Vietnam Birding

Vietnam Birding - Di Linh

We had finally arrived at our final birding location - Di Linh, after 4hrs plus of travelling. It's nearing the end of our trip, and we were feeling both happy (very rewarding) and sad (time to go home). Our birding experience in Vietnam so far was a fantastic and memorable adventure!! Food and service were the best!! We reached Di Linh around dinner time, and of course, eat first. No food, no need to talk about the rest! We were thinking that after makan, go back hotel and rest, shooting will start the next day, however it started right after dinner! Guide said "We will go for the Mountain Scops Owl later."

After about 40mins of travelling through small roads on the highlands, we arrived and alighted along the road at an unfinished construction site. It was drizzling and pitched dark. The best thing was that, only the ladies had their torch lights ready, the guys kept their torch in the luggages. We had to hike through a dense vegetation of leeches and up the muddy hill in the forest to shoot the Owl. It was an ultimate night adventure!! Luckily our Guide carried our tripods for us, or else sure cannot make it. As usual, we settled down, setup, tested trial shots and waited for the night show in perfect silent.

The moment it appeared, I was not expecting this fello to look like this. It looked interestingly cute and angry, very alluring and attractive. It was nevertheless, a beautiful owl. We spent about 30 mins here, then made our muddy way back down to the vehicle. And even gotten leeches all over our shoes and socks. We rested early this evening though there were some noisy activities going on outside in the homestay, and also, that neighbour's rooster started calling at 3am!!!

The next morning we set off at 6am, went for breakfast at a local soup noodle restaurant, then proceeded to watch our Pittas bird show. It was a little further uphill along the road from the previous Hide, but it was not a terrible hike to the location. Some of the birds sighted here were the Siberian Thrush, Little Pied Flycatcher, White-throated Rock Thrush, Orange-headed Thrush, Silver Pheasant, Siberian Blue Robin, Blue Pittas and Ochraceous Bulbuls (once a beautiful icon to a nuisance fello).

We spent about 2 over hours in this Hide before moving back to the Scops Owl Hide to catch another endemic bird - the Indochinese Green Magpie. But sadly, the star bird did not make an appearance :(( We spent quite a long time here because we do not want to give up too soon. Few of our team mates were already falling asleep. We even had our simple beehoon lunch in the Hide prepared by the nearby coffeehouse. Most of the birds were seen here were seen earlier before such as the White-throated Rock Thrush, Indochinese Blue Flycatcher, White-browed Scimitar Babbler, Orange-headed Thrush, Grey-eyed Bulbul, White-bellied Erponis and the Buff-breasted Babbler.

After having some butt sore, we decided to call it a day and went for afternoon tea at the nearby coffeehouse down the road. Guide had received news that the Serpent Eage was perching there. The air was cool and breezy outside the forest, great for a cup of hot tea or coffee. We reached and saw that it was a juvenile Crested Serpent Eagle and the perch was on the bare tree, 5000 miles away! If you looked carefully, there is also a pair of Nuthatch on the bare tree to the left. I did not realize it while I was shooting the Eagle, only to see it later while sorting the photos.

This day ended well shooting on the highlands and we were off for dinner and rest.

We had come to the last day of our Vietnam birding trip and one of our team mate decided to sleep in. We went out early to fully utilized our last precious morning before making our way to the airport. We had the local legendary bread - Banh Mi for breakfast, and it tasted so much better than ours back home. We did birding along the mountainous road, photographing whatever birds that came around. Lighting was not very good, cloudy and overcast, making shooting pretty tough because birds were high, far and tiny. It did started to brighten up slowly but by then, it was time for us to leave. Birds sighted were the Bronzed and Ashy Drongos, Red-vented Barbet, Maroon Oriole, Green-billed Malkoha, and some Mountain Pigeons.