The Science of Birds - From the Field: Birds and Birding in Vietnam and Cambodia

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Recorded in a hotel room in China, Ivan shares his recent birding and travel experiences in the countries of Vietnam and Cambodia. ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

If you listened to the last episode, you know that I'm on this big trip through Asia, starting in Vietnam, then going to Cambodia, China, and so on. Well, right now, I am in China. I'm in a town called Bar-Cam, which is in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, one of them anyway, way up in the mountains on the Tibetan Plateau. I think I'm at about 8,000 feet in terms of elevation right now. I'm sitting in a nice hotel room and I finally carved out a little time to record the next podcast episode. So this is another From the Field episode.

I'm just doing this from an outline. I don't have a script. I'm doing it again in a hotel room, which is less than ideal, but this is the only way I can do it while I'm traveling. It's a big trip and so I wanted to keep the podcast rolling and so here we are in Barcam China. But the episode that I'm going to be presenting to you is not about China. We're going to roll back a little bit, and I'm going to talk to you about my experiences in Vietnam and Cambodia, about the birds in those places as well as my experiences of those birds. And then later, hopefully, I'll do an episode on my experiences with the birds in China, because so far they've been pretty amazing.

But Vietnam and Cambodia were awesome as well. let's go ahead and talk about them. So as an introduction, let's talk about the Indo-Malayan biogeographic realm. Now I did an episode way back in the day about biogeographic realms. I can't remember right now what episode number that was. But basically, ecologists, scientists have divided the world into eight biogeographic realms. And each of these has had a long shared evolutionary history in terms of the animals and plants living in each region. And so each of these biogeographic regions has its own sort of flavor, its own sort of character from a human perspective.

And so Vietnam and Cambodia are in the Indo-Malayan biogeographic realm, and that includes India and Southeast Asia and a large part of the Indonesian archipelago. But if we want to get a little more granular, we can break the Indo-Malayan biogeographic realm into three small, regions, one of which is Indochina, and that's the one that includes Vietnam and Cambodia. And that's basically mainland Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, as well as parts of southern China. Now, this episode is going to be, well, of course, from my perspective, but I'm going to be

talking to you maybe as though you're someone from North America. The majority of my listeners are from North America, the U.S. or Canada, although I do have people listening from around the world. So forgive me if you live in Southeast Asia and all of this is just like stuff you see in your backyard, but I'm going to be talking about it as though it's pretty unusual for most of us that live in North America or in Europe or even Australia or South America, anywhere that's not Southeast Asia. Why travel to Vietnam and Cambodia? What is waiting for you there that is so worth the time and effort. Well, of course, because it's a unique biogeographic realm, and if you've never been there, you're going to see lots of things that are

just not like what you have back home. Major groups of animals and plants are going to be wildly different from what you're used to. Southeast Asia is the home of tigers and elephants and all kinds of interesting primates, special reptiles, insects, and of course lots of amazing birds. There are over 1,200 bird species found in Southeast Asia, and there are some special groups that you would find, you're basically only going to find, if you go to Southeast Asia. These aren't restricted just to Vietnam and Cambodia. Of course, birds don't actually recognize political boundaries, so many of these groups overlap these countries or are found in multiple countries.

But just to name a few of the bird groups that are special to Southeast, Asia, just to kind of highlight some of these, there are the Asian barbits in the family Megalimidae, and maybe of those guys, there's probably a dozen or so found in Vietnam and Cambodia. And these are chunky, stout-bodied birds with big bills, and they're generally really colorful birds. They're sort of related to toucans, so they've kind of got that kind of vibe going on, although they're a bit smaller in body size. Then there are the pittas, which are ground-dwelling birds that run around on the forest floor that are wildly colorful and very secretive so even though they're super colorful it's really hard to find them and see them you hear them

much more than you see them there are about eight species of those in vietnam and cambodia then we have the broadbills the ones in the family you're a limadie those are exclusively found in southeast asia almost broad bills well they have broad bills and they are again wildly colorful, really cool birds, really charismatic birds. There are the leaf birds in the family chloropsaeity. And the funny thing is, you know, when you're out birding just about anywhere else, and you look up and you see a bird, you go, oh, hey, it's a bird, it's a bird. And you go, oh, nope, it's actually a leaf.

