We couldn’t get very close, but the tree on the horizon was FULL of darters — and so were most of the surrounding trees in this area of Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Cambodia.
One of our reasons for including Cambodia on our trip home was the opportunity to bird watch in SE Asia, and we have to admit that thus far we have had mixed results.
We have been greatly surprised by the lack of birds to be spotted as we casually walk around through parks and temples. Either there are very few, or we hear some but they are so small and elusive amongst the lush greenery that we can’t see them. (It doesn’t help that when we DO spot one, we have difficulty identifying it because our Cambodian bird app is not very intuitive!).
On the other hand, we saw great flocks of birds when we went on a birding trip on Tonle Sap lake, the largest freshwater lake in SE Asia. It is just the beginning of the dry season here, and large flocks of pelicans, storks, and darters are just beginning to arrive to nest.
Our birding boat.
Our birding trip took four of us out on a small boat down the highways and byways of the wetlands of Tonle Sap to the bird sanctuary. For conservation reasons, you aren’t allowed to get very close to the nest birds, but we were able to climb high up into a bird hide and see hundreds of pelicans and darters clustered in the trees that are peaking out of the water, which is still relatively high. As the dry season progresses, the water level will drop and the lake will shrink, but there will still be enough aquatic life to sustain thousands of birds.
This is the ladder that goes up to the bird hide.
Our great joy while on the birding tour was the spotting (unaided by our guide!) of a Greater Adjutant Stork – a giant of a bird that stands nearly 5 feet high and has a large yellow wattle hanging from his neck. Unfortunately, he was far enough away that our cameras couldn’t do justice to the picture, so he will live on in our memory but not in our photo album! From the bird hide we also had great looks through a spotting scope at the Lesser Adjutant, a stork who stands a mere 3 1/2 – 4 feet high! Other birds spotted on the trip included: Black Drongo, Blue-tailed Bee-eater, Greater Coucal, Asian Openbill Stork, Streak-eared Bulbul, Common Kingfisher, Chinese Pond Heron, White-vented Myna, Indian Roller, Large-billed Crow, Spotted-billed Pelican, Grey Heron, Asian Palm Swift, Green-billed Malkoha, Peaceful Dove, Also saw the vacant nests of the Baya Weaver and heard the Dark-necked Tailorbird.
And then there are the bats of Battambang. We hesitate to include them in a blog about birding, since they are mammals, but sometimes you have to bend the rules!
We spent four nights in Battambang, a 4-hour bus ride from Siem Reap, and one of our “must do” items was to see the bats come out of their cave at dusk. So we rented a scooter and headed toward the limestome outcrop that houses a Buddhist Temple, a memorial to the Cambodians killed during the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, and caves. (see next blog)
We weren’t sure exactly where to go to see the bats emerge from the caves, but around 5 p.m. it became quite clear that folks were gathering in one particular place at the base of the limestone outcrop. We found a bench to sit on and waited. 5:15 pm, no bats. 5:22 pm, no bats. 5:23, hundreds, then thousands of bats pouring out of a large opening in the limestone cliff in a river of flapping that twisted and turned as the bats headed east. We figured that we could look up and see over 1000 bats in the blink of an eye, and the amazing thing is that this river of bats continued for more than 20 minutes!
It was a sight so worth seeing that we went back again a second night and watched a smaller stream come out from a different cave on the opposite side of the limestone outcrop. These ones headed west, giving a great photo opportunity of bats against the sunset sky. Truly an experience to be remembered.
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