As promised, this is the second and third installment of Kaeng Krachang – combined!
Turns out, I did not have as many blog worthy photos of critters to make an entire post on its own, so everything other than butterflies will go in this post.
As you can see from this very simplistic map attached, all the intersections and trails we visited are along the bird watching trails.
Here are some environmental photos to show you how popular the place is.
This is a photo taken at the first intersection.
This is Antonio and Nelson getting acquainted with the butterflies at the second intersection.
The second intersection sees the most visitors. Look at the numbers of parked cars:
These is one of the puddling butterfly groups we encountered at the third intersection.
I would say the second intersection is very popular. It was also at the intersection that our own butterfly celebrity Les Day (and the rest of us less popular butterfly enthusiasts) bumped into a shirtless Dr Ian Redmond (below, right), whom I had mistaken for yet another Caucasian male who had decided to take on the Thai forest and its biting inhabitants without a shirt after visiting the beach. As it turned out (Les explained), Dr Ian Redmond is a conservationist who has been in the field for 30 years, is a champion for gorillas and needs no introduction. He has a wikipage here. You can stalk his page on Facebook here.
Unfortunately, out of the group, only Les managed to recognise him. The rest of us spend too much time listening to David Attenborough’s soothing voice on DVD, reading C&P4 and had no access to BBC. However, judging from Les’ reaction, we decided in our herd mentality that he must be famous and proceeded to take group photos with him like fanboys and girls. 
Dr Ian Redmond was travelling with a group who for all you know, might have done conservation work and were just as knowledgeable. However, since Les didn’t recognise the others, we decided that we didn’t know better either and continued pursuing the relentless butterflies. We lodged at Samarn Bird Camp while we were shooting at Kaeng Krachan. Click here for more information.
Forgive the childish photo-combo design. It looked good on my phone and seemed like a good idea at the time
Samarn birdcamp has hot showers, acceptable food and airconditioning. If you didn’t go anywhere you wouldn’t think you were here to rough it out in the Thai National Park. Our hosts were really friendly and accommodating and their dogs were super friendly and ‘adopted’ us with so much as a pat on the head.
Hoffe, the dog with only three paws, zonking out near the kitchen
Samarn Bird Camp is very popular with birders (of course) and they make trips out daily early in the morning.
On to the non-butterfly critters… the below is one of the creatures on LC’s and Nelson’s agenda:
Lantern Bug
This Lantern Bug was spotted on the same tree where I found my Blue Begum discreetly perched just behind. The bug maintained a good height throughout the day (the time that we were there) which we thought was odd because some of the ones we had encountered tended to come down lower during the early morning hours. We tried several means to photograph this Lantern Bug, including piling up dead logs to climb up on and once, even sitting on Nelson’s shoulders just to get closer to the critter.
We also encountered a very shiny tiny jumping spider (Salticidae).
We also came across this very slow moving colourful bug with what looked like Chinese pom-poms on its feelers. Like the horned beetle, this bug took a long time to get ready to take off, gradually opening its wings intermittently and psyching itself to fly away. And when it did, it mustered nothing more than a metre’s distance!
The most intriguing creature we encountered was this clear winged moth. The moth came by on two occasions at the second intersection. It had a habit of perching its front legs on an object and while hovering, wave its hairy back legs rhythmically like it was riding an invisible bicycle.
We had the good fortune of managing to photograph some interaction between butterfly and some of these interesting characters:
Unfortunately when butterflies are in such numbers, most of such encounters are of the macabre type:
I did see several skinks make off with some of the smaller butterflies. Ants did the same and some bees were not spared either (as above).
Tiny butterflies especially were easy pickings but they were in such huge numbers too.
Kaeng Krachan is one of the places you have to visit if you’re a butterfly enthusiast! 🙂 So what are you waiting for?
Butterfly Effect 