, creating a bow wave in the muddy water and pushing through the boggy spots. I had to choose my exact route through the mud beforehand of course because I had to keep the bike as straight as possible and avoid the slippery, muddy edges of the ruts to avoid sliding and ending up in the mud. I was largely successful. Although it's never the 50 successful navigations that matter, it's the one failure where you end up totally coated in mud.


    The road eventually ended at a ranger station thing with a gate across the road where I turned round and headed back. I saw another mongoose in the road just before there though! I think they're probably it quite common in the tall grass and secondary vegetation, and when I got back to the stop where I saw the first mongoose, there were then two sat in the middle of the road that let me approach quite close and when I got really close they would trot off into the grass, before coming out again as soon as I walked away. Great little animals.


    Other interesting things seen while out on the bike in the grassland (and patches of forest between patches of grassland) included two species of macaque (Long-tailed and pig-tailed, the latter being Northern which is new for the trip), two species of treeshrew, including Northern which I hadn't seen yet, and a few nice birds like some parakeets, birds of prey, and an excellent view of an Orange-breasted Trogon. Quite a successful day in the grassland area on a bike. I covered much more ground that I otherwise would have. I was, however, rather sore by the time I got back to return the bike in the late afternoon, the seat wasn't particularly soft and I went a bit overboard with the into the mud at full speed stuff. I was also plastered in mud all over, soaked in sweat, and covered in blood (from leeches). Muddy would also have been an accurate description of the bike. Not quite as accurate as, "bloody hell, how did you manage to get mud THERE?!" but no one checked the bike when I returned it, so no problems.


    I had a bit of a rest and snooze for a couple of hours before dinner so that I'd be reenergized for spotlighting. All that biking was tough work. When I have a meal, I like to try one of the various soft drinks that they have, rather than just blindly asking for a coke every time. Tonight I had a 'nutri boost: milk + juice drink with nutrients delicious + refreshing strawberry flavour' which sounds alright, like a yogurt drink maybe. It was not. It tasted like the sort of artificial nature-identical strawberry flavour jam that you might get with a cheap breakfast and mixed with water and the cream from strawberry flavoured Oreos. The fakest, most disguistingly sweet, thing ever and with that weirdness that you get with milk mixed with water. There was some Vietnamese text on the bottle with the word New Zealand in big blue letters. It's clearly the kiwis' fault for this monstrosity of a drink.


    After dinner, I headed out for spotlighting. Still determined that the forest on the other side of the rapids along the road to Crocodile Lake is the best chance for loris. I passed a car going off into the grasslands with a group of tourists for spotlighting and even as he was passing with the too-dim spotlight waved around chaotically, it was obvious he didn't really know what he was doing (those night drives don't try for loris anyway, they're targeting ungulates in the grassland). My need for a ridiculous sugary drink had not been met by that disgusting abomination of a drink, so I bought an - odd but delicious -mixed dark berry fanta for the road.


    The first thing seen, about a km down the road, was the cutest most adorable little owl ever! A cute widdle Collared Scops Owl sat on a vine right by the road sat there and looking around, posing excellently for photos. Two (different) owls in two nights, both completely self-found is very good for me! It's the same number of owls as I saw the whole time I was in Malaysia, and none self-found there. The Collared Scops was definitely pygmy, and quite slow because it just sat there. Not quite a loris exactly. If you squint really hard and have half a jerry can of the rice spirits that they make at crocodile lake maybe? I continued on for the pygmy slow loris. There aren't really any mountains for me to climb in Cat Tien, but I will ford every stream to find the loris.


    The next thing of note (apart from an inidentifiable rodent running off instantly), 4km later, was a Large-tailed Nightjar perched nicely on an expose branch. That makes two species each of nightjars and owls at Cat Tien because I'm now suddenly good and finding night birds but terrible at finding lorises apparently. At Danum Valley when I wanted night birds I never saw any but saw three or four lorises every night (seriously) and now that I want lorises, all I can find are night birds. Typical. I did a long way tonight, I wasn't far off from the crocodile lake trailhead when I turned around. Unlike yesterday, I continued through the horrendous mud. I've already been through one cycle of getting extremely muddy and clean again, so what's another? (I didn't actually fall in it this time of course, so the mud got no higher than my knees).


