Doi Inthanon National Park, 21-23 July

Tony and Aoy picked us up from our Chiang Mai hotel, about 5.30 am. We drove into Doi Inthanon, which has Thailands highest mountain at about 8'000 ft. The trip was reasonably wet, ranging from downpours to drizzle, and that's how it was for 3 days.

We drove first to our accommodation, 'Mr Daengs Birdwatching .
Centre'. Mr Daengs and his family were delightful, and attentive hosts and our cooks for the 3 days. The area is more remote and largely subsistence farming in patches and villages carved out of the forest, so accommodation was very basic and uncomfortable by our standards, particularly in the wet. We used the centre as a base for shorter trips up various roadways, stopping at intervals to look for birdlife. Again there were many wonders to be seen, often colorful. Examples included the Collared Falconette, a truly tiny falcon species perching on tree tops, colorful kingfishers, intensely colored Niltavas and Sunbirds, and many others.

I'm not a bird sighting collector any more than being a train spotter, so the rapid fire sightings meant less than the closer and more extended encounters. One such event stands out for both of us - a visit to the top of Doi Inthanon, in the rain, to it's summit forests and to meet a very special resident the White Browed Shortwing (it needs a better, more fitting name).

The forest at 8,000 ft is still tall, with large trees. But the understory includes Rhododendrons such as R. arboreum, being one of the earliest species bought to the west ( as seed), grown here and used as a parent for many of the early hybrids that were bred. We have the species in our garden at Portobello.

In the wet, and cooler at that altitude (10 degrees C when we were there), it's a dark and striking forest. We hunted for some time for the target inhabitant, a robin like bird that lives on the forest floor. Tony called one in, with his tape. It sang the most exquisitely sweet and tuneful refrain, like a dunnock in terms of duration and sweetness, but with a rich and warm melodic quality. But try as we might we could not sight it and left that area, taking a break in a nearby clearing. As we approached the clearing we suddenly had glimpses of the bird, as the most fleeting of shadows in the forest floor, or perhaps just a flicker of light. In the clearing the birds - they were a pair - came out in the open and we had a long encounter, reminiscent of an NZ Robin encounter when the bird trustingly approaches you. The shortwing male is larger than our robin but otherwise not unlike it in posture. It has a very dark, slate blue plumage and prominent, even comical white eyebrows, being the only thing you can make out when in a dark shadow. The female was brown, like the leaf litter.

While the bird itself might not necessarily make the global bird star annual calendar, it's enchanting secretiveness and then trusting approach, it's habit of slipping in and out of view between the dark and less dark parts of the forest floor, it's exceedingly beautiful song emitted in bursts from the gloomy depths of this old forest, made it quite an experience and we keep referring to it and remembering it a great deal.

Other experiences in Doi Inthanon included enjoying the invertebrate life, my favorite being a small hunting spider (like the Trites species at home) but with an incomprehensible metallic body covering. How does it do that, on soft body parts such as the abdomen, where there is no rigid body shell such as for a shiny beetle? Another favorite was a cicada that, if you got close, the noise was too loud to bear and you covered you ears unless they split!

Somewhat a factor on the trip was however the musty bedroom, dank sheet less beds, wet bathroom, lack of clothes washing or drying facilities and awful plumbing of the room we returned to at the end of two long days in the field. So the flight out of Chiang Mai, carrying much wet and smelly clothing was a relief, even if it was to be the start of a long period of travel, with brief stopovers in Bangkok and Singapore, then a disgusting nighttime flight on Jetstar to Darwin, spitting us out at about 4.30 in the morning, for the last leg of the trip, in the Northern Territory.