Bach Ma
Day 11: Monday 25th March 2019
05:30 breakfast; 06:00 departure; 1 hr drive to get to Bach Ma national park and then a 19km drive with 1230m of ascent (from 20m to 1250m) - and we finally started birding at 08:15. The ascent was through fairly thick cloud (as seen above on the descent) and we were fairly pessimistic about our chances of seeing much in these conditions - but once we got above ~1000m we came out of the murk and we actually had a very good morning. I saw 7 species new for me - including the very rare Indochinese Wren-babbler, our main target species here.
05:30 breakfast; 06:00 departure; 1 hr drive to get to Bach Ma national park and then a 19km drive with 1230m of ascent (from 20m to 1250m) - and we finally started birding at 08:15. The ascent was through fairly thick cloud (as seen above on the descent) and we were fairly pessimistic about our chances of seeing much in these conditions - but once we got above ~1000m we came out of the murk and we actually had a very good morning. I saw 7 species new for me - including the very rare Indochinese Wren-babbler, our main target species here.
After leaving the park we drove a short distance to Lang Co where we first looked for and found White-faced Plover and then stopped for a pleasant lunch.
There were only these two waders on the beach. Kentish (Charadrius alexandrinus) and White-faced Plover (C.dealbatus) were previously considered conspecific but have recently been split. According to my field guide White-faced plover (which as new for me) differs in having pale lores (the bit between the eye and the bill) , a very short breast band and little black on the forecrown. I think these two birds illustrate this difference well. The field guide also says that White-faced Plover is a fairly common resident and Kentish Plover is a local resident and fairly common winter visitor. However, Susan (our guide) said that she thinks the split is dubious and that the (sub)species is occurring in Vietnam is dealbatus and that alexandrinus has not been reliably recorded here.
After lunch we had a 4 hour drive to Kham Duc, where we spent the night at hotel Be Chau Giang.