    As I was walking back, almost back at the rapids (just after the concrete paving slabs start along the Crocodile Lake road for anyone who knows Cat Tien), I saw some eyeshine. It was not huge but clearly mammalian and moving quite slowly in the middle story. The right colour too. Could it be? I got up to where the eyeshine was and it had disappeared. It took about five minutes of moving the torch around just in that spot and I located the eyeshine again. It had been three metres directly in front of me the whole time, in dense vegetation. Hell yeah! I'd only gone and found myself a Pygmy Slow Loris! I was actually shaking with excitement, it was there right in front of me, moving ever so slowly and delicately through a bamboo thicket. Now that I had located it, I saw it really well. It's so tiny! Really noticeably teeny tiny and really frail looking. Gorgeous little loris. They don't move very fast, so I obviously got to watch it for a while and even got some record shots that are probably just about recognizable. I can totally see now why they're difficult to find. They're very small, very shy, this one at least was in really thick vegetation, and the eyeshine is extremely difficult to pick up. My loris skills are back! I was grinning the whole time. In fact, I'm still grinning. The loris slowly retreated into the vegatation, and once it was far enough into the bamboo, the eyeshine looked so very insect like that I may not have given it a second look. Not an easy mammal to find, but well worth the effort. Such a wonderful, wonderful primate. And an outstanding view of it too (although once you've found a loris, unless it's really high up in a tree you do generally get great views). I'm so stoked with that sighting, probably much more so because I really had given up by then. I saw the loris a bit before 11 which is well over 4 hours after sunset, and close to 5 hours really.


    There were lots of a Siamese Algae Eater like fish on the ford by this time and they really didn't want to move out of the way for me to get past. I saw little else of note on the way back, but yeah. Pygmy loris. And with that, I've found all four of Cat Tien's speciality primates. The last 1.5ks back to the HQ from the rapids were a bit of a slog. I'm exhausted.



    New birds:

    Indian Roller

    Yellow-legged Buttonquail

    Green Peafowl

    Rufous-winged Buzzard

    White-rumped Falcon


    Blossom-headed Parakeet

    Collared Scops Owl

    Large-tailed Nightjar


    Mammals:

    Small Asian Mongoose

    Northern Pigtailed Macaque

    Northern Treeshrew

    Pygmy Slow Loris
     
  8. Brum

    Brum Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    It's good to know that owls aren't mythical creatures after all... :p And well done on the loris, I'm extremely pleased for you! :D
     
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  9. Giant Eland

    Giant Eland Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    When I went in May I asked the keepers and they said they had replaced the flying squirrels with the owl. I think they still may have had the squirrels, but off exhibit. I was pretty distraught at this news, but luckilyyy I saw them in the final zoo of my entire trip: Beijing.
     
  10. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Sounds like a good trade - several individuals of two species of giant flying squirrels for one Barn Owl.
     
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  11. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I don't think there was really any doubt that you would see a Pigmy Slow Loris, but excellent nevertheless! Interesting about the eye-shine looking insect-like - for all I know I could have been walking right past and ignoring them every night.

    Seriously, though, the grasslands was too far for walking? For shame.
     
  12. Giant Eland

    Giant Eland Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Petaurista alborufus and what was the other species they had!?
     
  13. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

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    If the loris is more than a couple of metres from the road, I think you'd be unlikely to notice it. When I first saw the eyeshine from a distance it was right by the road and then I knew where to look, but otherwise I doubt I'd have found it, they're just much more difficult that other loris species because they're smaller, and the forest at Cat Tien feels much denser than other places, especially with all that bamboo. I'm sure I walked past multiple lorises.

    Well I walked to the grasslands on my second night when I went spotlighting in them, so you obviously could walk to the grasslands, but I just got much further on a bike. Also, that bike was quite good fun :D.
     
  14. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Vietnamese lylei (I'm pretty sure they still have both species). You've probably already seen lylei in America?
     
  15. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Did you try any spotlighting inside the forest on the trails while there? I tried it once and the understorey was so thick that all I could see were the undersides of the leaves right above my head.
     
  16. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

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    I tried one of the trails near the HQ briefly. I turned back because it was both far too dense to see anything and also that it was too wet and muddy for me to walk without looking at the ground the whole time.

    Even the Crocodile Lake trail, which is relatively more open, felt too dense to spotlight effectively.
     
  17. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

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    The Feathered Gems of Cat Tien's Forest


    I eventually managed to drag myself out of bed early enough in the morning on not enough sleep, it being after midnight by the time I got to sleep. At least I had found the loris though! It would be annoying if I had no sleep and no loris!


    Today was my last day at Cat Tien, I leave early tomorrow morning for Dalat since there's one bus per day which leaves at 6:30. My Cat Tien targets that I'm yet to see are pittas and partridges (which is entirely unsurprising) so I decided to focus primarily on the trails today as well as a bit of the Crocodile Lake road.


    I started with the trails behind the captive animal area. I don't think I've mentioned that yet, but there are a few cages with some animals that are rescued or some such. This includes some sub bears, gibbons and macaques, with two animals that appear to be hybrid rhesus x pig tailed that I've heard about as a result of introduced Rhesus Macaques.


