Birding rarely gets better; I'd never seen Black Bazas before our fantastic five days raptor-watching on Khao Dinsor, peninsula Thailand (see here, here and here) at the end of October and the start of November, where we were treated to thousands upon thousands of them, migrating above, alongside and below us.
But none were perched, or indeed anywhere near as close as the birds pictured. Again, The Rock provided (see previous, and especially the following, post), and having wandered off to try and get better shots of various Bulbuls in a roving flock, these birds appeared from the forest and landed in the tree right next to me.
A nervous pause followed, during which I fully expected them to take one look at me and sod off over the ridge - on the contrary, they decided on the unexpected and extremely novel choice of completely ignoring me and tucking into their freshly-caught breakfast (see about-to-be-crunched preying mantis in some of these shots).