It's just a leaf bird. But when you're in Southeast Asia, you see a leaf bird, you got to specify. It might actually be a real living leaf bird. These are birds that are bright green and they really do look kind of like leaves. they blend into the leaves, even though their faces are pretty colorful. Another group that's special to this region, and one that I really like, is the laughing thrushes. They're in the family, Leothricody. Laughing thrushes are not closely related to the familiar thrushes of Eurasia and North America,

but they have kind of vaguely thrush-sized and shaped bodies, although their bills tend to be a bit more curved, down-curved. Many of them are fairly brightly colored, or at least least strongly patterned. They're social. Many of them are anyway. They hang out in these groups, and they do make really loud racket that sort of sounds, I guess, like laughing. Not like, ha, ha, ha. But, you know, kind of a chattering call song sort of thing. And I just got to stop myself here, because there are other great groups. There are the tree babblers, the scimitar babblers, ground babblers, flower peckers, cup wings, and on and on and on. The point is that when you go to Southeast Asia, there are going to be birds in families that you're basically

not going to see anywhere else. Lots of special birds. But hey, you know, travel has more to it than just going to find interesting birds. Vietnam and Cambodia have really lovely cultures, really interesting histories and wonderful food and wonderful people, and there's just lots of great things to see and do in these countries besides running around in the woods looking at birds. Although that's primarily what I did, and I definitely think that that is a fine activity to do in those countries. So what am I going to do in this episode? I'm going to walk you through my travels in those two countries and highlight some of the birds and the experiences I had along the way. And I hope you find that interesting, giving you a little window into what it's like to do this kind of

travel if you're not familiar with it. Hopefully, by the end of the episode, I will have convinced to you that these are great places to visit and to go birding, and I will have you chomping at the bit to visit them yourselves. Oh, and by the way, Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. You already know what this episode is about, so let's get right into it. My visit to Vietnam and Cambodia was just part of a much larger trip through Asia. But while I was in Vietnam and Cambodia, I was working, I mean, I'm kind of working the whole

time, but I was really working in Vietnam and Cambodia because I was leading a birding tour for my business called Wild Latitudes. So I was in Vietnam for about two weeks, and then I was in Cambodia for about one week. And the whole adventure began in the city of Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon. That is in the southern part of the country. There are two major cities in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City in the South, and Hanoi in the north. I really like Vietnam in general. I've enjoyed my experiences there. And Ho Chi Minh City, you know, if you like cities, I think it's a good one. certainly for food and for coffee. Coffee is like everywhere in Vietnam, which is amazing.

I'm kind of a coffee crazy person. I'm totally addicted and I love it. I love it. I love it. And so, yeah, Vietnam won my heart because, yeah, of that. But again, the food is great and as a vegetarian, I find no limit to the wonderful vegetarian food that is offered in Vietnam. I have eaten excellently all across this entire trip.

And yeah, there are wonderful cultural things, there are museums, and there are pagodas and temples and historic sites to visit related to the Vietnam War. There's lots of cool stuff to see in Vietnam, including Ho Chi Minh City. Oh, and by the way, you can get massages there, like legit massages, professional massages, for very cheap. I mean, at least as of this recording, that may not be true forever, but yeah, I mean, like really good stuff. And you can get haircuts and you can get all kinds of services for relatively cheap and the food is cheap. Everything is still, at least from a North American perspective, pretty inexpensive. So my tour group arrived and we hit the ground running. We had lots to do. We basically spent

the first day or so just checking out Ho Chi Minh City, not doing a lot of birding per se. But then we got into our bus and we headed out and headed north to Katia National Park. and that's where I recorded my last episode, Episode 106. Kat Qian, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right, it's spelled, it's two words, C-A-T-T-I-E-N. It's the largest intact piece of lowland rainforests left in Vietnam, with an area of about 280 square miles, which is about 720 square kilometers. So it's a pretty good size, and it lies just up against the Dong Nye River, and so our explorations of the park were all right on the eastern edge right along the river.

So this is tropical rainforest. It's only about 400 feet in elevation, and it is pretty warm and humid, and it did rain quite a bit off and on. And there were some biting insects. They weren't too bad most of the time, but there were leeches. And I personally had never really experienced leeches, and this time, yeah, I got quite a few of them on me. And, you know, it's a little disconcerting when you find one on you, whether it's, you know, just, just crawling around on you, whether it's firmly attached and full of blood. But yeah, they, I think they must inject an anticoagulant because you pull the leach off and then your little wound bleeds for quite a long time afterwards. And you might discover blood on your pants or on your shower towel or whatever later on.

So anyway, Cat Tien National Park, we were there for several days, and it was awesome. We basically birded up and down this kind of main road through the park. The forest there that we were experiencing was some of it was secondary, so meaning it had been cut and then had regrown over the course of decades. But some of it that we were walking through certainly felt like primary forest or much older forest anyway. and that was really cool. You know, that's always the best thing, right? This sort of relatively untouched forest. It has the biggest trees and the most diversity of plants and animals.

So we got to experience that. And, you know, the birding was really good sometimes and really quieted others. And that's a theme that has occurred, especially in Vietnam and Cambodia, across this trip, where it's kind of boom and bust. You get these moments, maybe even an hour or so of just like, birds, birds, birds, and there's all these different species, and they're just going nuts, and you don't know which way to look, and it's really exciting. And then you go out for, you know, maybe even almost into the same place the next morning and nothing, you know, pretty much nothing.

