Birding with Ram Gopalakrishnan: Vietnam: land of pittas and broadbills

Pitta! Exclaimed Nhu Nguyen our guide, and there was pin drop silence, broken only by the clickety clack of long lenses. With its striking black bands and numerous shades of green, the Bar-bellied Pitta surely had no equal. Yes, till followed by a whole family of two male and four female Siamese Firebacks, that too at noon rather than their customary morning hour! The male, with its red face and long glossy black tail, has to be the most charismatic member of the pheasant family. A morning that would remain etched in our memory for a lifetime.

We were on a birding trip focused on the southern part of Vietnam, a long S shaped country that offers about 850 species of birds in a variety of habitats. After taking a red-eye flight into Ho Chi Minh airport, we headed off after breakfast directly to a bird hide at Dong Nai Natural Reserve, a lowland dry deciduous forest. Can we appreciate anything at all so short of sleep and caffeine, we wondered; we soon had the answer in the form of the Bar-bellied Pitta and the Siamese Firebacks with a steady stream of flycatchers, babblers and bulbuls in between. A quartet of Silver-breasted Broadbills, with white gorgets, posed for an eternity till chased away by ungainly Racket-tailed Treepies and noisy White-crested Laughingthrushes. Mr and Mrs White-throated Rock-Thrush showed their beautiful patterns.

After finishing off a packed lunch at the hide itself to maximize birding time, we moved to a second hide with a water hole where we waited for the Blue-rumped Pitta, a less colorful but just as prized member of the pitta family. A Hainan Flycatcher and a male and female Laced Woodpecker kept us busy with our cameras. Abbot's Babbler and a male and female Siberian Blue Robin rounded off the list. Somehow caffeine and sleep were forgotten in this marathon session straight off the plane!

Next morning we drove north to Cat Tien National Park, part of the Dong Nai Biosphere Reserve, on the banks of the Dong Nai River which we crossed to access the park. A pair of Scaly-breasted Partridges were the first to arrive at a hide. I vacillated between clicking away at the male and female Bar-bellied Pitta pair on the ground, and the Black-and-red Broadbill above: nice choice to have, I guess. A Banded Kingfisher kept putting its crest in and out in the most distracting fashion. A Northern Treeshrew irritatingly kept disturbing the pittas. Much birding happens at hides here: a snack of crickets, worms and corn washed down by a drink of water and a quick ablution is usually irresistible for most birds, and the decoy cameras installed in the hide windows helps them get used to photographers when they arrive. Waiting at a hide isn't all fun: nothing much happens or the usual regulars just flit in and out for long periods while you sit cramped in drenching humidity and providing mosquitos their meal. Or maybe you just feel it more when the sightings dropped, as happened this afternoon. We did get a nice sundowner from our vehicle on the way back though: not one but three of the generally shy male Green Peafowls, with their loud calls, long tail feathers and blue and yellow face! And as the sun went down, a Great-eared Nightjar was identified by its characteristic two-toned whistle, as was a Brown Boobook which posed close enough for photos.

The musical crescendo whoop and howls of White-cheeked Gibbons resounded through the National Park as we set out next morning. Sure enough, there they were, black males and golden colored females, swinging on all fours through the canopy. When they stopped howling, background score was provided by Green-eared Barbets. We headed back to the hide, hoping to get a sighting of Germain's Peacock Pheasant. When a good motionless hour passed with even the small fry seemingly on vacation mode, I nodded off and threatened to fall off my chair…..the male, exclaimed Nhu! A majestic pheasant with bright red facial skin and large blue markings on its grey feathers, he stayed for a few minutes unperturbed before marching off. As if permission were granted, he was followed by an Emerald Dove, a pair of Lesser Necklaced Laughingthrushes and a female Red Junglefowl. Target accomplished, we moved on from the hide with broad smiles, which got even broader when we noticed a pair of Black-and-red Broadbills building their nest just above the road.

Wow what a bird, exclaimed Mandar Khadilkar, our group leader. He was referring to the Banded Broadbill, with its bright yellow wing bands allied to a mauve body and blue bill. A Great Iora and a Brown-rumped Minivet were ticked off while we spent the next couple of hours trying to locate the Orange-bellied Trogon, whose orange belly glowed like a lantern in the green forest when we finally found him. Coconut water later tasted extra sweet.

