THE LOST SHOE AND OTHER THINGS

White-crested Laughingthrush - by Yurie Ball

My left shoe literally disintegrated this morning in the field. I’m not surprised the amount of abuse I’ve made them suffer, plunging them ankle deep in mud and water. I suddenly found myself walking attached to the upper only and the sole buried in the morass behind me. I should have foreseen this as the left shoe had been giving off wheezy, birdlike squeaks for the last few day which made me think I had discovered a new bird. But this didn’t happen before I had another good day with the birds.

Three new birds for the area which included an Oriental Cuckoo, a passage migrant. Ten Cattle Egrets which were studiously following in the footsteps of those Friesian and Holstein cows that I mentioned before, picking off the insects that the cows disturbed. The final one was the best for me, a juvenile (all brown) Black-crowned Night-Heron (60cm.). When I first saw it it was taking off and looked very much like a fairly large raptor with its lumbering flight but then I spotted the long beak. This now brings the list of birds seen in the area to 183 spp.

The two rare Northern Hobbys are still hanging about and two more Black-naped Orioles were spotted. The Oriental Cuckoo was spotted again along with a Banded Bay Cuckoo. A flock of White-crested Laughingthrushes (12) was seen, raising Cain with their raucous, cackling calls. A Peregrine Falcon was also seen. Mae Hia is certainly producing better birds than Huay Tung Tao at the moment and as HTT is in a bit of a mess, what with the road building, I will be concentrating more on MH. I almost forgot, I was stymied by one bird this morning. It was about the size and shape of a Spangled Drongo (maybe a little bigger) but had curved white wing bars on the wings. When seen from the back these bars formed half an oval. When it opened its wings there was a lot of grey in them. Now after seventeen years here, birdwatching, it’s not often that a bird doesn’t get identified by me, but this one has got me foxed. The closest I could get to it was the Black Magpie but that doesn’t exist up here in the north.

Finally, the Coup d’Etat seems to be fizzling out here but there is a rumour floating about that Thaksin plans some sort of comeback/revenge, see my nasty Blog at:
http://uk.360.yahoo.com/profile-wBQSJZwzeqqLI2swShradMT0_Q (copy and paste)