And some of that has to do with birds traveling around in mixed species flocks. That's another topic that I did an entire podcast episode on way back, which you can dig through the podcast and find that, mixed species flocks. That's a phenomenon in the tropics, as well as in the more northern latitudes, kind of various places around the world. So that explains some of the boom and bust. So we would walk around and bird as a group, and we had our local guide, our local Vietnamese guide, which who, of course, was the real expert. You know, I'm there, and I can identify a lot of birds, and I can, even if I don't know the exact species, I know what general type of bird it is, like, oh, I know that's a drongo, or I know that's a barbett, and I can narrow it down pretty quickly.

But especially when it comes to the calls and the songs, you know, it takes years and years to develop that knowledge. So our local guides are essential. So we had a really great one in Vietnam, and he helped us get on the birds. But interestingly, and this is just a sort of a thing that happens in birding, right, is that we hear many more birds than we see. And sometimes that can be really frustrating. Because, for example, there's something like a barbellied pitta, which is a beautiful, wonderful bird that's highly sought after. It's on the cover of the Birds of Vietnam book that I have, the first edition of that book. And the bird was like right there in the forest, right in front of us, right in front of our group, and everyone was being very quiet, and the bird was right there

calling, and we didn't see it. Like, I got like a little tiny glimpse of it. and then it was gone. So, you know, that's kind of what happens sometimes, especially in forest birding in the tropics. Many of these species are very secretive, and you're only going to hear them, or you might get a little fleeting glimpse. And that is just going to have to be enough sometimes. But of course, it all, it's all worthwhile because other times you get amazing looks of birds very close by, and you have these great experiences. So, you know, it's all good. So some of the more common birds we had in that national park were drongos all throughout vietnam and cambodia drongos became almost kind of a running gag because you know you need to get the kind of baseline

or most common birds you need to get those figured out early on because you don't want to just freak out every time you see those common birds because they're they're all over and they're going to distract you and drongos are very good at distracting you making you think it's some new species when it's oh yes Yeah, it's another ashy drongo, and we've seen about 800 of those already. Now, don't get me wrong, drongos are awesome birds, they're cool, they're charismatic, they're amazing vocalists, and they have a lot going on, a lot of going for them. But they're fairly common, at least some of the species. And then there are bull bulls.

There are several different species of bull bull, some of which are, you know, kind of drab-looking and not super exciting, and others that are a little more jazzy colored and patterned. And then barbets, which I've mentioned a couple times, barbits are interesting because, because they tend to perch way up in the tops of trees or up in the canopy. And even though they're very beautiful and they're not super small, it's really hard to see them because they're so far up in the canopy. But you hear them all the time and they've got these kind of simple single note or simple trill-like calls and songs that they just kind of repeat over and over all the time.

So you're almost always hearing one species of barbid or another, one of the more common ones that we heard across both Vietnam and parts of Cambodia was the Indo-Chinese barbid. Also in Cat Tien, we had a couple other highlights. We had the green pea fowl, which is the closest relative of the Indian pea fowl, which most of us know as the peacock. But the green pea fowl is, well, it's a bit more green and stunningly beautiful, like the Indian pea fowl.

And we got good looks at that bird, which is really amazing. That's very much a Southeast Asian species. And then we had really good experiences with a couple different broadbills. There's the black and red broadbill, and we got an amazing looks at that bird. It's got a big head, big bill,

big broad bill, and these birds are often in pairs, and that's exactly what we saw. And they make really great vocalizations. And we also saw the banded broadbill. And I encourage you to check out pictures of these birds because, yeah, They're stunningly beautiful.

One thing that's sort of characteristic of Vietnam especially is the illegal capture and trade of birds. Birds are kept in cages as songbirds and sold, and that's really unfortunate. That's really caused the decline of many species. So one of the things that we could do while birding in Vietnam would be to go to these private bird hides or blinds, where some dude has set up a blind where you could sit comfortably and look through a little hole and see these birds come in that are being baited with mealworms or whatever. And then you get really close looks and you get your lovely pictures and it seems all super great. And, you know, in other parts of the world, it is pretty great.

I mean, sometimes that's really the best way to see some of these birds. And probably we could argue the ethics of that up and down, left and right. but in Vietnam there's a real problem which is poaching. So you've got this hide where someone is baiting birds and they're coming in and the birders are happy and the bird photographers are happy. But then those guys leave the birders and bird photographers and guess who comes in later sneaks in to capture the birds, the poachers. So talking with our local guide, we decided that we are definitely not going to go to any

of those blinds or hides. I mean, our local guy just doesn't even do that. we don't want to support that sort of mechanism or phenomenon of birds being captured that way. So that means we just have to kind of do it, you know, cowboy style and get out there and see the birds that we see and not see the birds that we don't see. And, you know, luckily the people that travel with me totally get that and they totally are happy with that. You know, my birding tour company, we don't really, we don't really market or try to attract people who are just super hardcore listers who just really have to see the bird at all costs.

