When visited: March 2014. Weather: Hot 25-30C
Found myself here for the weekend and thought I’d do something different from the usual day trip to the Phi Phi islands. Searching for birding sites, the only place near enough for an early morning ramble was the Noppharathara National Park (NNP)which another birder had written about…
7am in aonang…
dawn glow behind the cliff in Aonang
sunrise over aonang
Coming from Aonang town centre, the Aonang Cliff beach Hotel to be precise, where the MacDonalds and Starbucks are located, it’s about 3-4km away from NNP. A motorcycle taxi brought me there for 100bht…. and I started off at the beach…where the longboats were moored..
Noppharathara beach is also a launch point for many boat trips
casuarina alley
The casuarina trees were impressive..but there was not too much birdlife around the beach..sadly no gray capped pigeons as noted by a previous blogger. And so I made my way to the Noppharathara National Park….the entrance was impressive…
Entrance to NNP
Entering the NNP, there are several chalets around and signposts…but all in Thai! I just wandered forward to a large open field from which I saw most of the following birds….
the common yellow vented bulbul
black drongo with forked tail
black drongo with insect in beak..
the biggest common mynahs I’d ever seen..
the uncommon olive winged bulbul
magpie robin adult and juvenile
Long tailed shrike
the always beautiful coppersmith barbet
? female..? juvenile coppersmith barbet
Disappointingly, the NNP was very small and there were lots of little houses beyond the open field and really did not feel like a national park at all! I walked all round and then went to the board walk at one side of the park and tried to find the mangroves without any joy….I asked about a boat trip to check out the mangroves only to be met by blank stares from the boatmen who were more interested in trips to the islands. It was easy enough getting a motorcycle taxi back to aonang.
Dinner first night was at Wang Sai Seafood about 1,5km from aonang..decent fresh seafood but nothing Singapore didn’t have. Second night at Jenna’s on the main road..pretty decent western and thai and reasonable prices.
The Noppharatthara National Park was ultimately a bit of a disapppointment and I think if you are an experienced birder you would find it so. But I think if you haven’t seen the ‘commomer’ birds of South East Asia, then I guess it wouldn’t be a bad place to spend a couple of hours..you’ll certainly see some interesting things!