Pajareo sin fronteras

  You'll never believe what can be found in downtown Phnom Penh... With my whirlwind introduction to Cambodia I managed to see most of the Phnom Penh specialty birds in the first few days of birding. However, I still had a couple more days there before leaving for Siem Reap, where I am now. Monday work didn't start until mid-morning, which meant I had time to head down to the southern outskirts of Phnom Penh where there are still a few areas of remaining wetlands.  The wetland areas, with the city slowly but surely encroaching from the north; just behind me was an enormous mall being built. I say "remaining" because they're being filled in and developed at a blinding rate, part of the ongoing building boom in Cambodia financed by outside investment, mostly from China. On the one hand I'm enough of an economist to appreciate that it does genuinely translate into higher incomes and better standards of living (geopolitical concerns aside). On the other hand, fil...

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 sc...