We just really want people to have a good time and see some cool birds and, oh, we saw some great ones and we missed some others and, hey, who cares, it's fine. We're having a good time. We're seeing other wildlife and learning about plants and culture and all that stuff. Yeah, and then speaking of all that other stuff, Katien National Park has some other really neat non-avian attractions. One of the most exciting things, in my opinion, is the gibbons, the golden-cheeked gibbons, or also known as buff-cheeked gibbons. These are great apes, and they're really charismatic. They

brachiate through the trees, which means they swing, you know, they hang under the branches and swing arm-to-arm, or they're super long arms, moving gracefully among the branches, very athletically jumping from one tree to the next. And early in the morning, they make these really loud territorial calls. It's super impressive. And when you hear it, you know you're not in Kansas anymore. You are in Southeast Asia. You are in Vietnam. And I actually got a recording of some gibbons making this vocalization.

So I actually have this microphone set up that I brought with me on this trip to try to get some bird sounds and other interesting sounds. So here are some golden-cheeked gibbons vocalizing. And bonus, the bird that you hear the loudest in the foreground is Abbott's babbler, which is a really secretive forest bird and we got the little glimpses of it and we could hear it. So this should be an interesting recording. So a couple other primates that we saw in the National Park were black-shanked Duke Langers, really nice-looking monkey, and long-tailed macaques and pig-tailed macaques and I think a couple others. but yeah, it was, yeah, some great primates.

And so, again, that's just really awesome. If you live in North America where we have no primates other than humans, it's pretty exciting to see them in Southeast Asia. We didn't see any of the Asian elephants that are in the park. There are some. There's a small herd there. But we did see a really large mammal, a charismatic megafauna mammal, and that is the Gaur, G-A-U-R.

Now, at first glance, you see a gower or a herd of them, you go, oh, just a bunch of cows. Because these are members of the bovody family, the cow family. But these guys are the biggest members, the biggest wild bovids in the world. And so the males are just this like massive tank of an animal, which is ridiculous looking with big horns and just a hulking huge body. And these things are pretty rare in Asia today. So it was really special to see herds of Gower in Katchian National Park. Another major highlight. in terms of non-avian wildlife was seeing an Indo-Chinese

flying dragon. Now, me being a, you know, a herp person as well as a birder, I really have always wanted to see some of these species that, quote-unquote, fly. From, you know, the flying frogs, flying snakes, flying dragons, which are lizards. And sure enough, we saw one.

It was really kind of small, just imagine a little small, skinny lizard. But we watched that little sucker jump from one tree to the next and he spread his ribs. he has these long rib bones that lay flat against his sides normally when he's just hanging out on a tree

but then he or she when the lizard jumps to another tree it spreads its ribs and their skin stretched between the ribs creating sort of wings and the lizard glides down to the next tree and by golly we saw one do that

and it was just so cool and I felt so lucky to see that so yeah Cat Tien really delivered it's a great national park It's, you know, a biological treasure, a wonderful thing that it still exists. We had a great time there. So, you know, we got back on the little ferry. You go back across the muddy river, the Dongnai to get back to our bus.

We got on the bus. And we headed further north. So our further experiences in Vietnam were in Vietnam. quite different ecosystems. So not in the tropical lowland rainforest anymore. We started climbing up an elevation into what is called montane rainforest. So still really wet and green, but further up an elevation, cooler, with a different mixture of plants and yes, a different mixture of animals and birds. Once you get high enough, you actually have a bunch of coniferous trees like pines. The most common that you see is the Kassi pine, which is K-H-A-S-I, Pinus Kessia.

And that is a native pine in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, but they also grow it in plantations. So you see these big areas full of nothing but Kasi pine. But where the forest has been left intact, there's a really big mixture of evergreen trees and some deciduous trees, trubs, just amazing wealth of plant diversity. So we spent basically the rest of our time in Vietnam in this highland area called the Dallat Plateau, D-A-L-A-T. Dalat is a city. It used to be an old, during the French colonial period, it was what was called a hill station, sort of this retreat away from the tropical heat of the lowlands. But that has grown into a very large, I would say, bustling city.

It's kind of surprising you get up there and there's this major city going on. And, you know, kind of like Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, I visited Hanoi too. I liked a lot. It's very busy. I didn't actually mention this earlier, but the cities in Vietnam are, well, they're just, they're very busy. And there are lots of cars, but there are actually many, many more motorbikes. Everybody's got a little moped or a motorbike, and they're just like thousands and thousands of them. And they're just flowing through the streets just constantly. And getting across the street in Vietnam is an art form. So it takes a little bit of practice to safely cross the street.

