Yesterday morning we got picked up at the Logde after breakfast for a guided trek to "Crocodile Lake". We travelled down the road a few miles on the back of a truck, the road soon turning into a bumpy dirt track. Our guide was a young bloke not much older than 20. He lead us down a narrow jungle path deep into thick forest. He was good on some birds, but my confidence wavered when he told us a coucal calling from high in the canopy was a moorhen. However, he did find us 2 species of monkey and a brief glimpse of a civet in the trees, so I let him off. Birds very difficult to see in thick forest as usual, but after a couple of hours walking we reached the lake and there was lots to see.

We walked along raised boardwalks to the rangers' station, where the rangers and some Vietnamese visitors were swinging in hammocks and making a heck of a noise. But we sat in their watchtower for an hour or so, and we were very lucky to see a small croc raise it's head above the closest reeds and eat a fish. They're the Siamese crocodile which is almost extinct in the wild, and they've been re-introduced to the lake here. It's a beautiful lake, fringed with reeds and water lilies and surrounded by virgin forest. We saw jacanas, egrets, purple heron, crested serpent eagle soaring overhead, and I think a rufous winged buzzard settling in a tree far over the other side. There was a stunning pair of scarlet backed flowerpeckers in the foliage level with us, tiny shiny blue birds with a vivid wedge of scarlet from their crowns to the rump.

Coming back from the lake we saw an amusing ants' nest - a hole in a bank with what looked like a mud chimney sticking up out of the ground above it. The monkeys we saw on the way out were Northern pig-tailed macaque with short thread-like tails held upright, and the one the guide spotted just before we reached the road again was a black-shanked douc (I think) with a long trailing white tail. The civet was the briefest of glimpses through thick leaves, a bit raccoon-like and quite high up in the canopy. He pointed out flying lizards too, but we didn't see them flying.

Other mammals I should mention we've seen here are Pallas' squirrel with a great bushy and banded tail, and a tiny striped squirrel with a thin tail, a bit rat-like in profile - I haven't worked out yet whether it's Eastern or Cambodian. Can I mention that the Japanese paradise flycatcher we definitely saw on Saturday isn't on the park list and our guide today says they don't occur here? I think we've seen a first!

The same truck took us back to the Lodge. Later in the afternoon we ambled down to the HQ again, birding along the roadside which is much more profitable than deep-forest birding. We booked a river trip for today, then walked back in the twilight and saw lots of Great-eared nightjars coming out of the trees just past a little bridge that's the half-way point along the road. They're huge for nightjars, wingspan must be well over half a metre, and they make a great pip-pee-wooo noise that I managed to record on my phone. I'm getting a great collection of forest noises here.

Dinner was expensive and not really good enough to be worth recording. There's a party of 11 Germans staying here now who sit at their table barely talking at all. I think we're the only guests tomorrow night - that won't be much different.