Hi Y'all, Paddlewiser Clas Hagelstam and his Godson Markku were both here in sunny Phuket for a paddling trip. They are from Finland. Clas is 72 years old. He started paddling when he was 60. He acted like he was in his 30's... great guy. All he wanted to do was paddle all day. He's a madman! We spent the first two day paddling off the southern end of Phuket. We saw about 20 Lesser Frigate Birds close up and over 30 Oriental Pied Hornbills too! We went to Khao Sok National Park for 4 days. We paddled on a huge reservoir and stayed on some quaint little floating bamboo bungalows. This place is really neat and there are absolutely NO MOSQUITOES! It looks like it would be mosquito central. We had a brilliant time spotting wildlife. Being a serious bird nerd, I was in heaven. Here's a list of what we saw: Green-billed Malkoha (new bird for me!) Oriental Magpie-Robin All three Asian Paradise-flycatchers (beautiful blue-headed bird with very long tail feathers - new birds for me!) Stork-billed Kingfisher Dollarbird Black-capped Kingfisher Crested Serpent-eagle (male and female) White-bellied Sea Eagle Bushy Crested Hornbill (new bird for me!) Wreathed Hornbill Great Hornbill Helmeted Hornbill Common Flameback Woodpecker (male) Whiskered Treeswift (new bird for me!) Black-crested Bulbul Ashy Drongo Common Tailorbird Dark-necked Tailorbird Chinese Pond Heron Hodgson's Hawk-cuckoo (new for me!) The flycatchers. They were so cool in flight. They have long feathers that waved up and down during flight. What awesome birds. We heard a male Great Argus (it looks a lot like a peacock) I sure wish we would have seen it! We also saw at least a couple dozen Gibbons, several Pig-tailed Macaques including a mother with a very small baby, Long-tailed Macaque (same as the Crab-eating macaque), Dusky Langurs (big black monkeys with white rings around their eyes), and a wild pig! All you have to do to see wildlife is sit still and wait a little bit. At one point, we were sitting just off of a point. At least a dozen gibbons and a dozen Dusky Langurs were swinging in the trees right in front of us. We all had binoculars so we could see right into their eyes. I can't wait to go back there. It's one of my two favorite places in southern Thailand. The other is Ko Adang, but that'll be another story. Cheers, Dave Dave Williams, Director dave_at_paddleasia.com http://paddleasia.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jan 26 2000 - 00:10:49 PST
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