Up at 5 and met just before 6 to take off for a full day of birding. We are in Dalat for 4 days as there is so much to see. The hotel provided us each with a bag of breakfast - croissant, boiled eggs, fruit, water, sandwich. We headed through the town which is quite lovely with a large lake in the middle and flowers in bloom all around. There are many coffee shops and hotels as this is such a spot for Vietnamese tourists. Bom drove us up and up into a pine forest and into the area near Bidoup Nui Ba National Park. Tien had booked 2 different hides for us - these aren’t his hides but ones we could use to see some very special birds.
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| Peering through the blind |
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| Saigon beer box full of mealy worms |
We were at over 5300’ - cool but as the sun rose, the sky was crystal clear and bright blue. In the hide, however, it was still out of sunlight and cool/cold. Tien spread his requisite mealy worms and birds soon started to flock in. We saw a huge range of birds during the 4 hours we were in the hide. Plus Bom arrived at one point with hot coffee for all of us. It was really birding in the lap of luxury!
One of the focal birds came in pretty early - an Indochinese Wren-babbler itch a long curved bill. We saw Scimitar Babblers and Mountain Fulveta that we had seen a few days ago but many new birds joined them. A whole flock of White-cheeked Laughingthrushes flew in. There were easily a dozen of these large, colorful birds with bright white cheeks. A Blue Pitta wandered around the left edges of our viewing area twice. And then a brilliant yellow, about 14” big, almost cartoonish looking bird flew in and walked about - wow. We all inhaled sharply or exclaimed! This caused much excitement and we got multiple viewings of the Indochinese Green Magpie. The drawing in the bird guide does not give it its full due. It is almost comical to see. It made me think of a bright yellow Woody Woodpecker with red and green highlights. How could this bird be real!
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| Indochinese Green Magpie |
We also saw 2 different types of squirrel and a shrew.
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| Northern Smooth-tailed Treeshrew |
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| Eastern Striped Squirrel |
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| Red-cheeked Squirrel |
We continued watching until almost 11:30 when Katy and I decided we had to stand up and wander about a bit. We thought that 4 hours was probably enough. We walked out to the van and walked down the road a bit and warmed up in the sun. As we got back to the van, Bom was already setting up lunch! We had fresh small baguettes and the very popular La Vache Qui Rie soft cheese as well as peanut butter and jam and left-over hard boiled eggs etc from our breakfast bags. Bom also cut up a perfectly ripe mango. I found eating mango slices with peanut butter on the baguette was superior to putting jam inside the bread!
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| Roadside picnic |
We rested briefly before heading just down the road to another hide for a different very special endemic bird. This was the Collared Laughingthrush and is only viewable in a very small area. This hide was also just off of the road and smaller. We sat down and the viewing area was downhill which was great but we were very aware of how carefully we needed to get up and down so as NOT to tumble down the hill. Tien set out mealy worms again and called the bird (he does excellent bird calls) and almost immediately 3 of the Laughingthrushes appeared. We also had flycatchers, White-tailed Robin, and others. We only stayed about an hour as fatigue was setting in and we had seen the primary birds twice.
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| Collared Laughingthrush |
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| Black-headed Sibia |
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| Snowy-browed Flycatcher |
Bom drove us back to Dalat and the hotel. We’ll meet up for dinner and list at 6:30. It occurred to me that not everyone may know what the list is. On birding trips there is typically a detailed list of all of the possible birds that you may see. Each night the list is reviewed and ticks made against what we’ve seen that day. There is also a mammal section for this trip.
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| Remarkable musician topiary in one rotary in Dalat |
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| We just asked for chocolate ice cream but it involved a most elaborate production! |
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