I'm not normally such a light sleeper, but, lately, I've been waking up well before first light, at five o'clock in the morning, felling unusually alert and refreshed. As a lie on the bamboo floor of my hut, I listen for the sounds around me. On dry days, the first villagers have already been up and about, tapping rubber for an hour or more, but I still hear the motocycles of the latecomers on the way to their plantations.

It is at this time , before daybreak, that the lives of nocturnal and diurnal inhabitants of the forest intersect. Among birds, the last representatives of the night-shift are still calling alongside the early birds from the day-shift. Lately, the first diurnal bird to chime-up has been the Black-naped Monarch. The calls of two cuckoos, Indian Cuckoo and Drongo Cuckoo, also ring out in the darkness. Among the nightbirds, a Collared Scops-Owl still pipes regularly at intervals of about ten or fifteen seconds. As I lie there, I wait for the calls of Javan Frogmouth: Ah, there it is! A short series of four or five tremulous, soft gwaa notes, typically heard once or twice only each morning. If you drift off to sleep for a minute or two, you could easily miss it. I fancy that the Javan Frogmouth has become more vocal since the rains began. A shy and unobtrusive bird, the colour of dead leaves and bark, it lives out its life mostly unobserved among vines and cross-branches in the crowns of trees, gleaning larger insects from the foliage.

The Large-tailed Nightjar , by contrast favours the drier, dusty areas of open country. It often perches on dirt roads, its eyes reflecting pink in car headlights or a flashlight beam, making short flights to snatch flying insects. Its loud, resonant chonking calls are uttered much less now than they were two or three months ago, before the rains began.

This year , I often hear the male and female Spotted Wood-Owls duet together. The first bird, presumably the male, gives a deep, rolling hoo , and the female follows with a loud, deep tremolo in response. These are really huge owls, almost the size of an eagle-owl, but lacking the ear-tufts of that species. They are beautifully marked with pearly-white speckles on the upperparts and forecrown, broad dark transverse bars on breast and belly, and a deep orange-rufous facial disc surrounding large, dark eyes.

We have only one pair of Spotted Wood-Owls in our study area, and they live behind the house of Nai Samrong and his wife. They range along at least 60 m. of the main street through Bang Tieo village, as far as the old burial ground which is the last remaining major piece of woodland in the village.

Although the Spotted Wood-Owl is not really a forest owl, such a big bird nevertheless requires big, mature trees in which to live. During the daylight hours, the pair are usually to be found roosting in a tall Pterocarpus (pradoo) tree on the bank of the Khlong. Last year, they nested successfully in a hollow Parkia (sataw) tree in Samrong's garden, rearing a single young to the delight of both Mr. Samrong and the fahrang birdwatchers who were staying in the village at the time. The young owl left the nest on 20th April.

Alas , our elation at this apparent success story was short-lived. Scarcely two months later, our tree nursery manager came into the office with full-grown young owl in a sack. He had found it floundering about in his rubber plantation, one of its legs shattered by a gunshot wound. It was badly emaciated and had probably been shot around forty-eight hours earlier. In site of its ferocious appearance with its strong, curved talons and hooked bill, it was as gentle as a baby, taking fragments of meat (dipped in feathers to provide the necessary roughage) from my fingers. After dressing the wound with antibiotic powder, I splinted the leg, hoping for the best. Alas, the bird was already too weak and it died only three days later, leaving me railing about the stupidity and ignorance of village hunters who will, almost in a reflex action, pull the trigger on any large bird they see.

At Wat Khlong Thom , sixteen kilometers up the road, there is an aviary, which, the last time I looked at it, held two or three Spotted Wood-Owls, along with Brown Wood-Owls and Buffy Fish-Owls. These had all been stolen from their nests when young, and later dumped at the temple when the villagers from Khlong Thom Nua or Phru Dinna sub-districts tired of keeping them. The general scarcity of wildlife is not only due to forest destruction: it has as least as much to do with the exploitative attitude of people generally. It seems we cannot leave other animals to live their lives in peace, but must kill or capture them; buy or sell them, either for food or to keep in cages.

Attitudes are changing , though, and I take heart from Mr. Samrong who has never molested the owls on his property. They lost their young in 1994 and this year, 1995, apparently failed to breed at all. Nonetheless, with a landlord like Mr. Samrong, the Spotted Wood-Owls of Ban Bang Tieo should at least get the chance to breed again in 1996.

Philip D. Round
August 1995