Birds at Chiang Mai Area

When we were at Doi Inthanon, we could hear bird chirps all round but could barely see any due to the dense leaves in the trees and of course birds' camouflages when they perch on tree branches and between leaves. 

bird chirp on the Kew Mae Pan nature trail

However we did see a few birds in the flight between trees or branches, and managed to capture one bird highlighted at the trailhead - green tailed Sunbird,  on my camera. The green tailed sunbirds are tiny, colorful and restless. We saw them several times, and eventually one of them perched on a branch for a minute or so, I finally took a few photos of it. 

green tailed Sunbird

Interestingly, we saw more birds at the garden house hotel we stayed than in the mountain. The garden  house is truly in a large garden, with a few cabin houses, a pond, many tall trees, some blooming plants and bushes, few people.

The garden House Hotel near Doi Inthanon National Park

The most unique and elegant bird we saw was a black crested bulbul, perching on a branch, near a light colored full blossom. 

a black crested bulbul

There are also whiskered bulbuls, just like what we saw in Singapore.

whiskered bulbul at Chiang Mai old city

There are a few birds that are similar to what I saw before but actually are different species. 

We saw several orioles in the garden - initially mistaken them as black-naped orioles, but turned out to be black hooded oriole  after I zoomed in on the photos! Both orioles have a bright yellow plumage with black color on the head and tail. The black hooded oriole has a black head  and throat, like wearing a black hood, the black-naped oriole has only a strip of black across its eyes from front to  back.

A black hooded oriole

There is at least one more different species of bird  there - crested myna from its Singapore cousin mynas.

a crested Myna

During a breakfast by the pond at the garden house, a tiny bird was hopping around in bushes, from its chirping I suspected that it was an ashy tailorbird. After zoom-in on the picture, it turned out to be a different tailorbird - dark necked tailorbird, both of them are tiny, and have a reddish head. The main difference in appearance between them is the color of plumage - ashy tailorbird is brownish, the dark necked tailorbird is greenish with dark neck or dark throat. As we looked around, a big bird flew in, and landed at a dried up manmade waterfall, I took a picture of it, and it moved a few steps forward and disappeared behind the stones. After breakfast, believing that the bird was resting behind the stones, I walked to where it was, and the big bird was there resting, my footsteps on dry leaves startled it, it flew away. It tuned out that there was an inground water tank there!

A bit further away from the pond, a oriental magpie robin was resting on tree branch after it caught an insect for breakfast, and a streaked Wren-Babbler was foraging in bushes. A couple of other birds I saw at the garden house were common kingfishers and greater racket tailed Drongo.

dark necked tailorbird  - can you see? it has a reddish head

A heron 

An oriental magpie robin with breakfast in its beak

Streaked Wren-Babbler

a common king fisher on a powerline

greater racket tailed Drongo

There are plenty of flowers and fruits in the garden, a perfect environment for birds to live. Since we were the only guests at the garden house during our stay, so we had all the garden for ourselves, thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful place, the tranquility and nature,

Doi Inthanon

Doi Inthanon, or Mountain Inthanon, is the tallest mountain (2565 meters high) in Thailand, located in northern Thailand, about 1 hour drive away southwest to Chiang Mai. Inthanon refers to the last King of Chiang Mai.

Summit

The mountain has many type of forests, near the summit, the cloud rainforest, lower elevations pine forest and mixed forest. The summit of Doi Inthanon is relative flat and covered by rainforest; from the summit, we can not see surrounding mountains, even not the lower slopes of the mountain. There is a short boardwalk trail through the rainforest around the summit area and a small monument - King Inthawichayanon's Stupa.

We got to the summit around 9:30 am. It was cool, 10C, the surroundings were clear of smoke and the sky was blue above our head. Sunlight shone through the dense forest, bird chirped all around, it was a great time to be there.

The summit of Doi Inthanon

King Inthawichayanon's Stupa

topography of Doi Inthanon

Kew Mae Pan Trail

Many trails are short, but there are a handful long trails. We picked Kew Mae Pan nature trail, the acclaimed most beautiful trail in Thailand, its trailhead is about 400 meters lower than the summit elevation. The trail is a ~ 2 mile long loop, with an elevation change of 138 meters, portion of it is pretty steep. 

The first  mile ascends to the Kew Mae Pan viewpoint, the highest point of the trail,  it passes through a cloud rainforest, with crossing with a creek and a small water fall. Before reaching the viewpoint, the last 100 meter or so of the first mile is in an open meadow.  The grasses in the meadow were brownish due to the dry hot season, but still lively, they swayed in the breeze with chirping birds flying over.

A small water fall by the trail

            

the open meadow near the Kew Mae Pan viewpoint

the Kew Mae Pan trail - started tracking late

The viewpoint has a panorama view of the area west to Doi Inthanon. Unfortunately we could not see far due to smoke at lower elevation. The middle 1/3 of the trail, is on the west facing slope of Doi Inthanon, the trail is narrow, and descending. There is a big rock seemingly out of place with its surroundings. White and Red wild flowers dotted the trail, and slopes. 

A short detour allowed us to see the twin pagodas -  Pagoda Noppamethanedon & Pagoda Nopphonphusiri.

The chorus of birds accompanied us almost all the time, which made the hike so much more pleasant.

