The Quest for the Giant Ibis

March 2019: Birding the Wetlands and Forests around Siem Reap

Some trips take a while to settle down.  I had a free weekend based in Singapore and was trying to work out what to do with it.  Version one saw me trying to persuade Jakarta-based birding guide Khaleb Yordan to come with me to Kalamintan to look for Bornean Peacock-Pheasant but the local guide said it was the wrong season.  Version two was a brief weekend around Siem Reap in Cambodia with just enough time to get some waterbirds and the Bengal Florican (somehow Khaleb managed to invite himself along on this trip too, not sure how that happened).  Then after a few schedule changes, I found myself with more time and so expanded the Cambodia trip to include a 3 day trip in search of Giant Ibis in Northern Cambodia.  Now I had a plan and was excited to visit a new country and see some very high quality birds.

Saturday, March 23 - Siem Reap

I'd arrived at Le Meridien Hotel the day before and Khaleb had flown in later that night.  First thing Saturday morning we met our local guide Mardy Sean from the famous Sam Veasna Center who arrived in a very nice Toyota Landcruiser with a local driver ... seems I got the logistics all right for this trip.

Our plan for the day was to visit and bird around Ang Trapeang Thmor a reservoir built at the time of the ancient Angkor culture then rebuilt more recently by the Khmer Rouge using slave labor.  There was a lot of history in the place, good and bad, but it was the birds were were going to see and this site had a lot of birds.

We started before dawn and as the sun rose were were arriving at wet fields in time to see the arrival of huge numbers of Asia Openbill (Storks) and Painted Storks coming from their roosts and joining a massive assemblage of ducks, herons and other water birds.  It really was a very birdy spot and almost everywhere we went that day was just packed with birds.

Painted Storks

Our main target for the morning though was cranes, a group that I've always thought of as temperate but some make it to the tropics and the reservoir and the surrounding rice paddies were home to a large and important concentration of Sarus Cranes.  Mardy had good intel and soon enough we'd worked our way out onto the fields where there were 50+ Sarus Cranes feeding in the burned rice paddies, a very cool site.  Who doesn't love cranes?

Sarus Cranes (Photo: Khlaeb Yordan .. used with permission)

With the target in the bag, the pace for the rest of the day was relaxed.  Next stop produced an incredible collection of roosting owls of three species - Barn Owl, Spotted Wood-Owl, and Spotted Owlet - one can only imagine how many rats must live in these rice fields in order to support such a density of predators.  This site was also the location of a bit of a disaster.  I was walking along and heard a "thud", looking down to see the bottom half of my Canon 400mm lens had fallen off and dropped to the ground.  I picked it up but the fall had broken the circuit ribbons so no repair was possible.  Day 2 of a 2-week trip to Asia and I had no lens .... not a good thing.

Barn Owl (Photo: Khaleb Yordan) 

Spot-billed Pelican (Photo: Khaleb Yordan)

We kept birding hard, perhaps harder now that I wasn't distracted by the need to take photos, and added a lot of birds.  By the time we left that afternoon we had seen 90 species including such goodies as Black-Necked Stork and Greater Spotted Eagle along with a huge range of water birds.  A very nice start to the trip.

Sunday, March 24 - Siem Reap to Tmatboey

A long day today that started with a 'mega' target bird in the form of a visit to the BENGAL FLORICAN grasslands.  This striking bustard is in deep trouble with less than a thousand remaining individuals scattered across Cambodia and India and populations declining everywhere.  Here at least though they were easy to see and our guides' attempts to have us eat breakfast before looking for the bustards were ruined when the bustards kept popping up out in the grasslands around us.  Fruit was dropped, coffee was spilled, but we all saw the birds and were able to salvage breakfast after the fact. A very nice way to start the day with the sun coming up over the grasslands reminding me that birding really does take you to the most amazing places.

Bengal Florican (Khaleb lent me his lens for a minute)

The Florican reserve also had lots of other good birds, Manchurian Reed-Warbler was a lifer as was Blue-breasted Quail.  There were more Sarus Cranes, Small and Yellow-legged Buttonquails, Red Avadavats and Australian Bushlarks.   We had two local guides on motorbikes who rushed ahead, found or flushed birds then waited for us to come and see them.  This was really very well organized birding and quite easy, I was beginning to feel a bit guilty, but then our time was limited so I wanted to make the most of it.