You just have to be determined and confident and very steady. Keep an even pace and just walk and everything kind of just flows around you. The motorbikes just flow around you. Anyway, yeah, so I should have mentioned that, but there's lots of little horns honking and cars moving and there really aren't all that many red lights and crosswalks. And even when there are crosswalks, you kind of just take matters into your own hands. So yeah, so now we're in DeLot. and Delat is at 4,800 feet.

Remember, Katian was about 400 feet, so very low elevation. Now we're almost to 5,000 feet. And we're still within the tropics, so Delat at this high elevation has what's described as almost like an eternal springtime. The temperatures there tend to be mild year-round, and the weather is just kind of nice. So it's actually a popular vacation destination for Vietnamese people.

It can be very busy at different times a year, during holidays and things. And it's also sort of a, I want to say breadbasket, but it's a really hot spot for agriculture, particularly for growing flowers, but also for vegetables. And they have just like endless greenhouses.

If you have a vantage point looking out over the sort of suburbs of the city and the surrounding areas, it's just like a sea of greenhouses. It's crazy. So we had a hotel kind of in central Delotte, and we went out for, we had like three full days and we went out for a morning activity and then we went out for an

afternoon activity and in between we enjoyed really good food of course and i of course drank copious volumes of coffee and there might even have been a little bit of beer in there somewhere and good times were had by all so we would go out to a park or kind of a natural area and find these patches of relatively intact forest and just enjoy the birds out there and so a lot of the same families of birds are found there, things like laughing thrushes and barbets and all that stuff, but you find different species at these different elevations. So it's really neat to, you know, compare and contrast between the low and high elevation areas. If you hear a little background noise, that's because again, I'm in a hotel and there's some people banging around occasionally.

So yeah, we had lots of fun birding outings at different elevations. On one morning, we went up to Mount Langbion, which is the highest peak, which is around 7,000. feet in elevation. And one of our target birds there was the collared laughing thrush, which we got, again, it was one of those ones where we got really close to and we got little glimpses of and we heard it very well, but we didn't get really amazing, satisfying looks. But one bird that's one of my favorites in this part of the world is Mrs. Gould's Sunbird. You might remember that I probably mentioned that one in the Sunbird episode I did. Mrs. Gould's Sunbird is just ridiculously colorful and beautiful, and the male has this really long tail. I mean, he's just this

iridescent colors, just lovely. And so most of us in the group got to get a decent look at that bird, which was great. Another of my favorites that we had really good looks at was the silver-eared messia, and that is a type of laughing thrush. We had this one morning we were watching these trees from this great vantage point, this beautiful morning, and all these different bird species were coming and going, and it was really probably one of our best birding experiences in the Delotte area on the Delotte plateau. And the silver-eared messia is this laughing thrush that is mostly green all over with a yellow throat. It's got a black head with a sort of silvery white cheek or ear, sort of the ear patch. And it's got some patches of bright red in the wing and in the

rump. And it's just a really beautiful looking bird. And we had this whole group of them moving through the trees and we got good looks at them with our scopes and our binoculars. And that was just a really satisfying experience because there's a book about the birds of southeast Asia and that bird is on the cover. So, you know, anytime you see the cover bird, it's really exciting. And as a birding guide, you know, it's, I always want my tour participants to see the really great charismatic birds. And it can be really frustrating when we go to find a particular bird and we don't get those satisfying views, but when we get them, yeah, it feels good. It's like high fives all around, everybody's happy, I'm happy, life is good. So eventually,

After all those great birding experiences, it was time to go. It was time to head out and leave Vietnam. We actually took a short flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. We had one more night there to enjoy. Some folks at my urging actually got massages because I was like, hey, guys, this is your last chance to get a cheap, really amazing massage. And thankfully they took me up on it and they thanked me for it. And I was too busy working on stuff to get a massage, but that's fine. And yeah, and then it was time for. for all of us to head to Cambodia, which was what we did the next day. So Cambodia is to the west of Vietnam. If you don't have a mental image, it's kind of a circular-shaped country. Vietnam, I should have pointed out, is kind of this long, skinny, S-shaped country, and we were in the lower part of the S. So Cambodia is to the west, and we flew to Siem-Reep, which is a decent-sized city on the north shore of a very large lake called Tonle Sap.

And, of course, I may be mispronouncing that. It's actually the largest lake in Southeast Asia. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. So we arrive to Seamreep, and we're met by my business partner and friend, Steve. He's going to co-lead this part of the trip with me. Steve has been doing the legwork kind of preparing for our arrival. And so we get there, and we get there kind of late at night. and we settle in, and then the next day we get up early, and where do we go?

