
In Pak Chong we were picked up by Khao Yai Nature Life & Tours, a hotel & Tour company owned by Lisa and her husband Tony. Tony turned out to be "Tony Eagle-eye", a well known Thai bird guide which was very opportune for us as he took us on a birding tour of the Reserve the next day.

Some 200 elephants tramp the park's boundaries. Other mammals include tigers, leopards, bears, gaur, barking deer, otters, crocodiles, various gibbons and macaques and some rather large pythons. Khao Yai also has one of Thailand's largest populations of Hornbills, including the Great Hornbill, king of the bird kingdom, as well as the Wreathed Hornbill, literally 'elephant-jaw bird'), Indian Pied Hornbill and Brown Hornbill. The park's bird list boasts 315 species.



As we watched the Kingfisher a White Vented Mynah made an appearance, a welcome visitor that made a change from the Common Mynahs that are everywhere in Thailand. This was quite a handsome bird with a strange tufted crest immediately over the bill.
Shortly after this we pulled over at a break in the forest by some open grassland. Here we heard the by now familiar sound of the Red Wattled Lapwing, a common and very noisy bird that constantly sounds the alarm & flies around in circles when something or someone approaches.

The little bird below is a Bright Headed Cisticola, cousin to our Zit. This one is a little gem, even smaller and daintier than than the Zitting Cisticola with a nice chestnut/gold crown. Looks like he was raiding the spiders webs.



Next a little Abbots Babbler came to investigate the calls from Tony´s recorder.










It had been a superb day birding and we were looking forward to more here later, but we said goodbye to Tony who was heading out west to Kaeng Krachan National Park where he had some Japanese clients, serious birders, lined up for three days, so we were on our own for a while.