A weekend bird walk at Ho Tram

A great place for catching up with some of the typical birds of the dry semi-desert areas of coastal southern Vietnam is Ho Tram. Just a couple of hours by road from Saigon there's a very nice resort imaginatively called Ho Tram Beach Resort where I often go with the family for a bit of weekend R&R. Admittedly I do spend a lot of time playing on the water slides and lazing by the pool but I usually manage to tear myself away for an early morning walk or two. Over the road from the resort, a few hundred metres back from the beach the scattered trees, plantations and cultivated areas are full of birds.

In a pre-breakfast stroll last Saturday I notched up a list of 58 species including the rarely recorded Spotted Owlet (thanks to Moray Iles and his dad who'd seen it there the previous weekend for the heads-up on that one). Abundant species here include Barred Buttonquail, Red-wattled Lapwing, Red-collared Dove, Indian Roller, Little Green Bee-Eater, Hoopoe, Plain-backed Sparrow, Australasian and Indochinese bushlarks. Some of the other species seen last weekend were Rufous Treepie, Stork-billed & Collared kingfishers, Asian Golden Weaver and four species of starling. A scarce bird in Vietnam that I didn't see last weekend but have seen on previous visits to Ho Tram is Pale-capped Pigeon. Always worth keeping an eye out for that one.

In the nicely landscaped grounds of the resort typical species include Golden-bellied Gerygone, Pied Fantail, Olive-backed Sunbird, Grey-capped Greenfinch and Plain-backed Sparrow. Zebra Dove which first appeared at Ho Tram just over a year ago in January 2011 is now all over the place and obviously likes it's new home on the Vietnamese Riviera! A nice find in the resort grounds this time was a very smart male Siberian Blue Robin.

Richard Craik

Zebra Dove at Ho Tram Beach Resort

Hi All,

Further to Florian and Simon's reports of Zebra Doves in the vicinity of Vinh Cuu and Cat Tien last year I can now confirm that they have arrived at Ho Tram, 100km or so to the South-East of Saigon. During a pre-Tet beach break there with the family at the weekend I came across several Zebra Doves looking very at home in the casuarinas around the Ho Tram Beach Resort. Although much of the weekend was spent in the swimming pool and on the water slides rather than looking for birds there were plenty of birds around the resort with Plain-backed Sparrows and Grey-headed Greenfinches common in the casuarinas as usual. A list of birds seen on a pre-breakfast stroll around the resort, beachfront and neighbouring scrub and from my sun lounger follows:

Little Heron
Pond Heron species
Eastern Cattle Egret
Little Egret
Kentish Plover
Spotted Dove
Zebra Dove
Plaintive Cuckoo
Asian Koel
White-throated Kingfisher
Little Green Bee-Eater
Common Hoopoe
Golden-bellied Gerygone
Racket-tailed Treepie
Brown Shrike
Olive-backed Sunbird
Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker
White-rumped Munia
Plain-backed Sparrow
Grey-capped Greenfinch
Taiga Flycatcher
Sooty-headed Bulbul
Streak-eared Bulbul
Barn Swallow
Red-rumped Swallow
Common Tailorbird

All the best and chuc mung nam moi etc... to all,

Richard Craik