    The mosquitos in the trails were rather horrendous, and there were lots of leeches as well by a) leeches don't transmit dengue and b) I am the Legendary Leech Whisperer or Crocodile Lake. I was fairly well covered though, wearing my one long-sleeved shirt, although the mosquitos still went for my hands and face. I much prefer short sleeves, but I even more prefer not having dengue. The attire of some of tourists, generally females, really does amaze me. It's like they got on the wrong bus and were expecting to be deposited at a the beach and when they found themselves in a rainforest in the leech and mosquito season, decided to just put some leech socks on and leave it at that. I'm concerned about wearing short sleeves, and you're really going into the forest in what is basically a bikini top? And it's not even fully in khaki. For shame. It occurs to me that the last time, apart from in bed, that I wore anything that was not khaki or camo print was in May.


    Anyway, I spent ages being sneaky on the trails. There were lots of Shamas today, which are pretty cool but not really what I want. Then, to my shock, in the undergrowth about 6m away was a pitta! This was a Blue-rumped Pitta, my second most desired species at Cat Tien out of the three that occur (the others being Bar-bellied and Blue-winged) but since I'm not using tapes or hides, I hadn't really expected to see any so I'm chuffed with that one! It hopped around for a few seconds in closeish view, then flew off low. I stood around for a while being eaten by mosquitos and leeches to see if it would come back, but it didn't. It wasn't calling at all. I have a love-hate relationship with pittas. I love them when I see them, I hate them when I don't! (And it's by far most often the latter case!)


    I soon found a likely reason why the pitta was about, when about ten minutes further on I stumbled across a bird blind. One of those black mesh constructions around a cuboid frame with slits to look and photograph through. This, presumably, is where bird guides put out seed and mealworms and bring birders to look for ground birds. I didn't happen to have any birdseed or mealworms on me today, but I figured with a hide and an area where birds are frequently fed, this would be a good bit of forest to look in. (Based on the condition of the hide and lack of vegetation around the feeding area, it was clearly being used. I got great looks at a Verbal Hanging Parrot feeding nearby, and a little further along the track until extreme sneakiness paid off as I was able to get quite close to a stunning male Siamese Fireback before it noticed me and shot off. Getting pictures of these ground birds without bringing them in to the hide by tapes/food would be pretty much impossible I think though. Even the Junglefowl, which are the most common groundbird at Cat Tien and the only one I've been seeing quite a few of, run off the instant they notice you. Such a high poaching pressure is, presumably, what is making all the birds extremely wary.


    On the mammal front, some crashing in the trees materialised into a pair of Buff-cheeked Gibbons moving rapidly through the canopy, although they came into view at the same time as a mysterious brown bird which is very annoying of them.


    The trail eventually came out to a large tree and around this tree was a group of tourists with their guide who asked me where I was going. Expecting to be told I shouldn't be in the trails and that I need a guide, I was all vague about where I was going so that they would let me just walk off, but it turned out that the guide was not a national park guide but a guide from some outside tour company, and they weren't sure of the way! It's always best do downplay what you're doing in forest's though because otherwise you'll be told to get a guide. Local guides seem to think that tourists will die instantly the moment they set foot in a forest without a guide. Never mind going around at night!


    I birding the trails all morning and most of the afternoon, picking up a few birds. As I was walking back, I got a spectacular view of an Orange-breasted Trogon that landed on a branch right in front of my face and then, I kid you not, three metres further on around the corner in the middle of the path was... A Bar-bellied Pitta. Just amazing and unbelievable. I looked at it for a couple of seconds before it exploded up from the trail and into the undergrowth. I could still see it hopping though, about 10m away in the undergrowth. So I dropped my bag and got down on my hands and knees into the mud and leeches to look right along the ground level where it was remarkably clear and I could see it. The most stunning little green jem of the forest hopping along the ground, moving away from me. This was a male with the stunning green cap on the head. I crawled along the ground in the mud following it a bit, but after a couple of minutes he hopped completely out of view. So that's two pittas, entirely self-found with no guides, no tapes, no worms. How the f did I manage that? I only saw two species of pitta in my entire almost six weeks in Malaysia! And that's out of over half a dozen possible in Malaysia. I found two out of three at Cat Tien in half a day! Today is definitely one of those 'I love pittas' days.


    At lunch, it's got to the point where I now always go to the same restaurant, sit at the same table, and order the same thing so that the people there don't need to ask what I want. This always happens when I'm at a national park type place where there's limited eating places (there are technically two restaurants at Cat Tien, one is really nice and has good food, the other is a less nice setting and seems to generally have run out of food) because I end up going to the same place and once I've found what I like, I just have that. I vary my diet with different drinks, and with lunch I had a Winter Melon (aka Wax Gourd) juice which is very distinctive tasting. I'm not sure if it's pleasant or unpleasant and I can't really describe the flavour.


