When I lived in Kuala Lumpur I had a fine Aussie boss by the name of Keith. Being an Aussie, he liked a laugh, he liked a beer, and he liked looking at birds; except in his case these were real birds, with feathers and beaks etc. His boss (therefore my boss’s boss, a.k.a. God) was similarly inclined and they would disappear into the jungles of Malaysia and return wide-eyed with excitement having spotted a lesser-crested tit warbler.
A few years ago I met Keith again in Bangkok, about to embark on another bird-watching mission. For many, telling friends that they were going bird-watching in Thailand would be a thinly veiled reference to a carefully planned week of debauchery. But in Keith’s case, he really did intend sitting up to his arse in leeches in some distant swamp for hours on end in the vain hope of spotting a tiny grey bird. Would he photograph it, I enquired? Nope, he would just note his findings in a little notebook and return home happy. Completely bloody nuts.
But there are people who take some really fine photos of birds; and I didn’t see why I should not be one of them. My decision to add my name to the list of whizzo bird snappers was reinforced when I discovered that there is a reservoir at Bang Phra, only 45 minutes away, with a large and varied bird population; and many excellent bird photos from there can be found on the web.
She who must be obeyed ensured we were dressed in suitably camouflaged clothes. She even provided a green scarf to cover my sodding big grey lens. But our efforts were rather spoiled by a friend who joined us wearing a violent blue shirt covering a stomach the size of Singapore. It was like taking a blue-lamped lighthouse for a walk, the birds could see us from kilometres away.
The area we entered was designated a “no-hunting” area, which was reassuring. At least we were unlikely to be shot. But I think that all the birds were refugees from the hunting area, because none of them showed the slightest interest in hanging around to be photographed (or as they probably saw it, to be blown to bits). The place was certainly busy with birds, but at a distance. Once you arrived at a place where there had been flocks of birds; they had all buggered off to somewhere else. We did the “arriving at a place where the birds have already left” activity for a while; before settling down with our camouflage and travelling lighthouse and did the “waiting for the return of the birds to the place they just left” activity. Nothing happened.
A birds did fly in front of the sun, in order to distract the lighthouse in case he had a Gatling gun under his shirt (there was room). This made it impossible to get a reasonable photo:
Then there was an orange legged black billed bird thingie which looked so boring it really would have been better with a bullet through the head:
Thoroughly disheartened, we headed back to the car. And then… and then! Through the undergrowth I spotted a flash of colour. Braving snakes, large insects and maybe even tigers, I squirmed through a small hole in a patch of spiky thorns to gain access to the waterway beyond. Ignoring the blood oozing from my forearms, the mud soaking through my clothes and the ants nibbling at my genitals (actually, that was quite pleasant), I took a shot of this magnificent creature before it disappeared into the undergrowth; maybe lost from human sight for years.
Note: Any resemblance between this duck and the duck that sits in a pond at the entrance to the park is entirely coincidental.
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2010-11-26| biggrtiggr saysDo quite a lot of twitching myself, bt the pills help