We go to Angkor Wat, A-N-G-K-O-R, second word, W-A-T. Now, if you haven't heard of Ancour-W-A-T, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is an archaeological site. It is about a thousand years old, more or less, maybe a little more, actually. And it is one of the most spectacular archaeological sites you can visit on the planet. It's up there with the pyramids and with Machu Picchu in Peru, that sort of thing. It's this vast complex of temples that were initially Hindu, but then converted to Buddhism later on, and they were expanded upon for hundreds of years. And Angkor Wat has this unique

Cambodian architectural style that's just really just beautiful and fascinating. And, you know, if you have, if nothing else, you might have seen the pretty bad movie, um, Tomb Raider, the first one with Angelina Jolie back in like, whatever, 2000. It's got some bits and pieces of some parts of the film that include images from Anchorwat, where you've got these massive trees with the roots growing over the stones because they've been growing there for hundreds of years. Anyway, you know, for somebody from America, it's kind of the reason you go to Cambodia. It's usually the number one reason that someone would go to Cambodia. There are many other reasons to visit Cambodia, but that's kind of a must-do

So we get in little tuck-tucks, which are these like little motorbike-powered sort of rickshaw things where like three or four people can get in this little covered wagon thing and get pulled around by a motorcycle. They're super fun. So our group got split into a number of tuck-tucks and we went to Anchor Watt. But we got there early and our intention was not to immediately go to the archaeological site. We wanted to check out the birds. because the site is protected, there are actually quite a few pretty large trees and the forest is reasonably intact there, and so it attracts lots of birds. One of the most exciting for me was the

oriental pied hornbill. Hornbills, any hornbill species is just awesome. And that one has a special place in my heart because it's actually the one that we used to design the logo for our business for wild latitudes. And I went many years of the first years of the business without actually ever laying eyes on one of the birds in the wild. But, you know, finally I got to see Oriental pied hornbills in the wild. And remember when a bird has the word pied in its name, what that means is it's black and white. It's some combination of black and white, like a pied cow. So there were hornbills and sunbirds and drongos and bull bulls and minas and raptors and all kinds of of good stuff, just within the major walls of the biggest temple at Anchor Wat.

So we did our birding in the morning, and then we kind of let everybody run around and enjoy the ruins on their own. And then I kind of peeled away and just, you know, I checked out the site, and I really appreciated Anchor Wat, and then I took a little extra time to do some more birding, and so that was really fun. But, oh man, let me tell you, it was hot. Cambodia, general, at least for the first few days, was so hot and so humid, and I just had to be like, all right, they were doing this. I'm just going to sweat and sweat and sweat and just tried to manage it and drink lots of water and find shade and just deal. And Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam was at times pretty dang humid as well, but this was next level, man. And I didn't really

emphasize this, but the Delat Plateau in Vietnam, being at about 5,000 feet, was very mild. You know, the temperatures were more like in the 70s in terms of Fahrenheit, and, you know, in the mornings you'd put a sweater on, and it was, you know, really quite pleasant. The sun was intense because we're in the tropics at high elevation, but in mild temperatures. But now in Cambodia, we've got intense sun, like really intense sun, and super hot temperatures. But that's okay. That's what we're doing. So great birding at Anchor Watt, and then the next day, basically, we left town, went to the northeast, way up into some protected areas that were dominated by a different ecosystem, not lowland tropical rainforest and not montane rainforest, but something that is called, one name for it would be the central Indochina dry forests, or the dry dipterocarp forests.

So these, when they're intact, still have pretty good-sized trees and lots of vegetation, but also grasslands mixed in between, sort of the trees are more spread out, a little more open. And unfortunately, that habitat has been massively destroyed across much of Southeast Asia. So we only got to see little sort of pieces of what's left of it in Cambodia. And Cambodia actually has some of the largest tracks of that ecosystem, sort of in eastern and northeastern Cambodia. But yeah, it was really, really enjoyable to go birding in that environment. Sometimes it was kind of quiet, but we did have some really, some highlights.

And one of the biggest highlights in all of Cambodia for us was seeing the white-shouldered ibis. This is one of the two very rare ibises or ibi that you find in Cambodia. The other one is the giant ibis, which we did not see. That one was going to be a bit too difficult to reach. But for the white-shouldered ibis, we had, so instead of a bus, we had five, we had five four-wheel drive vehicles in this part of our journey. And we needed them because the roads were really, really rough. And we went way back in the forest on these rough dirt roads and worked our way back in there. Then we went for a walk. And again, you know, still super hot and humid.

