Thailand; Day 15 - Pak Thale

   After successfully seeing the Spoon-billed Sandpiper the previous evening, the pressure was off for our morning birding in the Pak Thale salt pans. And it truly was a magnificent spectacle with thousands of wading birds on offer of a wider variety of species. It did not take us too long to relocate one Spoon-billed Sandpiper but it was again quite distant and we never saw it any closer to us. Through the scope the views were still good, but it was a shame we did not see an individual closer.

  Sifting through the throngs of other waders we eventually managed to suss out our next target, with Nordmanns Greenshank proving quite common once we had worked out how to separate them confidently from Common Greenshank. Asiatic Dowitcher was another species we wanted to see having seen a few the previous evening, and we were treated to a large number of flybys with mixed flocks of Black-tailed Godwits. Great Knot was another eastern species that was very common, as was Red-necked Stint. We were only able to pick out two Long-toed Stint though among the masses, and these were not close.

  In the afternoon we had booked to go on a boat trip with local bird guide Mr Daeng to a sandbar further out at the edge of the mangroves, where we hoped to find a couple of new species of plover as well as an Egret species. Sadly though we missed out on most of our targets, although not for a lack of trying, with a good few hours spent checking the birds on the beaches without success. It was tough going but still enjoyable, with the plovers proving especially tricky to decipher.

  In the end we saw many individuals of Malaysian Plover, one of our targets, and occasionally they were confiding. We saw a few females as well, which were surprisingly striking once we actually saw them. Sadly though, the White-faced Plover we were searching for did not materialise, despite our best efforts and searching through the birds present for an extended time period. The birding was generally good, and we enjoyed other lifers with Collared Kingfisher and a summer plumage Javan Pond Heron.

  What this did mean however was that our entire afternoon was spent on this activity. But this was just as well, as the sun took its tole on us and our evening meal was chaotic affair, meaning we returned home late and exhausted.