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THE BIRDS OF BANGKOK. 
By W. J. F. WILLIAMSON. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In the last number of the Journal, I published a Preliminary 
List of the Birds of Bangkok, and stated that, with the present 
number, I hoped to commence a serial paper giving some account of 
the appearance, habits, etc., of the birds of this locality. 
Comparatively little has been done, up to the present, in the 
way of a systematic study of the birds of Siam. A few local collections 
have been made and some papers issued, the earliest, of which I have 
any record, being Capt. Stanley S. Flower’s Birds of a Bangkok Garden, 
published in The Ibis in the late nineties of the last century. This 
includes 28 birds only, and is of very slight value. ‘The same may be 
said of the list of Siamese birds, numbering 75 species (some of them 
unidentified), given in an appendix to Mr. H. Warington Smyth’s 
Five Years in Siam, published in 1898. The only part of the country 
which has been worked with any degree of thoroughness is the western 
portion of Siamese Malaya, from Trang southward. In 1908 and 1909, 
this district was visited by Messrs. Robinson and Kloss, of the 
Federated Malay States Museums, who published in The Ibis, in 
1910-11, a paper giving a complete list of all the birds obtained or 
observed by them or their collectors.* The paper in question, which 
enumerates some 270 species, is the most important contribution yet 
made to our knowledge of Siamese avifauna. It is to be remarked, 
however, that the area covered by these contributors includes, not only 
Trang, but also the adjacent Langkawi group of Islands, together with 
Perlis and the northern portion of the State of Kedah as far south as 
the mouth of the Kedah river. These places were all Siamese territory 
at the time they were visited, but, before the paper was issued, a large 
part of the area mentioned had passed under British protection by 
* As stated by Messrs. Robinson and Kloss, Trang had been previously 
visited in 1896, 1897 and 1899, by Dr. W. L. Abbott, the well-known 
American naturalist, who formed a magnificent collection of bird-skins. Urfor- 
tunately, however, no full account of this has ever been issued, though a iew 
species have been described. 
