I recently asked a birding friend whether he had been in the field recently and his response was “it's not the right season.” Like most of us, he was awaiting the onset of the next dry season, or northern winter. There's certainly something about those November, crystal-blue skies, when the rain has stopped, and before the dust and smoke haze of another dry season has built up, to get the juices going. We reach for our binoculars, tents and other gear, and head for the hills, buoyed by the prospect of some cooler weather before the downhill slide to the March and April heat.

I am always concerned, though, by the way so many of us “switch-off” in the wet season, thereby denying ourselves year-round enjoyment of bird and the forest. At Khao Nor Chuchi, I used to keenly anticipate the onset of the rains. It meant that the forest suddenly came alive with hitherto invisible plant and animal life, frogs and fungi, as well as the songs of birds one hadn't heard from in months.

But I'll admit that wet-season birding is a hit or miss affair. We have all known what it is to be cold and wet, on a mountain somewhere, the cloud and mist swirling round us, the wind whistling through the trees, with scarcely a bird to be seen. Even if you have taken refuge in a forestry guard station, instead of a tent, your clothes will not dry out and soon take on an unpleasant, musty odour. Certainly, if you hit it wrong, and your trip coincides with the passage of a monsoonal trough, it may be a week before the rain stops, and your precious holiday is wasted.

But I'd have to say that even in the mountains of Chang Mai, some of my best-ever birding experiences have been in the middle wet season. I shall always remember the time when, watching a Giant Nuthatch on Doi Ang Khang, a sudden downpour forced me to take shelter under my folding umbrella. With water trickling down the back of my neck I watched the nuthatch sheltering on the underside of a horizontal tree limb where it hung, upside-down, protected from the falling rain.

In spite of the discomforts , there are times when wet-season birding in the mountains is positively sublime. Between the showers, you suddenly find that birds which you thought were highly elusive have become easy to find. I had rarely ever heard Spot-breasted Laughingthrush singing at all, and when I did it was for no more than a few seconds at a time. Yet on a mid-June visit to Doi Ang Khang, I couldn't stop hearing the song of this arch-skulker: I counted 7 singing birds in one valley alone. In addition, White-tailed Robins were jumping all over the place. I think I saw and heard fifteen in one day, whereas in the dry season, you've had a good day if you've seen one! Cochoas are other much sought-after birds for which the wet-season is prime time. There are also many others.

Another bonus of wet-season birding is the near total absence of tourists. In such a popular tourist destination, it's not easy to even find a place to stay on Doi Ang Khang during the winter months. But go back in June or July and, apart from the locals, you'll likely have the place to yourself! Between the rain-showers, the air will also be clear and free from dust.

It's not only the amateur birders who shun the northern mountains in the wet season. It was also true of the professional ornithologists and specimen collectors, who worked during the era of the Migratory Animal Pathological Survey (MAPS), and subsequently. Among the bird specimens out at TISTR there are precious few taken for the months May to October. Almost all the collecting was done in the dry season, between November and April. So if we want to search for evidence of moult, or seasonal plumage change by examining skins, we can't do it.

Clearly , we are depriving ourselves of a lot of knowledge here. We are still not sure whether birds such as Plumbeous Redstart, River Chat, Slaty-blue Flycatcher, Gould's Sunbird and others are winter visitors or residents. We don't know even the arrival times in autumn of a great many winter visitors, because most of them are have taken up occupancy well before our own annual migration to the north takes place. How many of us have visited northern lakes, such as Nong Bong Khai or Beung Khong Long in the wet season to determine which waterbirds breed?

Don't wait for the next dry-season. Now is the time to visit the north!

Philip D. Round
August 2000