And we met up with this little, this little family of locals that was basically living in the the forest temporarily as they were, you know, sort of, they were working on their rice, harvesting their rice for the season. But they were also there to protect the white-shouldered ibises. So these birds, they're only, I mean, there's only a few hundred, I think, left in the world. And they're dependent on these openings in the forest that historically had small pools of water that were created by large mammals, things like elephants or rhinos. And the birds depended on these sort of gaps in the forest that had, you know, a little bit of maybe grasses and also these pools. And now the birds persist more so in man-made openings in the forest. In any case, this is

basically the one place in the world. You can go to see the white-shouldered ibis. So we got way back in there and we got set up and we got to meet this adorable family, actually a couple families and their little camp and little shy kids that were really cute. And we got there just before sunset because that's when the ibuses come in. They've been out foraging in the area all day and they come in to roost in these tall dead trees. And sure enough, here they came. Dozens of white-shouldered ibises they perched in the tree. We got the scopes on them. We got great looks. High-fives all around. It was awesome. And it took a lot of effort to get there to see those birds. So, you know, I kept reminding everybody like, hey guys, this is not something like almost nobody in the world gets to see this species.

really soak it up, enjoy it, get really good looks, keep going back to the scope and looking and looking and looking because chances are you're never going to see it again. So yeah, so we spent a couple days out in that environment and then we headed back to C.M. Reap. And I did forget to mention actually one of the other sort of major birding sites that we went to on the way out of C.M. Reap was this big preserved area of kind of mostly rice fields, flooded rice fields, but maybe a little bit of, you know, a few little patches of trees and things. And one of the big reasons this area is protected is for a bird called the Bengal Florican, or Bengal Florican. And it is a member of the Bustard family. It's kind of a smaller buster, but again, this is a very rare bird, and it's one of the few places you can see it.

And we did not. We did not see it. It's not really the ideal time of year. And we did see lots of cool birds when we were out in this kind of rice paddy area. Some of the highlights were the blue-tailed bee-eaters and Asian green bee-eaters and Asian woolly neck stork. But man, again, it was just so hot and humid and we, you know, we could only take so much before we had to head out of there. So we couldn't look anymore for the Bengal Florican and maybe at another time of year. It would be a little easier. So anyway, we did that and then we went out to the dry dipter of carp forest, white-shouldered ibis, yada yada, back to see him reap. Then we did our last major birding adventure of this entire trip.

that was to first take our bus for maybe a 45-minute ride and then we got, we got to this dock on the shores of that big lake, Tonle Sap. Now this lake, I don't have numbers in front of me, but this thing is massive. It's like you're not, it's like great lake size. You're not going to see the other side of it when you're standing on the shore. And it's an incredibly dynamic lake. So it expands during the wet season, during the monsoon. The Mekong River, which is to the east, actually gets so much water in it that it basically kind of backs up into this lake and fills up the lake.

So water is flowing into the lake during the monsoon from the Mekong. But then as the dry season comes on, and that's when we were there, we were there at the beginning of the dry season, there's this big change. The lake reverses its flow because the Mekong draws down

because there's less water in it and the flow reverses from the lake, the lake starts to flow outward toward the ocean. I think I got that right. Right. It's either that or the other way around. Anyway, the lake reverses its flow and it also shrinks dramatically. And around the margins of the lake, you have this interesting ecosystem called the Tonle-Sap freshwater swamp forest.

And so it's this vast, vast area of water, but there are all these trees that are coming out of the water and shrubs and things. And so there's just like this infinite maze of channels between all these plants. It's a swamp, a vast swamp. And this entire area, Tonle Sap, this lake and its surroundings, this is a major hotspot of biodiversity. It's one of the most biodiverse parts of the entire planet. And so we get on a boat, we get on this wooden motor boat that's covered,

and it can seat maybe like 20 people. And we go out into the swamp, and it's morning still. And we're birding along the way, pointing out things here and there that we're seeing. It's like, oh, it's, never mind, it's just a drongo. But then again, we're seeing cool, things like Indo-Chinese rollers, brown shrikes, and so on and so forth. But then we go out to what is just this remarkable thing, and that is these floating villages. There are some floating villages on this lake that are literally made of these houses that are floating on like

metal drums or plastic containers, and there are a whole bunch of houses connected together, and they've got floating schools, and there's even temples, Buddhist pagodas. Some of them are on like sort of concrete pillars and kind of permanent, but a lot of them, they're movable. So as the lake changes, because it's dynamic, right, as it expands and contracts, these floating villages can move. They just get towed around by boats and people live their entire lives in these villages. So we take our big boat and we dock at the first floating village and we take a little break and then we get into these much smaller, more like canoe-like boats. They still have motors, but they're very narrow and long. They can each seat about

four people. So then we get into a little group of those things, and then we head further out into the swamp, like way out. And this swamp is just like, I mean, it is just mind-boggling how big. And we didn't even see just a small part of Tonley-Sapp Lake, and it just seemed like it went on forever. So we're going along, going along. The motors are really loud, so it's really hard for us to point out birds that we're seeing. But we get to this endpoint. And this endpoint is this tower. Way out in middle of nowhere in the swamp is this concrete tower. It's like four stories high. When you climb up there, you get to the top, and you're looking out over this vast swamp, and it's a great place to bird from. We saw gray-headed fish eagles, spot-billed pelicans, and several storks, the Asian

