Giant Ibis

We left Siem Reap travelling to the northeast with our first stop at the Bengal Florican Conservation Area. The florican is a member of the bustard family and is critically endangered. The conservation area uses eco-tourism dollars to get the locals to prevent habitat destruction and protect the florican. A walk through a grassy area got us some spotting scope look at heads poking up in the tall grass, and the occasional distant fly-by of a bird or two. It was enough.

Bengal Florican

Continuing on we stopped at Koh Ker, a 10th century temple with different architecture than we'd seen before. The pyramid as the centerpiece of the temple was over 100 feet tall. There was a constructed stairway allowing visitors to climb to the top. We did, even in the humid near 100F heat.

Our final destination was Tmatboey, a remote northern plains Khmer village within the Kulen Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary, the country’s largest protected area managed by the Ministry of Environment. Tmatboey is one of the two known nesting sites in Asia for the critically endangered Giant Ibis which are threatened by land conversion and habitat disturbance. We had three days to explore the birds and an even more fascinating temple nearby.

The Preah Vihea temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site, situated atop a 525-metre (1,722 ft) cliff in the Dângrêk Mountains. It was the site of much fighting during the Khmer Rouge and also heavily disputed territory with Thailand. The area has seen much change though history.

The Giant Ibis was the star of the birding. It is considerably larger than any other ibis in the world. We were fortunate to see a nest with one adult and a nearly fledged juvenile from long range out of a constructed blind. This video is with my phone through the spotting scope:

I've discovered that Cambodia isn't a destination for bird photography. I've never seen birds so shy to the camera. Perhaps it's because anything alive is potentially dinner around these parts, so animals are extremely wary.  But the birding has been exceptionally great - by the time we left Tmatboey we had piled up a total Cambodia list of 244 species with 46 life birds.

You can look at our Cambodia checklists in eBird from my public profile:

eBird link