Hello Tweeters,

We got back from Thailand over two weeks ago, traveling
through airports where almost everyone of the thousands of people there were
wearing masks to avoid coronavirus. Just three weeks earlier, before
birding started, we had taken a city tour in Bangkok, where we visited the
Grand Palace. Coronavirus was already an issue in China, but in Bangkok,
neither we nor the zillions of other tourists there wore face masks. We
remain concerned about everyone we encountered on our trip!

However, while in Thailand on our birding tour, we mainly
concentrated on birding and were far away from crowds. We were generally in
our van ready to head out at 6 am and didn't return to our hotel until after
dark. The pace for us septuagenarians was grueling. We had already been
told that we were the oldest people on the trip, so we muttered privately,
but were determined to keep going. A plus on this tour, though, is that we
had a team that traveled with us and prepared lovely Thai mid-morning
snacks, with coffee (!), and they prepared hot lunches when we were far away
from restaurants. They also followed us around in the afternoon with more
snacks, cakes, fresh fruit, and the like. Talk about being spoiled. The
food in the hotels where we stayed was also generally very good.



https://www.flickr.com/photos/29258421 at N07/albums/72157713193644983



This is probably also age-related, but the older I get, the
more I like to have a picture of a bird to remind me what I saw. Sometimes
the processed picture, enlarged and brightened a bit, is much better than my
original look at a bird, period. Thus, we always look forward to a chance
to go through whatever images we manage to get on a birding trip. I do use
the pictures to illustrate our ebird lists, but I also enjoy sharing the
final album with those of you on Tweeters. So the link above gets you to
our Thailand birds album. I put a description of the trip at the top of the
album, so I won't repeat it here. There are 200 photos in the album.
Overall on the trip we saw almost 450 birds. Three-hundred and fifty were
lifers!

I always make mistakes in identifying birds. Please, if any
of you spot an error, please don't hesitate to let me know.



Charlotte Byers, Edmonds

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