At Khao Yai there is a wide variety of animals, I sadly didn’t get much of a chance to photograph them because of time restraints. But where we were staying there was plenty of activity at night time.
After the students and other teachers had gone to bed, we would have a quiet drink and chat downstairs; this is when the animals came out of the surrounding forest. Thankfully, not the tigers or elephants, but sambar deer, porcupines and civets to name a few.
I had stupidly left both my external flashes at home, I couldn’t believe it myself when on the first night I went to grab one to photograph some deer close by. One thing I did get half a picture of was a porcupine. I hadn’t seen porcupines this big. They were very shy and took off pretty quickly.
There were plenty of bugs, beetles, moths and the list went on at night under the lights. This fellow above is the biggest Rhino Beetle I have ever seen. It was smacking into walls, lights and eventually landed on our table.
In Thailand I have watched rhino beetle fights where Thai guys gamble over these animals, they battle on a piece of wood or cane and simply the winner is the one that falls, walks or is thrown off the wood.
Thais will pay a few hundred dollars for beetles and this monster would have been worth a few dollars.
There were plenty of moths flying about as well. Sorry for the colourful one being out of focus, I thought it was just my vision being blurred from a few cold ales on the night.
One thing a little sad was seeing animals that had become tolerant of humans, these sambar deer were close to the coffee shop and were scavenging in the bins. Some other deer were also doing this at our accommodation, eating leftovers from our breakfast, lunch and dinner.
One beautiful animal I had never seen in person before was this hornbill; it turned up the first night we arrived.
The hornbill spent the 3 days we were there eating leftovers when he could. The caterers would clean up and then leave the bins open with all the scraps, the sambar deer, civets, porcupines and hornbill would stop by and have a feed.
The forest has to be full of food for these animals, especially this time of year as it is wet and very green. But it looks like many over the years have realised that an easy feed is found at the accommodation.
It is a 500 Thai baht ($15 Australian dollar) fine for feeding wild animals, this fine is too small but fines in general across Thailand are like this. The rules for the handling and storage of waste needs to be monitored a lot better. If there was stricter monitoring, larger fines I am sure that these animals wouldn’t be hanging around eating out of open rubbish bins.
I do want to go back to Khao Yai, without any students and just be able to go out to the grass plains early in the morning and late in the evening and see the animals in their environment, and photograph them. Also do a trek with a ranger and stay a few nights out in the park would be awesome.
Anyway, something I can try and plan for next year.
Brunty
0 comments:
Post a Comment