So I'm in Cambodia now

Cambodian Tailorbird- more about these little guys below

In mid-February, the powers that be decided that it made sense to send me to Cambodia for a work trip ("mission", in the unnecessarily lofty terminology of international development organizations), with less than two weeks' advance notice. What ensued was a flurry of absolute last-minute preparations: getting visas, figuring out flights and hotels, and figuring out what it even means to do work trips in an ongoing pandemic. Oh, and of course figuring out how and when I was going to go birding, and what birds Cambodia even has. 

I arrived in Phnom Penh last Wednesday after an exhausting overnight flight from Manila by way of Singapore. I've been working every day since then, and doing my best to explore the city and its birdlife in my limited free time. Phnom Penh is a mixed bag: on the one hand, it's a beautiful city, located at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers with shiny Buddhist temples scattered throughout the city and in general some really fascinating architecture. It's also pretty birdy despite being a big city, although maybe my standards are just incredibly low coming from Manila. On the other hand, it's damn hot: 80 degrees around sunrise and getting into the 90s by mid-morning, and absurdly humid to boot. Walking outside from my air-conditioned hotel feels like walking into a wall, and I have to wait for a solid 20 minutes after I get outside for my camera and binoculars to be done fogging up. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm looking forward to being in the nice, cool weather of the Philippines.

I was working all day my first couple of days here with time only to see some birds from the side of the road while doing fieldwork or walk around the garden of my hotel (although I still managed to get two lifers, Streak-eared Bulbul and Red-breasted Parakeet). On Friday morning I walked down the road to Wat Botum Park, where a fruiting fig tree was attracting a huge swarm of mostly common birds: Common Myna, Oriental Magpie Robin, Asian Koel, Streak-eared Bulbul, Yellow-vented Bulbul, White-shouldered and Black-collared Starling, and a migratory Asian Brown Flycatcher. 

Coppersmith Barbet missing an eye

Female Asian Koel- much more common than they are in the Philippines, and just as noisy!

White-shouldered Starlings

Common Myna, utter trash birds in Phnom Penh

Streak-eared Bulbul, my first and arguably worst lifer of the trip

The streets of downtown Phnom Penh

On Saturday I had a half day off, so I went to visit Wat Pich Mkot, a site that had a lot of my target birds according to eBird and which I knew absolutely nothing else about. Among other things I wasn't sure how to get there, as it was on the other side of the Mekong, which has very few bridges going across it. Google told me I needed to take a ferry, but I had no idea how regular they were. Fearing I'd have to sit and wait on the riverbank for an hour, I left my hotel at 5AM, over an hour before sunrise, taking a Grab to the ferry port. As it turns out, crossing the Mekong is a routine affair in Phnom Penh and all I had to do was walk right onto the ferry amidst the stream of motorbikes, paying 500 riels (about 12 cents). The ferry departed about 30 seconds after I got on it and I was soon on the other side of the river, where Wat Pich Mkot was less than 10 minutes away on the back of a motorbike. Instead of arriving late, as I'd feared, I actually just had to sit around twiddling my thumbs for another half hour until the sun rose.

As it turns out, Wat Pich Mkot is a Buddhist temple complex (wat means "temple" in Khmer), where the monks have been planting trees for the last few decades. My main target was Cambodian Tailorbird, a tiny little bird found in the Mekong floodplain immediately around Phnom Penh and nowhere else in the world. Despite being in one of the biggest cities in Southeast Asia they were only discovered in 2009, which I can only imagine was deeply embarrassing to the ornithology community. Making it even more embarrassing, it turns out that they're stupidly common in the right habitat: right before sunrise I had at least 3 Cambodian Tailorbirds singing loudly right over my head. 

Cambodian Tailorbird! One of only two Cambodian endemics

As the sun rose, I found myself surrounded by a dawn chorus of unfamiliar birds: one downside about the last-minute scheduling of my trip was that I had no time whatsoever to study birds or bird calls, so I was essentially flying blind with only my prior knowledge of Philippine birds to guide me. Thankfully, as if by divine intervention, a British guy suddenly pulled up beside me in a motorcycle, brandishing his binoculars. This turned out to Jonathan Eames, a Phnom Penh-based birder and conservationist and one of the original discoverers of Cambodian Tailorbird. He was nice enough to show me around the temple complex and the various birding spots, and to put up with all my ignorant questions about Cambodian birds.

And there were lots of Cambodian birds in fact- I managed to add things like Greater Coucal, Common Iora, Two-barred Warbler, Ashy Drongo, Ashy Minvet, Ashy Tailorbird (lots of ashy birds now that I think about it), White-rumped Shama, and Pin-striped Tit-babbler to my Cambodia list, and more importantly got lots of lifers besides the tailorbird: a calling Pale-legged Leaf Warbler, a flyover Black-winged Cuckooshrike, a flock of Abbott's Babblers, a skulking Green-billed Malkoha, and a skittish White-rumped Munia. The best bird of the day besides the tailorbird was a briefly seen (and self-found!) Yellow-rumped Flycatcher, an uncommon migrant in Cambodia and very much a lifer for me. Unfortunately the photo ops were generally pretty difficult, with bad light and shy birds- so at least some things were similar to the Philippines!