An out-of-place rock on west slope of Doi Inthanon

a zoom in of the rock

The Kew Mae Pan viewpoint is at the very top of the mountain in this photo

Pagoda Noppamethanedon & Pagoda Nopphonphusiri

the lookout for the Pagodas

Smoke blocked the views of surrounding mountains

Water Falls

Doi Inthanon has many waterfalls at lower elevations, we went to 4 of them. The most famous of them all is the Mae Klang waterfall. This is a beautiful waterfall, with two cascading falls. There is also a trail by the canyon. We hiked on the trail, and got close to the upper fall. 

Interestingly there was nobody there except us at the waterfall. It turned out that local vacationers actually rented shelters by the creek downstream, they enjoyed the water in the shade of shelters under trees along the creek, while kids were playing in the stream.

Mae Klang Waterfall

zoom in of the lower fall

Another desolated water fall is Siriphum waterfall, again we were the only people there at the waterfall. We could view the waterfall much better on the road to the waterfall than at the official viewpoint of the waterfalls. There is a beautiful tropical garden at the official viewpoint of the waterfall, but we could not see the waterfall itself from there due to dense vegetations. We found a trail going uphill, and through it we hiked to the bottom of the second waterfall cascade. 

Strangely we saw many hoses on the ground and across the creek. Were they used to divert the water from the water falls? Were they used to pump water to the top of waterfall to make water running during dry season? It seemed to be former. 

viewing of Siriphum Water from the creek downstream

Siriphum Waterfall - viewed from the road

The other less visited waterfall is Sirithan Waterfall. The reason for less visitation was due to the closure of waterfall viewing platform for repair. We hiked down 40 meters from where the platform is. The unofficial trail was very steep, 70 degree slope. The hiking was treacherous, but the views and tranquility at the bottom of the waterfall made it worthwhile. 

started tracking on the creek bed

viewing of the waterfall from the creek bed 

The waterfall cascade is visible from the viewing platform 

The most visited waterfall was Wachirathan Waterfall. In addition strong water flow there, another reason for the high number of visitors was that the parking lot is only 30 meters away from the waterfall. There is a trail starting from the bottom of the waterfall, and going downstream 100 meter or so where the trail is blocked due to safety concerns. This is a beautiful waterfall, with good amenities. We had an ice cream break after the short hike.

We enjoyed visiting and hiking at Doi Inthanon. 

A season without smoke and heat should have made it 100 times better.

Notes

1. Doi Inthanon national park has fees for entrance

2. Kew Mae Pan Nature trail requires hiring of local guide (200 Bhats) for each visiting group - this helps igneous people economically and let them get the benefits of conservation. 

Playing with Elephants

We had a fun interaction with a family of three female elephants at a family elephant sanctuary south to Chiang Mai. We were the only visitors to the sanctuary in the morning and were pampered by the tour guide and had unlimited time to interact with the elephants - feeding and walking to woods.

The three elephants 

The sanctuary has three related elephants, all female, grandma, mama and daughter. The elephants are Asian elephants, which typically don't have tusks, only some male Asian elephants have tusks. The young female elephant has a pair of small tusks, called tushes. As it get older, her mouth becomes bigger, and the tushes may not be visible later.

The sanctuary is located on the slope of a mountain, and close to a creek.

The tour guide, also the owner of the sanctuary, is a young Kirin people ( a minority in Thailand), who speaks English pretty well, and has a temporary volunteer helper Dave from United States.

He is very knowledgeable about the elephants. He told us how to tell an elephants age.

Younger elephants have more hairs on their heads than old elephant. They don't have the spots on their ears - as elephants age, the color of their ears edge turn to light color, leaving speckles or spots on the edge of the ears, as we can see from the first photo of the three elephants. The one in the front is the youngest elephant - it still has quite some hairs on her head, and not speckles on the years. The second elephant is the oldest, grandma, it has the most spots on its ears. 

Another interesting fact is that elephants have holes between mouth and ears. They are glands for emitting hormone. They are more visible in mating season, especially for male elephant - the discharge is called "musth". Looking carefully, we see two domes on these elephants' heads - that is a characteristic of Asian elephants. African elephants have one one dome, so do Sapiens.

The elephants are vegetarians - they eat plants, trees, grasses, ... corn stalks are nice food to them, and corns are gourmet food. When we visited they were fed with corn stalks. 

We were given bags of corns to feed the elephants, and the elephants could never get enough of them. They eat over 200kg of food per day!

feeding corns to the elephants with tour guides Show and Dave looked on 

These elephants are gentle giants, but we were reminded not stand behind them. 

One interesting observation, elephants are slow, but can locate a corn using their long nose wherever we place it, as long as we are patient to wait for them to locate it.

Another interesting observation is that we could not tell the difference in size by looking at the elephants separately until they stand side by side. Their two domes on the head are also more obvious if we look at it from the front.

After over an hour feeding, and chatting with tour guides, we walked in the woods with the elephants.

The elephants were led by their keepers, each elephant has one keeper, called Mahout. The mahouts basically use food, corn stalks in this case, to coax them away from the shelter, and into the woods. Once they were into the woods, I could safely walk by them, or in front of them.

The last activity was bathing with elephants in the creek. It was a lot of fun - washing elephant and elephant spraying water at us, I also got a few elephant kisses!  We stayed in the creek for 15 minutes before heading back to the shelter. As soon as they got back to the shelter area, the freshly showered elephants started to spray dirt onto their bodys!

No elephant ride, but no line to wait, more intimate time with the elephants, we had a great time at this family elephant sanctuary.

giving elephant a bath

people were bathing downstream!

A kiss from the baby elephant

Spray dirt on themselves right after shower

Notes 

The last time we visited Phuket, Thailand, we did not got a chance to visit elephant sanctuary because we did not know that we needed to make appointment/reservation ahead of time.