Leaving the grasslands reluctantly behind us we had a long drive ahead to the North but made a couple of stops when we entered more woodland habitat, adding different birds along the way.  White-rumped Falcon was my key target here and we managed to find a female at the Being Mealea temple (we saw a male two days later on the way back).

White-rumped Falcon (Photo: Khaleb Yordan)

By late afternoon we arrived at our home for the next two nights, a basic but comfortable lodge at Tmatboey.  Conservation orgs have worked with the local villagers here to preserve the population of GIANT and WHITE-SHOULDERED IBIS.  They have worked to reduce hunting and the use of chemicals in farming while promoting eco-tourism and enhanced farming incomes through the sale of certified organic (Ibis-friendly) rice.  While it's certainly no pristine wilderness the project has managed to help to preserve the ibis populations in an area where a lot of people make a living from farming and would otherwise have no incentive to keep the forest or the birds around.  So a success story, and we were playing our part by paying to visit.  Now the ibis had to play their part by letting us see them.

We spent most of the afternoon searching for Giant Ibis and drew a blank at the usual sites.  We did bump into some Brown Fish-Owls, a lifer for me and a surprise for Mardy who hadn't seem them at this site before, but the ibis remained elusive.  Then, with perhaps only 45 minutes before sunset, we got word from another guide that they'd found an ibis but it was at least 30 minutes drive then hike away from us.  So off we went, racing against the light, but ultimately arriving in time to see one of the world's great bucket-list birds, GIANT IBIS, sitting quietly in a tree.

The amazing Giant Ibis (Photo: Khalen Yordan)

Monday, March 25 - Tmatboey

With the Giant Ibis in the bag, Mardy and the local guides visibly relaxed.  Only now did they tell us that the early rains had made them quite worried as the rains give the ibis the opportunity to wander away from their dry-season haunts and spread out in the forest hunting frogs.  In short, they get much harder to see when the rains come, so we'd gotten a bit lucky and now everyone was very relieved.

White-shouldered Ibis (Photo: Khaleb Yordan)

The other star ibis, WHITE-SHOULDERED IBIS, turned out to be a lot easier.  At first light we drove to some trees where the ibis had been seen roosting the last few nights and got scope views before they dropped down into the forest and vanished.  This was the last of my five key target birds so I was able to relax too now and from here on in just enjoy the birding.  So the rest of the day was a very nice and very easy set of short walks through the woodland adding local species at each stop.

Black-headed Woodpecker (Photo; Khaleb Yordan)

Rufous-bellied Woodpecker (Photo: Khaleb Yordan)

After a good day of birding and a tasty local meal cooked by the village ladies at the lodge, I at least was looking forward to a good night of sleep and so crashed early.  In the middle of the night I found that I was having trouble sleeping though, it felt like there were some insects inside my mosquito net and while I kept flipping them off my face, half-asleep in the pitch dark, they kept coming back and, well bugging me.  When I turned my flashlight on the scale of the problem became more apparent, there were literally thousands of winged termites in the room, swarming all over the mosquito nets, the walls and the floor.  Khaleb ran to the bathroom and turned on the bathroom light and the whole mass of little insect bodies migrated towards the light eventually leaving us to get some sleep.  It wasn't a pretty site in the morning though, the toilet, the sink and the water bucket all had a layer of dead termites several inches thick on them and more little corpses carpeted the floor.  At least here was food for the birds in this forest I suppose and I'm sure the geckos in the lodge had a very good day.

Tuesday, March 26 - Tmatboey to Siem Reap

After an abortive try to get to the river - a road too muddy for a Toyota Landcruiser is pretty much too muddy for anything - we started the long drive back to Siem Reap.  Several birding stops along the way added more birds, some views of temples, and more of a sense of the habitats of Central Cambodia.  Too soon though it was time to say goodbye, and after a tasty (and termite-free) last meal at Le Meridien we all parted ways with me heading back to Singapore and on to other adventures.  I'll definitely try to come back to Cambodia though and try to see some of the other special wildlife that they have there (the Vulture Restaurant, the Mekong Wagtail etc.), it's a beautiful country with wonderful people and great birds.

Cambodia with Asian Openbills