Coral-billed Ground Cuckoo

Birding tours in Khao Yai

Birding tours in Khao Yai national park

Tour description in short

Location of Khao Yai national park on the map of Thailand

Our birding tours in Khao Yai national park are available as daytrips or multi-day tours. The tours will be completely focused on Khao Yai's amazing birdlife.

On these tours we explore the park by car and make stops throughout the park in different habitats, at fruiting trees, or stake-outs for specific species. Normally not a physically demanding trip.


Why our birding tours?

With over 400 bird species recorded, Khao Yai national park is a great location to visit. Some great birds include Siamese Fireback, Silver Pheasant, Coral-billed Ground Cuckoo, Red-headed Trogon, Eared Pitta, Blue Pitta, Long-tailed Broadbill, 4 species of hornbill including the stunning Great Hornbill and the rare Austen's Brown Hornbill, and the list goes on and on. What more do we need to add?

Khao Yai is easy to reach from Bangkok and has plenty of good facilities. And besides the stunning birdlife, there is a good chance to add some amazing bonus mammals too!



Click the following button to contact us, or continue reading, below.

Tour package summary

Activities

  • Birding
  • Safari drive(s)
  • Jungle walk(s)
  • Viewpoint(s)

Tour details

  • 1- or multiday tour
  • Private tour
  • 2000 - 7200 Baht (per person)
  • Difficulty level: Easy to moderate

What's included?

  • Entrance fees
  • Expert birding guide (English)
  • Transport
  • Lunch
  • Drinking water
  • Leech protection socks
Red-headed Trogon
The stunning Red-headed Trogon fairly commonly seen on our birding trips in Khao Yai national park
A Great Hornbill male taking off.
A Great Hornbill male taking off. A common sight on our birding tours in Khao Yai.

Tour itinerary

Here follows the itinerary of our birding tours in .
Note: We can organize both daytrips and multi-day tours.

Day 1 (06:30 to ±18:00)

Typically, our birding tours don't follow a standard itinerary. You may have specific target species. You might prefer to spend more time getting the best possible photograph, or you rather watch birds through your binoculars. Maybe you wish to watch a specific behavior for an extensive time, or you rather see as many species as possible. With the total number of days you are spending in the park in mind, our expert birding guide will factor this all in when deciding which spots to visit and which activity is most likely to be fruitful. Our guide will try for the best to get the most out of your birding trip based on your preferences.

Generally speaking, our birding tours are not physically demanding. We travel across the park by car to explore various habitats, visit fruiting trees, and stake-outs. Sometimes it includes just waiting on a spot, or walking along the road or on trails in the jungle.

Siamese Fireback male in Khao Yai
Siamese Fireback male posing in Khao Yai national park.

Bird photographers might prefer waiting an extensive time on a spot to get the perfect shot. Please, share with us in advance about such preferences in the correspondence prior to your booking. As well as your target species, in case you have any.

Between all the birding we will lunch around midday at one of the park restaurants.

The stunning Orange-headed Thrush in Khao Yai.
The stunning Orange-headed Thrush is a winter visitor in Khao Yai.

At the end of the day you will be returned to your hotel or your taxi if you continue your travels to your next destination right after the tour.

Wreathed Hornbill male flying up close in Khao Yai
Wreathed Hornbill flying up close. The second largest of the four hornbill species in Khao Yai.

Extra information about the national park

Two young Buffy Fish Owls in Khao Yai
Two young Buffy Fish Owl in Khao Yai.

Khao Yai national park lies at just 2.5 - 3 hours northeast of Bangkok and is easily accessible.

Our tours start from Pak Chong, a town to the north of the park. And we are able to organize transfers from Bangkok, and other places.

The park is open all year round, and our tours can take off every day of the year. But booking in advance is recommended!

For information on the best time of the year to visit the park, and for more of our tours in Khao Yai, click here.

Blue-eared barbet in Khao Yai
The Blue-eared barbet one of the most colorful barbets found in Khao Yai.

How much does a tour cost?

