thaibirding.com

[Miquel]

Hi !
We are two spanish birders who returned of our trip in Thailand last week.
We want to give information about birds seen in every site visited in the trip, as Nick told me before.
But first we have a question about this egret seen in Laem Pak Bia, in Petchaburi, the day March 29.
I read in the latest news of tis page that Chinese Egret was seen in the same site a days before, but we have problems to identification with the white form of the Pacific Reef Egret.
Anybody can help us? Thanks for advance.

Miquel and Salva

[nick]

I've finally got round to uploading Miquel's photo of the egret and it does indeed appear to be a Chinese Egret. The head plumes seperate it from white phase Pacific Reef Egret and the structure seperates it from Little Egret. This bird's bill is the same width for most of its length, tapering only in the final quarter and creates a slightly droopy effect - characteristic of Chinese Egret's bill.



For more information see Poole, C. M., Jin-Young, P. & Moores, N. (1999). The identification of Chinese Egret and Pacific Reef Egret. Oriental Bird Club Bulletin No 30, Nov 1999.

Contact Oriental Bird Club for a copy of this publication http://www.orientalbirdclub.org/index.html
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I love it when a plan comes together!

[Miquel]

Thank you, Nick, for put the photo in the forum, and for your comments. We are doing the census by location ( and amount the birds seen every day ) and I think we could post it next week.