Not a holiday but a work trip which meant that I saw the meeting room, the hotel and the roads in between and not much else, but even so, the number of birds is still staggeringly low. Most of the birds I saw were in bushes around the car park of the offices where we were working, though I saw the Pond Herons over the city as we drove to work one morning. The Kestrel was literally the only bird I saw on the 45 minute drive to the airport. It was also my only Vietnam tick of the trip, as most of the other species were in those same bushes on my previous visit.
The list in full :
Chinese Pond Heron
Eurasian Kestrel
Feral Pigeon
Red-whiskered Bulbul.
Common Tailorbird
Japanese White-eye
White-throated Fantail
Oriental Magpie-robin
Tree Sparrow
Back in Denmark, it was cold, grey and drizzling on the fifteen minute drive from the airport to home. I still saw seven species.
Stuart
Hi Stuart
I'd love to visit Vietnam for all sorts of reasons but sounds like I might be better off going to Thailand or Malaysia for birding purposes in SE Asia. I'd still have had three lifers on that trip though (the bulbul, the white-eye and the fantail). You just assume that the tropics are teeming with avian life? Why the paucity of birds?
E
i guess stuart was in a big city. I can't say i saw many birds in Bangkok when i visited (save for an ok range in an area of scrubland adjacent to my hotel), probably 9 is about right there also.
Were there any parks, paddyfields, gardens etc. where you might have expected to see birds but didn't??
James