Just before dusk tonight I noticed hundreds of large birds flying high over the Island heading north. They don't fly in formation but scattered all over the sky.

Apparently they come over every year. A Thai told me a name for them years ago, but I didn't retain it.

 

Anyone know what species they are?

 

 

You sure they weren't bats?

Some on here will say they are fleeing the island due to the expense of living here compared to other places in Thailand. ????

I very much doubt they were migrating birds. Migratory birds usually arrive in November and depart in April, May.

They could have been egrets. Whole flocks of them move from their roost to the feeding grounds in the morning and fly back in the evening.

They weren't egrets. They are many of them in the fields near my place.

 

It's possible they were fruit bats, it was getting dark and hard to distinguish at the height they were travelling. My experience of these bats has been that they are raucous and erratic, but I've only seen them feeding or roosting. These animals were flying quietly and straight in one direction. I now know they do travel long distances at times, so it's possible that is the answer.

Possibly bats. 

 

I've sat in our garden in Rawai watching very large bats (fruit bats) fly over. Last time I saw this was a few months ago, but I'm not checking every day. 

 

The only time bats do this in large numbers is at dusk. 

Defo bats, see them quite often when out on the upstairs balcony at our place in Chalong, flying at different heights, irregular intervals and varied group sizes just on sundown (used to see the same when living in Darwin)