Deepak Rajanna

Southeast Asia has a frustrating pattern: the moment you step out of the forest and into human-inhabited space, the birds vanish. It's jarring if you're used to India, where even a chaotic market in the middle of the busiest cities will have mynas squabbling on the roof and something interesting cutting across the sky if you bother to look up.
Laos kept true to form. Beautiful country, but birdwise — around towns and villages — largely a void. Cambodia, it seems, didn't get the memo. The diversity around human settlements there caught me genuinely off guard. Not just the one-off pigeons, but real variety — birds that made it worthwhile to reach for the camera. At moments it felt nearly as rich as being home in India, which is saying something. These pictures below are from the trip.

We hit Phnom Penh during the Khmer New Year — not particularly conducive to looking at birds. We were too busy getting wet in the celebrations. But quieter pockets still delivered. Museum grounds and similar spaces had enough going on to keep things interesting. There's something satisfying about ticking species in the margins of a trip.

If birding in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap was incidental, in Kirirom it was intentional. Two full days, no other agenda, and the park rewarded our focus.

The big showstoppers were three or four Brown Wood Owls, right in the middle of Siem Reap. If an ecosystem can support that many apex predators in an urban setting, something is clearly going right. It reframed how I thought about Cambodia's birdlife for the rest of the trip. The forests around Angkor Wat added another layer — birds calling from the canopy above ancient stonework is a particular kind of experience. I didn't always have the zoom lens on me, which I'll regret, but what I did get was enjoyable.