A morning drive through the park in an attempt to see the Green Peafowl on its morning constitutional yielded only a couple of skittish peafowls which promptly ran for cover: behavior resulting from centuries of hunting? We settled for sightings of a compact and charmingly patterned Black-and-buff Woodpecker, an Indochinese Cuckooshrike and Vinous-breasted Mynas before driving north to Dalat, atop the Lang Biang plateau at an average elevation of 1500 m. Plantations of pine trees appeared and the temperatures dipped: the birds changed too. Our first stop at Tuyen Lam Lake yielded a sighting of the endemic Vietnamese Greenfinch and close up shots of a beautiful Indochinese Barbet. Swarms of Swinhoe's White-eyes and a couple of Black-collared Starlings swelled the list further. A second stop at Datanla waterfall allowed us to idly photograph Mrs Gould's and Crimson Sunbirds and a Chestnut-vented Nuthatch in good light.

Next morning we drove northeast from Dalat into the dense montane evergreen forest of Bidoup Nui Ba National Park. Overnight rain and an ongoing drizzle made our half hour hike into the forest tricky, and leech socks were mandatory. A hide is the only way to see anything in the thick undergrowth and at least you're dry and can keep birding in the drizzle. White-cheeked Laughingthrushes were numerous, noisy and aggressive but we were much more thrilled to see three critically endangered endemic Collared Laughingthrush. The endemic Black-crowned Fulvettas were easier to identify than the confusingly similar Black-browed and Mountain Fulvettas. A Lesser Shortwing, a Gray Bellied Tesia and a pair of beautifully patterned Rufous-throated Partridges strode daintily in and out. The show stopper however was the Indochinese Green Magpie whose panoply of multiple colors and red beak and legs look like they had been artificially painted on the bird. How we longed for better light for photos!

A second hide adjoining a stream led to a mandatory Slaty-backed Forktail and a White-browed Scimitar-babbler but the Black-headed Sibias were special. A break in the heavy drizzle made us head for lunch; having long heard its frog-like call, we finally got a glimpse of the near-endemic Necklaced Barbet. Lunch over, a heavy downpour and some convenient hammocks at the restaurant meant siesta time, we thought. To our chagrin, Nhu rustled up a raincoat for each of us and bundled us back into the vehicle for a visit to a third hide. You can sleep there if you want, she said! We watched the Indochinese Magpie ad nauseum while he raised his crest and wrangled with a squirrel over the worm bonanza and the White-checked Laughingthrushes were almost like irritating pigeons in a city. The rain didn't seem to bother them one bit, though the no-show of the endemic Black-hooded Laughingthrush was more of a dampener than the rain for us.

Crocia, exclaimed Nhu! We were back by the side of a bottlebrush tree at Datanla where we had come earlier, birds being attracted by the bright red flowers. Within the first twenty minutes of daybreak, we had seen two precious endemics: the Gray-crowned Crocias with vertical belly stripes and the even prettier Vietnamese Cutia with horizontal belly stripes. Nearby a handful of worms managed to entice one more endemic, the furtive Dalat Bush-warbler transiently into the open. Two subspecies, the Dalat White-browed Shrike-babbler and the Langbian Green-backed Tit, followed by a Burmese Shrike and Hill Prinias rounded off a most productive pre-breakfast session.

We grabbed breakfast and strong Vietnamese coffee to-go in a race against the forecast rain, and headed back to a different part of Bidoup Nui Ba NP. And the drizzle started just as we saw a male, female and juvenile Red Crossbill, their uniquely crossed bills ideal for prying seeds out of coniferous cones.

As the drizzle finally gave way to welcome sun, we headed south to lower altitude hill forest south of Di Linh where a different set of birds awaited, but unseasonal showers followed us. Finally the rain stopped: would our luck turn? What followed was possibly the best hide session all week: we were greeted almost on arrival by two lovely Bar-backed Partridges and a Blue-rumped Pitta! The indescribably pretty Blue Pitta followed, first the female and then the male in good enough light for photos and videos! The male stood around for a long time as the light faded and the partridges made periodic cameos into our field of view. This time the smiles on our faces lit up the evening gloom as we returned with empty camera batteries and full memory cards!

On the last morning, a stop before we headed back to Ho Chi Minh City revealed the Red-vented Barbet with its pre-historic appearing massive beak. And like alcoholics longing for just one more drink, we couldn't resist quickly checking out the Blue and Blue-rumped Pittas again at the hide: memory mementos for the return journey.

Vietnam has excellent roads with clean public toilets everywhere and a booming general tourism industry fuelled in part by relatively low costs compared to other Asian destinations. The national parks we visited were well run and seemed secure for wildlife, but the real threat comes from habitat loss outside protected areas due to developmental pressures. The Dalat plateau has sadly lost much of its evergreen forest to pine plantations and expanding farming and housing. The patch of hill forest south of Di Linh where we saw the Blue Pitta was surrounded all around by coffee and other plantations and it may be a matter of a few years before this iconic bird loses its home. One hopes that rising interest in birding and conservation will translate into better habitat protection, which in turn might fuel more nature tourism: a win-win for all concerned.

So dont wait: book your Vietnam birding trip!