Streak-eared Bulbul

The Yellow-vented Bulbuls in Cambodia look and sound quite different from the ones in the Philippines (and indeed, the species will probably be split at some point in the future), which is the only thing that makes them interesting.

Greater Coucals are pleasingly common and vocal around Phnom Penh

Common Pierrot

On Monday morning I had a little bit of time before work so I decided to return to the temple, partly because I'd missed a number of regular birds there and partly because (selfishly) I wanted to be able to self-find some of my lifers from the earlier visit. This proved to be an excellent idea as it turned out to be much birdier on my second visit; I managed to see nearly 50 species despite being a total Cambodia neophyte and still unfamiliar with half of the bird calls I was hearing. I'm sure it would have been even more successful for a proper Cambodian birder, but I still got to add lots more birds to my Cambodia list.

The sunrise ferry trip across the Mekong

The morning started with lots of tailorbirds: both Cambodian Tailorbirds and Common Tailorbirds were calling noisily, joined by a single Ashy Tailorbird (unbelievably, there are actually 4 species of Orthotomus tailorbirds in the Phnom Penh region, with Dark-necked Tailorbird finishing out the quartet). I was finally able to get satisfactory pictures of Cambodian Tailorbird, which was very satisfying: I love tiny birds and I love endemics, so this was really one of my top 10 targets for the country.

Cambodian Tailorbird

Tailorbirds look weird from below

   

Common Tailorbirds occupy the same habitat as Cambodian Tailorbirds and are about as numerous, but are surprisingly easy to tell apart by appearance and voice

With the tailorbird photographed, I could move on to the other good birds around me: Ashy Drongos, Black-winged Cuckooshrikes and a lone Hair-crested Drongo fluttering above me hawking insects, a trio of Plain Prinias chasing each other around screaming, Common Ioras singing from the treetops, and many tiny and identical Phylloscopus warblers flitting around in the trees: Two-barred Warblers, Dusky Warblers, Pale-legged Leaf Warblers, and a lone Radde's Warbler, which was a lifer for me. My personal favorite was the pair of huge Green-billed Malkohas mostly skulking around in thick branches but occasionally showing themselves. An extra lifer was a beautiful Black Baza that flew over being chased by Ashy Drongos.

Green-billed Malkohas are definitely a good addition to any morning of birding

Plain Prinias are a common (and angry) presence in open areas throughout mainland Southeast Asia

Common Ioras are, well, common throughout Southeast Asia but I'm not going to complain too much about pretty birds with great songs

Changeable Lizard devouring a dragonfly

Plains Cupid

Scarlet Basker

Someone on iNaturalist tentatively IDed these seed bugs as Metochus hainanensis, which would be the first iNaturalist record for Southeast Asia- but who knows

The best birding of the day was inside the temple forest, which holds some good birds despite being mostly replanted and home to several feral cats. Multiple mixed flocks passed by me, mostly including Black-naped Monarchs, Malaysian Pied Fantails, and Abbott's Babblers but also with a single beautiful male Hainan Blue Flycatcher. My favorite lifer of the day was a gorgeous White-throated Rock Thrush that sat still on a high branch looking at me while I took pictures. 

As Cyornis flycatchers go, Hainan Blue Flycatchers are definitely among the better ones 

Abbott's Babblers are fairly common but very skulky, making photos difficult

White-throated Rock Thrush was definitely my favorite lifer of the day

It's almost criminal that Olive-backed Sunbirds in mainland Asia are considered conspecific with the birds in the Philippines, considering how different they look

Sunbirds are mostly nectar eaters, but not above stealing bugs from spiderwebs

It turns out Eurasian Hoopoes are pretty common in Cambodia, but I will absolutely never get tired of seeing them

Asian Brown Flycatchers are another common (and extremely boring) migrant

Spotted Doves are always common of course

Some kind of nice geometrid moth (Acropteris sp.)

Tailless Line Blue

Common Tiger

I finished up after a couple hours of birding as the sun was getting higher in the sky and it was starting to become intolerably hot. I've had good luck so far in Phnom Penh finding most of my target birds, with 20 lifers as of today without even visiting any of the actual birding hotspots. Hopefully my luck continues!

NOTE: Yes, I'm bringing this blog back after almost 2 years of radio silence. Mostly this is because the world is opening up again, little by little, and I'm birding in more interesting places, and a blog seems like a better spot for it than just Facebook posts. Hopefully there's some interest once more! Oh, and for those not connected to me on social media, I've left the US and now live in the Philippines once again. So there's that.