open-bill stork, greater adjutant, and a bunch of painted storks. Then a lot of those birds were kind of circling around and the sky riding the thermals. And there were sunbirds and roeers and rollers and babblers and I don't know just all kinds of cool stuff and it was a really great place and I really didn't want to leave but we we eventually had to go and get in our little boats and take our little boats back to one of the floating villages oh and actually what we did is we had lunch in a floating village and it was just it was just amazing it was like something out of a movie this village I got to tell you it was really impressive and we had this great lunch and you know lovely people yeah and then we had to go back to the shore and get in our bus and go back

and basically have one more night and get ready to head out and leave Cambodia. So the next day, most of the group went there separate ways. They flew home, and I flew to China, where I am now. And that was, I don't know, five or six days ago, something like that. All in all, it was a great tour. We had lovely people in the group, and I think everybody had a really good time. We had a couple people get sick, and that was unfortunate, and the sickness kind of lasted a long time. We really try to keep it contained so that didn't spread to the group. And that's a

pretty difficult thing to do. But sometimes in group travel, that's just something that happens. And other than that, the trip went pretty much, you know, without any hitches. We saw lots of great birds and had lots of amazing cultural experiences, met lovely people, lots of laughs. So I think for the conclusion of this episode, I just want to make a few general observations about my experience across Vietnam and Cambodia. Now these are just, of course, my own personal observations. You know, I'm just getting a just scratching the surface of these countries. I'm by no means an expert in these places. But I can say that I had a great time. And I think that if you enjoy birding, then these are great destinations for you. There are many great birds waiting for you in Vietnam and Cambodia.

But do know that, yeah, it can be challenging at times. It depends partially on the season, but also just on the sort of randomness of the day, of the weather, whether or not you just happen to run into a nice mixed species flock of birds, or whether it's just quiet and all you can hear are crickets and frogs and maybe some distant barbets. But yeah, when it's good, man, it is good. And a funny thing, so often that something that happened was we would see something would catch our eye. We go, oh, it's a bird. And then we go, oh, squirrel. Or chip. or something like that. There were lots of members of the family siurity mammals in that group. So little chipmunks and squirrel-like things that

would be darting around in the trees, making us think that they were birds. And similarly, there were lots of butterflies. And I got to tell you, if I ever get into butterflies, I am heading for Vietnam because there were so many different kinds of butterflies, beautiful ones, and they were all over the place all day long. So you really wouldn't have probably a hard time entertaining yourself looking for butterflies. But just like the squirrels of butterflies kept distracting us and making us think that they were birds. So yeah, that's just a thing that happens as well. The people are great. I had, you know, lots of lovely little interactions. I will say that, you know, and I'm an introvert, so I'm not out

there like, you know, chatting up everybody and talking to everybody. But everybody was friendly. I never felt really unwelcome in either of those countries. I never felt like anybody was looking that me or people in our group with a, you know, kind of furrowed brow. If anything, I feel like, especially in Vietnam, that people just didn't really care. They're just kind of indifferent. Like, we're just like people like everybody else and so what, you know, so what that you're tourists, you know, so, you know, that's kind of nice. You just kind of feel anonymous. I will say that that feels, it feels very different here in China. I do not feel anonymous because I, so far am an anomaly as a westerner. I have seen very few people that are not Asian while I've

been in China. So that's different, is that, you know, I tend to get a lot of looks here in China. So anyway, more about that in another episode. Another general observation of birding in Vietnam and Cambodia is it is often quite noisy with human sounds. It seemed like it was really hard to get away from the sound of motors, of like motorbikes or cars or chainsaw. Or chainsaw. or weed whackers or tractors, or just, there just always seemed to be some little motor going. And that was never more obvious than when I tried to record bird sounds. I would turn on my recorder and put my headphones on and I could, sure, I could hear the birds, but in the background, I hear some loud motor.

And it was really frustrating. But, you know, these people are just living their lives, doing their jobs. You know, they aren't on vacation. They aren't outburning. They got to do what they got to do. So I really just tried to be patient and just realize that's the deal. if you really want silence in places like that you probably have to get way off the beaten path you know be willing to force your way into the forest with a machete or whatever and brave all the leeches

and tigers and snakes and who knows what but anyway it's just part of the deal just kind of know that these these countries you know they're just a lot of people and they got lots to do and so you know they're just they're just kind of ambient noise human noise but on the flip side in terms of humans yeah again great food great beverages from coffee to tea to fun fruit drinks and smoothies and all that stuff and lots of great cultural sites to visit so many many wonderful things to enjoy there and yeah i guess i'll leave you with that and um i hope you enjoyed this from the field episode this second one that i'm recording on this big trip through asia i don't know what the topic of the next one will be like i said i feel like i'll probably want to do one on china i'm actually spending three

three weeks in China in two different provinces. My experiences have been great so far, so I'd love to share some of that with you and talk about some of the birds. So thanks for listening, and I will talk to you next time. Cheers.