    In the afternoon, I walked along the road to the Crocodile Lake trailhead and did a few trails along the way too. Blue-winged Pittas apparently come out onto the road at this time of year. Wouldn't a three pitta day be awesome? Although given that I hadn't seen any on my previous walk or on the drive, I wasn't so hopeful. Germain's Peacock Pheasants also come out onto the road beyond the Crocodile Lake trailhead in the afternoons apparently, and it would have been nice to get a better view than the flushed one near crocodile lake.


    It rained quite heavily for much of the afternoon, although I don't know why I keep mentioning this: it rains quite heavily for most of the afternoon most days at this time of year. I also discovered that the waterproofing on my right boot is, well, no longer water proof. My boots really have taken a hot on this trip, I bought them brand new especially for the trip and they're proper hiking boots, but they're reached the stage where if I was at home I'd definitely be buying new ones. I'll just nurse them through these last few weeks and junk them when I get back. And in terms of other things I'm nursing, my phone also won't charge properly and requires a lot of careful fiddling and placement of the charger to make it charge. You may recall that this is the second phone of this trip. Sigh. This trip certainly has been hard on my stuff.


    Back to birding then, a Banded Kingfisher was a nice sighting. The Bornean from has been split which means this is new for the trip list. There was also a rather cute little flycatcher which appears to have been a Red-throates Flycatcher although they're winter visitors and I think it's too early. I'll have to check the pictures. I also saw an Indochinese Ground Squirrel run across the road at one point, which is a nice trip list. I hadn't bothered with leech socks for th road, so I ended up with a few leeches. I had to remove one every 15-20 minutes ish. One did end up in my pants again though which was annoying. I probably ought to think of some kind of 'in my pants' joke at this point but I can't think of one that's crude enough while also being witty in some way.


    I heard a Bar-bellied Pitta calling in the distance, my first time actually hearing a pitta at Cat Tien despite me specifically listening put for those three calls, got a flyover of Oriental Pied Hornbills, and found a group of doucs which are such lovely primates that they're always nice to see. It felt quiet in general though. I know that probably sounds like a lot, but there seemed very low general bird activity of drongos and bulbuls and such.


    I didn't want a long night of spotlighting, I've got my loris now and I've got to be up and checked out by 6 no ifs or buts because there's only one bus from here, so I stayed out on the Crocodile Lake road until dark and spotlighted back. I spent about 40 minutes scanning the section of road where I saw the loris yesterday to see if I might be able to find it again today. I didn't find it, although I think it was probably somewhere in the area. Unless it happens to be right by the road like last night, you won't find a pygmy loris at Cat Tien. I didn't see much of note, just some inidentifiable microbats and some medium sized megabats. I was only out in the dark properly spotlighting for just under an hour and a half though. That's a good length of time for spotlighting in some areas, at Sepilok in Borneo I was seeing heaps with less than two hours each night, but at Cat Tien spotlighting is slow and and difficult.


    So overall in my five and a half days at Cat Tien, I ended up getting all of my target mammals and most of my target birds, missing out on only one of my top target Cat Tien speciality birds: the notoriously difficult Orange-necked Partridge so that really is very good. Cat Tien is a lovely place, and I very much enjoyed the six nights spent here. The poaching pressure is clearly high though compared to similar parks in other countries. And presumably Cat Tien is one of Vietnam's better protected parks. There are certainly lots of rangers! (Although I'm aware that there's probably some corruption there too). I don't feel like I 'need' any longer here, although I could happily stay here and relax and tease out a few more species. At 350k per night, the accommodation is not super cheap though.


    Tomorrow, on to my second site in Vietnam (and the only other one I'll be visiting on this short two week Vietnamese sojourn), Dalat!


    New birds:

    Blue-rumped Pitta

    Golden-fronted Leafbird

    Lesser Necklaced Laughingthrush

    Blue-throated Flycatcher

    Bar-bellied Pitta

    Banded Kingfisher

    Red-throated Flycatcher


    Mammal:

    Indochinese Ground Squirrel
     
    Brum and Chlidonias like this.
  18. TZDugong

    TZDugong Well-Known Member 5+ year member

    Joined:
    17 Nov 2017
    Posts:
    1,121
    Location:
    Toronto, ON
    Very Nice! Where are you going after Cat Tien?
     
  19. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

    Joined:
    13 Jun 2007
    Posts:
    23,395
    Location:
    New Zealand
    Did you see any mouse deer there? I saw them every night I think, on both visits.
     
  20. LaughingDove

    LaughingDove Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    16 May 2014
    Posts:
    2,492
    Location:
    Oxford/Warsaw
    No, none! Not even any mouse deer eyeshine which is very distinctive. Odd...