Cambodia Interlude

 

After my excellent trip to Palawan with family and friends (and Nikki), I spent a week in Manila for a work trip where I did absolutely no birding besides peering out my hotel room window or walking around government offices in order to do my daily eBird lists. I did have plans to visit a few spots but a passing typhoon meant that wasn't feasible. 

Travel wasn't over with that however: the following week I had yet another work trip, this one to Cambodia. Travel was somewhat interrupted by the typhoon passing over Manila, so I ended up having to get re-booked on an alternate flight through Hong Kong with a 45-minute connection. Myself and other transferring passengers were marched through the airport at a half-sprint by a harried-looking Cathay Pacific employee, but finally managed to make it to the flight before it departed. Arrival to Cambodia was further delayed as I found out too late I would need to pay for my arrival visa in US dollars, which I didn't have, and had to figure out how to withdraw. I was exhausted by the time I got to my hotel, although one highlight of the journey was the airplane view of the Mekong as we descended to Phnom Penh.

The Mekong from my plane- definitely one of the greatest rivers on the planet.

This was my second time in the country, and a much more abbreviated visit than my previous one, where I got to squeeze in several birding trips. For my November visit I didn't really have the time or flexibility for any birding adventures, so I was mostly restricted to quick mornings of birding around Phnom Penh before and after work. Thankfully my hotel had some nice gardens on its grounds, so I was able to walk around a few times and get the usual Cambodian trash birds like Common Tailorbird, Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker, Oriental Magpie Robin, Streak-eared Bulbuls, and Common Mynas. An Ashy Drongo and a Red-breasted Parakeet that made quick stops by were nice additions to my hotel list.

Oriental Magpie-Robin

Red-breasted Parakeet

Ashy Drongo- this one of the migratory "white-faced" subspecies group

Work finished a bit early one afternoon so I decided to walk from my office to the famous Wat Phnom temple, the namesake of Phnom Penh. As I'd hoped, the resident population of feral Writhed Hornbills and Great Hornbills was hanging around the temple, gorging themselves on palm fruits and ignoring the gawping tourists below them. I only had my binoculars with me, but I was able to take a few digibinned pictures for posterity since it's a really spectacular sight. Apparently the hornbills escaped from some local rich guy's private collection, and are allowed to roam around the city because their former owner is very powerful and not to be trifled with. Hopefully I eventually see both species in the wild, but for now I'll enjoy watching them perched on lamp posts and flying over downtown traffic.

Writhed Hornbills

Great Hornbill on a very normal perch

My one free day was Saturday, November 5 when I had the full day to myself. I had no transportation of my own and didn't want to figure out how to negotiate car rental in a new country, so I settled for a morning of birding in Wat Arey Khset, the go-to spot for migratory birds around Phnom Penh. It's a fairly unassuming little temple on the far side of the Mekong, with just a few pagodas and a planted forest, but for whatever reason it's a huge bird magnet, with some eye-popping rarity records. 

I didn't have any rarities that morning (although I barely missed one- more on that in a bit), but it was a still a nice morning of birding where I could connect with the mainland Southeast Asian birds I hadn't seen since my last time in Cambodia. It started off with a Square-tailed Drongo-cuckoo perched shockingly close to me on a telephone wire (!), after which I had a few female Yellow-rumped Flycatchers and some Cambodian Tailorbirds, none of which perched nicely for a photo. Migratory Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers were singing throughout the mini-forest, and there were other nice migrants like Taiga Flycatchers and Forest Wagtails. There were lots and lots of Phylloscopus leaf-warblers darting around in the treetops, reminding me that I know absolutely nothing about phyllosc ID outside the Philippines; the only ones I confidently IDed were Arctic Warbler and Two-barred Warbler.

Square-tailed Drongo-cuckoo

Cambodian Tailorbird

Female Yellow-rumped Flycatcher; much less interesting than the male...

Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher

Taiga Flycatcher

Forest Wagtail

Arctic Warbler

I did, surprisingly enough, get two lifers that morning: a spectacular Chestnut-winged Cuckoo that flew over me and into the treetops before I could get a picture, and a few Blyth's Paradise Flycatchers that I had somehow managed to miss on my last visit. A female Siberian Blue Robin was a nice addition to my Phnom Penh list. Annoyingly enough I managed to narrowly miss out on what would have been the best bird of the day: a Siberian Thrush seen by Laurie, another birder who was there at the same time as me. I rushed to where she had seen it as soon as she sent the message to the local birder chat, but it had already flown, never to be seen again. I got much better views of some of the local residents like White-rumped Shama, Abbott's Babbler, Common Tailorbird, and Malaysian Pied Fantail.

Female Blyth's Paradise Flycatcher

Common Tailorbird

Malaysian Pied Fantail

Abbott's Babbler

Female White-rumped Shama

It was overall a nice but not spectacular morning, and I was a little disappointed at the lack of good photo opportunities. I probably should have gone out to look for the local Rain Quails that were displaying outside of Phnom Penh in the afternoon, but it would have been a long, expensive taxi ride and I was tired after a busy week of work and the travel before that. That was the last of my birding in Cambodia, though I had some quick birding in Singapore the next day- but that's for my next post.