The Hunt for the Crested Kingfisher

I have another post in the works that covers birding in the Chiang Mai area but I thought this story might be interesting to some readers. I'll try to keep it short.

A few weeks ago, when I was in Chiang Dao at Malee's Bungalows, I met a fellow who had just been birding in a tiny village about 20 miles west of Chiang Dao. Mueang Khong is situated at the confluence of the Mae Taeng and Mae Khong rivers and is at the end of a narrow, often rough-as-a-cob concrete and asphalt highway, ชม.3024. While there he had captured an image of a beautiful bird, the Crested Kingfisher. As soon as I saw John's photo, I knew I would have to go there. Using information he shared with me I was able to book a room in the small guesthouse where he stayed, the Ban Phu Tawan, whose proprietor has a small portable blind she makes available for guests wanting to bag the kingfisher. So last Friday, I skipped my usual pickleball session and drove my motorcycle loaded with camera gear the 80-odd miles to Mueang Khong.

Driving the CB500X to Mueang Khong

I dressed warm for the start of the trip and took extra clothing for the chilly mountain mornings. Nighttime temps in Chiang Mai are running around 65-68 deg while out in the hinterlands temps get down to 50 or sometimes 40 degrees at night. I nearly froze in Chiang Dao a couple of weeks ago in an unheated, tile-floored bungalow on a 40-degree night even though I wore a polypro jacket and wool sox to bed. By late afternoon, it might briefly reach 90 or 95 degrees but the nights out there have been bracingly cold. For this trip, I packed my polypro long johns, extra wool sox, and a wool pullover. It was a beautiful day for a ride. The last 10-15 miles of ชม. 3024 have some ugly hairpin turns and the concrete pavement is bad, bone-shakingly bad, but the beauty of the dense forest makes it all worthwhile. Keep in mind that it's midwinter in Thailand and there's been no rain for several months so these same scenes will be very lush at other times.

ชม. 3024 starts out smooth

Doi Luang is a steep SOB and is 7100 ft high

A farmed area occupies a small opening in the forest

I arrived at the guest house at about 3 pm. Ban Phu Tawan boasts a beautiful view of the Mae Taeng valley and costs $20 USD per night including breakfast. It was nothing special as far as accommodations go; I got a small, clean bungalow with a bed that was too hard for my aged body, a flat-screen TV, a fridge and Wi-Fi. It was spartanly furnished but otherwise adequate for my purposes, which was to get an image or two of the Crested Kingfisher. I had the owner drive me to the spot where I would be waiting the next morning but when we got there I was shocked to see a small crowd of other photographers, four portable blinds and enough camera gear to fill a minivan lining the bank of the river. All the cameras were facing a tree branch that had been stuck in the sandy riverbank and upon which our quarry would presumably perch. It was all very contrived. Silly me. And I thought I would be the only one.

Later for dinner, I made croissant sandwiches with cold cuts, cheese and Dijon I'd bought in Chiang Mai. I ate on the porch and afterward watched the sun sink below the surrounding hills to flood the valley with a golden glow that eventually faded to pink and then to black. As the evening cooled I became aware of the fragrances that were drifting down to me on a light breeze from the hillside at my back. I breathed deeply of the sweet night air that was scented alternately by hay or cut grass and then flowers. Perfect. I was in absolutely no hurry to go inside. I made myself a cup of tea and watched the sky darken and the first stars appear. Then I went to bed.

I passed a fitful night on the overly firm bed, arose at 5 am and after my morning tea and email check I wandered over to the restaurant for a breakfast of instant coffee, toast and a bowl of hot khao tom moo, a Thai favorite that I've come to love. After breakfast, we packed our various vehicles in the dark and returned to the Mae Taeng riverbank. My hostess set up the small blind that was to be my hiding place for the big event, placed a tiny plastic stool inside for me to sit on, and said goodbye. "I'll be back at 9", she said. I crawled into my blind and with some difficulty positioned the stool to face the perch the kingfisher would be using later. The other folks went to their far more spacious blinds where they set up their equipment. They had fancy tripods, $1000 tripods, with gimbal mounts and big 500mm, f/4 telephotos that made my beautiful Tamron 400mm f/6.3 lens look positively puny by comparison. Finally, by about 6:10 am everything was in readiness and we quieted down. Then we waited for first light, and the kingfisher.

About a half-hour later, I was fiddling with something in the blind, my camera, my glasses or something, and when I looked out again at the perch, he was there. He was huge, the size of a chicken, far bigger than any kingfisher I've ever seen. And magnificent. As soon as I could get my finger on my shutter button I began shooting. And so did everyone else. We were all shooting in continuous high-speed mode and the racket made by all those shutters clicking away madly was considerable. Why the bird didn't hear it and fly away, I haven't a clue. Perhaps he couldn't hear it. Or perhaps he did and doesn't care because he's become used to it. He stayed for at least 15 minutes but only showed us his back. During that time I must've shot 200 images! He flew away and we all started talking at once. One fellow said, "He'll be back soon. Don't worry."

Crested Kingfisher (male) — Mae Taeng River — Mueang Khong
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400 @400, f/10, 1/160 sec., ISO 100

Crested Kingfisher (male) — Mae Taeng River — Mueang Khong
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400 @400, f/10, 1/160 sec., ISO 100

And he soon was. This time he gave us a side view which, for a birder, is the perfect pose.
Because he was so close my 400mm lens was more than adequate. I shot all of the images with my EOS R attached to a monopod. One of the extensible legs of my tripod can be unscrewed and used as an adjustable height monopod, a compromise mount that is easy to point at a bird and that steadies your shots without the bulk of the full tripod. It's something I thought I'd never use but one that I now find very helpful.
Here's our boy looking backward as if to say, "I see ya, mate!"

Crested Kingfisher (male) — Mae Taeng River — Mueang Khong
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400 @400, f/6.3, 1/60 sec., ISO 1250

All told, I shot over 360 RAW images from the blind. That's about 16 gigabytes of images. Thank dog for digital is all I can say. A Little Ringed Plover showed up, and a White Wagtail, and those accounted for possibly 50 of that total. The photos you see here are possibly the best I have of the kingfisher but there are many other "keepers" in the batch.

Just as I was getting ready to go back to the guest house, I turned around and took this photo of the riverbank scene. My blind is the small one closest to the camera (and farthest from the river). The perch is just off-camera to the right.

"Big guns" trained on the kingfisher's perch.

When I was trying to enter my sighting on the ebird.org site, it wanted confirmation of the species because, it said, this bird is unusual for that area of SE Asia. I added an explanatory note and my image. When I checked the page for the Crested Kingfisher on ebird, the second image in their examples had listed for its location, Mueang Khong, Chiang Dao, Thailand. I tell you, this bird is famous. I'm beginning to suspect that it's a plant, imported to Mueang Khong to attract tourists. Not really. But should this kingfisher die or go missing, economic hardships in the area are sure to follow.

It was a wonderful trip and I got the images I wanted. The only thing missing was having our subject catch and eat a fish. That would have been the frosting on the cake. Maybe next time.