These are the rates (per person, per day) for our birding tour package based on your group size. Followed by a list of what is included. And feel free to check out our other packages in Khao Yai, below.

Group size: Rate per person:
1 Person 7200 Baht
2 People 3800 Baht
3 People 3200 Baht
4 People 2700 Baht
5 People 2400 Baht
6 People 2250 Baht
7 People 2100 Baht
8 People 2000 Baht
Age: Reduction:
4 to 12 years -200 Baht
0 to 3 years free

What's included?

  • Entrance fees
  • Expert birding guide (English)
  • Transport
  • Lunch
  • Drinking water
  • Leech protection socks

Other tours in Khao Yai national park

We'd love to hear from you


For any enquiries or quotation requests, please, use this contact form.

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Reviews of the Birding tours in Khao Yai

Our guests have rated us 4.6 out of 5 stars (5 reviews)!

  • 5.

    Name: , Czech Republic

    Tour: Birding tours in Khao Yai

    Tour date: 15 Nov 2023

    Rating:  

    Here is a draft review for the ornithologist guide Alex: We had a fantastic birdwatching experience in Khao Yai National Park thanks to our guide, Alex. We hired Alex for three days to help us spot and photograph the park's elusive bird species, and his expert guidance proved invaluable. Alex has an incredible depth of knowledge about the local birds and their habits. He knew all the best hides and vantage points to stake out, often spotting camouflaged birds that the untrained eye would completely miss. His unflappable style and tenacious searching revealed birds for us that we never would have found on our own, which allowed us to get some truly wonderful photos. The density of birds is not high in the park and many species are very shy, so having Alex's expertise was crucial. He took us to productive spots and waited patiently for the birds to emerge. His enthusiasm was contagious - when he did spot something, his excitement motivated all of us. I can't recommend Alex highly enough to any birder or photographer looking to maximize sightings and photo opportunities in Khao Yai National Park. His skill, experience, and commitment to finding every bird made our trip a huge success. With Alex's guidance, even novice birders will come away with sightings they never expected thanks to his keen eyes and deep knowledge of the local avifauna.

    Tontan Travel wrote:

    Dear Peter,

    Thank you for your review. We are happy to hear you had a great birding trip with guide Alex. We are very happy to have him in our team.

    It's great to hear that once again he has done his very best to get the most out of your trip.

    Thank you for booking with us!

  • 4.

    Name: , Thailand

    Tour: Birding tours in Khao Yai

    Tour date: 25 Feb 2018

    Rating:  

    I and my wife enjoyed beautiful forest and birds in Khao Yai NP with guiding of Mr.Jay. It was really lucky to have seen a colorful Trongos through telescope in deep forest and flying a couple of Great Hornbill. Also have seen many birds such as Bee-eater, Bulbul, Barbet, Roller, Coucal, Lapwing, Egret, Heron and so on. Next time we will try to spot elephant and gibbons. Thank you so much for good arrangement.

  • 3.

    Name: , United Kingdom

    Tour: Birding tours in Khao Yai

    Tour date: 16 Nov 2016

    Rating:  

    Thank you so much for a wonderful visit to Khan Yai National Park. Our guide Nang, was brilliant.
    Her English was excellent and we got on so well during our 3 day trip. She was so knowledgable on the birds and animals of the park, she seemed to know every inch of the park and was determined that we saw as much as we could.
    A wonderful memory!

    Thank you

    Tontan Travel wrote:

    Thanks Leslie for your guestbook entry.
    Much appreciated!
    And glad to hear you had a great trip with Nang.
    If you ever decide to return to Thailand you know where to find us ;-)

  • 2.

    Name: , Singapore

    Tour: Birding tours in Khao Yai

    Tour date: 03 Jan 2015

    Rating:  

    Hi Tony & Tan,

    We are back in Singapore and still thinking at this wonderful tour we did with Nang (I m not sure if you write her name like this..)
    She was just perfect. We did admire her capacity to find birds and show them to us. My husband who is the most used to look for birds was really impressed.
    She was so kind with the kids also and wanted everybody to enjoy the tour.

