That's my favorite place in Suanluang Rama 9 Park, Bangkok, Thailand. It's called a swamp on the map of the park but it looks more like a swampy lake. There are charming napa palm trees hanging low over slimy water,
and aerial roots of mangrove trees like filament curtains hiding nooks and crannies of this little watery world,
and dense thickets of grass, vines, and ferns form impenetrable thickets along a grassy part of the shore.
And even though this corner of nature is located within a park, there is not much fakeness in it. For example, like in the real jungle, you will be brutally bitten by mosquitoes and red ants. 😀
But local turtles are different.
These guys know that a figure on the shore means food. If you linger at a place convenient for turtles, they will begin to appear from the water one by one.
This happened to me when I was taking images of this scenery with napa palm tree fruits, at a relatively long exposure having put the camera on the pier.
Suddenly I noticed that something emerged from the water.
Her claws were so beautiful that my heart sank because I did not have a treat for this beauty.
These are perhaps yellow-headed temple turtles (Heosemys annandalii). I spotted a pond slider (Trachemys scripta) as well.
There are other residents there as well.
I used to walk on this pontoon bridge during past visits to Thailand but, today, it is closed to people. Here is a place of showdown between monitor lizards (Varanus salvator)
and a fishing place for herons of Ardeola genus.
Another similarity with wild jungles is that the local birds do not allow you to approach them. Even with my telephoto 70-300mm, it was difficult to reach this heron.
The lake is especially beautiful at the sunset.
The tropics become even more tropical, the gurgling of muddy water and flapping of the wings of evening birds become clearer, and mosquitoes don't give a stranger rest at the hour when dusk falls.
I was paying extra attention to birds this time. Especially, to a colorful one they call coppersmith barbet (Psilopogon haemacephalus). I heard its voice just a moment ago.
Its song is easy to remember, it sounds like a bomb countdown. 😀 And it resembles cuckoo's voice...
Birdwatching is my new mission!
I found nor coppersmith barbet, neither a kingfisher that evening. But it was only my third day in Thailand, everything was and is ahead.
My posts on pinmapple.com
I took the images with a Nikkor 70-300mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on February 2, 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand.
