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Wayne Kerr

Great thread Mo and I am very jealous. I was up there end of 2006. Love the place and studied the work of Seub Nakhasathien many years ago now and was great see the statue of the great man in the park. A few pics of my trip there are here (Wayne Kerr's Isaan Sojourn). The tiger prints you shot are bloody huge .

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mobs00

We get to the Headquarters and I take a look around. This is the original HQ but as it is so far in that a few years ago they moved it to the entrance.







This station is much nicer with about 6 buildings. There are even flushing toilets!







This is our new house for the next couple of days.







The house we stayed in last night was just concrete and tile. Tonight I get to sleep on a wood floor which is actually more comfortable and a whole lot warmer.








So it looks like if I wander off it’s going to be a hell of a long way to anywhere! There is only one road through here and I’m on it. Needless to say, I never went more than a km from camp.







Sompon cooking dinner. Some bushes, roots and a fish he caught with his bare hands were on the menu this evening.

mobs00

We were trying to conserve fuel. It worked great when we were going down hill but on the up the boys found it difficult.

mobs00

Here are some more photos of the headquarters.


















The HQ is in the middle of the jungle. They cleared all the small growth and left the large trees. They did an excellent job designing the layout and the rangers do a great job maintaining it.








This evening I was trying to get some sleep and all this commotion and noise was coming from under the floor. I go outside with my camera and this is what I find. Look at his bulge.





I look under the house and right under where my head was there is this birds nest. Doesn’t take much to figure out what happened.





Seems he left a snack for later though.








I don't know how he did it but there he is climbing vertically up the tree.

mobs00

Tonight we saw the only other group so far in 3 days. The editor on National Geographic Thailand was doing a 2-3 week trip for an upcoming issue on the two parks; Thung Yai and Huai Kha Khaeng. He saw some of Bruce’s work and offered to publish some in the magazine. Bruce is one of the few people who have ever photographed an Asian Tapir swimming in the wild. It will be the cover of his new book to be released within the next month or two.

mobs00

Nice shots. I have yet to go to Huai Kha Khaeng but there may be a future trip within the next month or two.

I have heard rumors that there may still be a herd of elephants in these parks. Now that would be something to see.

Wayne Kerr

Yeah I heard about the herds of elephants in Huai Kha Khaeng, a friend even told me there are a few white elephants amongst them too. I could really use a week or two up there.

sunsetter

great thread, love the pics, green!

Marmite the Dog

Got them in England. One of my sister's boyfriends hit one once at about 70mph. Made a right mess of the car and the deer.

Rascal

Ashame no wildlife pictures, but very awesome for certain.

mobs00

I can’t believe I forgot this one. Here is a video I took at the spot where I saw the barking deer. Turn your speakers up and listen to all the sounds. Enjoy.


YouTube - Thung yai



Maybe an admin could link this directly to this post/thread????

mobs00

Yeah I know. It really isn't as easy as it seems to get good shots of animals even in a jungle that is full of them. Waiting and looking for animals reminded me a lot of hunting. I did have "buck fever" when the baking deer walked up on me. The adrenaline rush, shaking, and sweats, not to mention fear of not knowing exactly what was coming.

Bruce in fact was always a hunter here in Thailand. About 15-20 years ago he was out with Wade in Sai Yoke and shot his first Gaur. It was huge. Something happened then and he has since only hunted with his camera. He has made it his mission to preserve the flora and fauna of Thailand through his books because soon it will be gone.

Mathos

This is a great thread, the area is superb territory and you are covering the same well.

How did your strategically placed cameras do in general, anything interesting?


Well done, excellent work green en route.

mobs00

Thung Yai HQ – June 14, 2007









Today I actually got to sleep in and as a bonus I took a dump in a toilet instead of a bucket. I think I woke up around 7am.




I looked around camp and found a small stream out back.







I followed the stream and must have spooked a deer as I heard loud crashing coming down the hill from my left, splashing in the stream and more crashing up the other side towards my right.





I walked for what seemed like 2kms and didn’t see much but a few birds. At this point I was starting to get a bit nervous and thought maybe I should head back and follow the stream to camp. I pushed forward though and about 100 meters from there I came to the road.







So I am now standing on this road in the middle of the jungle. Do I go left.......








or do I go right? We have chains on the tires that leave distinctive marks on the road. I looked around and thought I saw them but then again??? Maybe not???









I rolled the dice and took the trail to the left and after about a km I made it back to the camp.

mobs00

Thanks. This time the camera traps didn't produce much; some civets, barking deer and Sambar. We set up traps this time for tiger, gaur and tapir along trails with signs from them, there were a couple of gaur shots but nothing usable.

On previous trips he has camera trapped tiger, leopard, gaur, water buffalo, bantaeng, elephant and tapir.

mobs00

I got back and we ate breakfast. After this a ranger is going to take us to a large mineral lick/lake.








They built this brand new bridge. It was still shiny and green when we got there.




It was a ways down if you fell.




This if the trail through the jungle to the lick. It is just another game trail trampled down by herd of cattle or deer.





This is the biggest mineral lick I have seen so far but I am told there are much bigger ones in the park. They are everywhere and I am sure most are unknown deep in the jungle. There is animal tracks and sign everywhere. Mostly from herds of Gaur.






We set Bruce up in his blind and then went off to set up another camera trap on a game trail.




The camera trap is on the tree to the right. These game trails are massive. Look how wide it is from left to right. They think the herd of Gaur here is about fifty strong.






We then head back to camp leaving Bruce there till after dusk. The boys will go get him later. Notice the trail we took on the other side of the riverbank.

mobs00

The boys went to get Bruce and they all came back and we had dinner.


As Charlie was washing the dishes outside he all of sudden came back with a ghostly look on his face and said he heard something. He was scared to death! I wish I would have taken a photo then but missed my chance.




Here’s Charlie! He kind of looks like a bare knuckle boxer from the 20’s, minus about 100 pounds.






We set up a couple of flashes and waited around. Turns out it was just a civet, but exciting none the less. It was the first time I got to see one and it came right up to the house looking for food. It must have been pretty close to Charlie as they didn’t spook easily. I didn’t get a photo but Bruce did. There were quite a few around camp that night and we could here them fighting with each other. This is a photo I pulled off the net.

mobs00

Thung Yai – June 15, 2007

This is the last day of my trip. It was the most amazing thing I have ever done.

We arrived back to the ranger station where we spent out first night.







The rangers tell us they have found sign from Tapir and Tiger just 200 meters from camp. We followed them to the spot next to a stream. I wandered around and found some Tapir tracks on the other side.






This strangler fig was enormous and had so many things living on it. It was like it had its own mini ecosystem.




We did our final packing and I had a chance to take a few more photos. This is when I took my most famous photo. (see below)







The road out was a bit rough going.






We stopped near the exit to wash the truck down.






Good as new.






This is a pic of our group, Bruce, myself, Say, Sompon, Charlie and Wade.








I found this average looking butterfly near the first camp and took a couple of shots of it. Little did I know this would be my first published photo. Bruce decided to put 3 of my pics in his new book. He calls me up one day to say he liked the shot of my butterfly. He then told me the name of my first published photo; it’s a “Pansy Butterfly”. WTF. I thought he was joking and wouldn’t believe it till I looked it up on the net and there it was: Junonia lemonias, commonly know as the Lemon Pansy Butterfly.

mobs00

So that was my trip. I have a few more photos I need to find and will post them in the coming weeks.

As a side note: I was shooting with two cameras. A canon powershot SD630, which I used to take all the photos posted here so far and a Canon Digital SLR. I have yet to organize the photos from the DSLR as it belongs to Bruce and I have b