    Vegan meal was no problem at all she managed this very well and we did eat tasty and good the whole tour. We only didn't understand that we will sit outside on the car so we had not enough warm clothes, but she did lend us a jacket and a pullover when we traveled on the car.
    The driver we had the two first days was also very kind especially with my 8 years old son so I was able to let him with the driver some times when he didn't want to come with us any more in the afternoon.

    Can you please ask Nang to send me the photo she took from my children with the elephant? I want to show this to our family and our friends.

    We really loved our stay at Khao Yai an we will warmly recommend you to all our friends. I will also rate you on trip advisor with the maximum of stars.
    Thank you so much for the planing of this tour!!!!

    Best regards
    Angelika

    Tontan Travel wrote:

    Thanks for your reply Angelika!

    Good to hear you had a great trip with Nang.
    Our apologies that it was not clear you would be sitting in an open-air car. But we think we did mention in one of the emails to bring a warm sweater. We understand that people do not expect it to get cold in a country like Thailand. Hope nobody caught a cold ;)

    We will ask Nang to sent the photo of the kids with the elephant.

    Also, thanks in advance for writing on Trip advisor. However, there is no page about our company :( . For some reason they don't want to add us which probably has to do with their regulations that say that tour operators organizing multi-day private tours are not added to their website. Don't ask me why, haha; and yes we know they are not consistent, because there are definitely companies on trip advisor that offer similar services in different areas. However, some of our guests have written a review mentioning our company on the general page about Khao Yai National park. So that would be an option.
    We will try it again to add our business untill they get bored with us and stop rejecting it, haha.

    If you ever decide to come back to Thailand, just let us know!

    Kind regards,
    Tony & Tan

  • 1.

    Name: , Belgium

    Tour: Birding tours in Khao Yai

    Tour date: 25 Dec 2013

    Rating:  

    Ton en Tan,

    net terug voor oudejaar in België maar allereerst een woordje van dank voor de goeie begeleiding tijdens mijn trip met jullie in de laatste week van december 2013 in Khao Yai NP. Jullie hielpen mij bijzonder in het spotten van de verschillende vogels en dieren ( Ton is reeds een ervaren spotter, Tan is goed op weg !), en hadden veel begrip voor de moeilijkheden die een amateur fotograaf soms heeft om hiervan een mooi plaatje te nemen ( als de vogel ondertussen uiteraard niet gaan vliegen is ...). Gecombineerd met een paar dagen Bangkok , was dit voor mezelf en mijn echtgenote een ideale combinatie voor een weekje erop uit ( cultuur + natuur + culinaire verwennerij).

    Een tip voor reizigers die dit willen overdoen : in december in Khao Yai kan het verdomd koud zijn ( 5 graden 's morgens in een open wagen valt niet mee!)

    Veel succes met jullie opzet in 2014
    Met vriendelijke groeten
    Luc

    Great Hornbill
    Oriental Pied Hornbill
    Orange breasted Trogon

    Tontan Travel wrote:

    Beste Luc,

    Bedankt voor je bericht in ons gastenboek.
    We hebben vanalles mooise gezien, helaas bleef niet alles netjes poseren voor de foto, maar het moet ook niet te makkelijk zijn, haha.

    We hebben een mooie lijst aan vogels gezien zoals Zilverfazant, Siamese Vuurrugfazant, Groenkop- en Roodkop Trogons, neushoornvogels, 3 soorten ijsvogels, visuil, 3 soorten breedbekken, baardvogels, Siamese Grondkoekoek, diverse vliegenvangers waaronder de Mugimaki, Damalijster, Witkeelrotslijster, en nog heel wat meer.

    Het was voor ons ook leuk om even met de Nikon 200-400mm lens te mogen spelen ;).

    Wij wensen je nog een mooi jaar toe met hopelijk nog vele mooie fotokansen!

    Gelukkig nieuwjaar ook aan Martine & Bram!,
    Tan & Ton

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