I visited Khao Yai again in September 2006 during a weekend stopover in Thailand. The park, which is only 2 hours from downtown Bangkok,
seemed better than I remembered - perhaps there really were fewer people and more
animals, or perhaps moving to Europe from Australia has lowered my expectations. Either way, it was a good weekend.
I used Pa (Panuwat) from Wild Bird Eco as usual to organise my trip, which he did very well. But this time Pa hooked us up with a Khao Yai guide - Nine - who also runs the Green Leaf Tour agency and guesthouse. And Nine was fantastic. He was very knowledgeable about
the birds and mammals, speaks excellent English and is bloody good at finding things. I wanted to see two animals in the park: a Pileated
Gibbon and a Binturong. The former are supposed to be rare in Khao Yai. The
latter are quite common though hard to find.
Nine tracked down a family of Pileated Gibbons without too much trouble.
Their call is distinctive and he knows the territories of the different
groups. Later on that day we saw another male from a different group cross the
road that runs up the mountain.
Binturongs proved trickier. Nine knew the location of several fruiting fig
trees which we visited each day. But no Binturongs. He saw one 2 days after I
left.
We saw quite a few mammals in those 36 hours - White-handed Gibbons are easy to
see each morning. Giant, Variable and Grey-bellied Squirrels are also common,
as are Northern Pig-tailed Macaques, which panhandle along some of the roads near the visitor centre.
Pig-tailed Macaques
In the evening Sambar and Barking Deer are all
around the accommodation blocks and I also spotlit an Malayan Porcupine here. Over the past year or so the soldiers that guard the gate to the radar tower
at the top of the mountain have taken to leaving food scraps out. At 5pm each day they leave a pile of rice just behind the sentry point. We spent an
hour watching a group of Yellow-throated Martens feeding here. These are great animals and it was excellent to be able to watch them so well and for so long. An Asiatic
Black Bear is also a quite regular visitor, though he/she hadn't been seen
for a couple of weeks.
Yellow-throated Martens
At dusk just below the gate some bats streamed across the road. I caught one
in a net to identify it as a Malayan Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus malayanus).
I'd seen this species further south where it was rather more brightly
coloured. Spotlighting from a vehicle is not allowed in the park, other than on one of the official organised - and not very good - tours. I wandered along the road though and saw a Common Palm Civet.
