Siem Reap Bird Watching, Bird Sanctuary

There are 2 potential places where you can visit Cambodia rare endangered bird sites; 1. Boeung Pearaing & 2. Chreav Village of Tomnup 78. Both provide excellent friendly half day of bird watching tours, learn from your experienced local tour guides about many species of water/forest birds including: Comb Duck, Purple Swamphen, Comoran, Darter, Purple and Grey Heron, Adjutant, Lesser Whistling Duck, Black Headed Ibis etc. Learn from your tour guide and get to know how those birds are being protected and how Chreav community gets involved with local people to develop a better system of education in the order deliver a last long project relevant to the bird zones. These offer a great opportunity to tourists who love to see friendly birds and love photographing spectacular pictures of colorful birds.

Boeung Pearaing is more further out, situates at the shore of Tone Sap lake, 12km from central town of Siem Reap. You will be admired by charming rice paddies and come across some birds in the fields. The best time to visit Boeung Pearaing is from January to April. The only way to explore the birds is by taking a boat which takes approx 1.30 – 2 hours, depends on how you like it.

Chreav Village of Tomnup 78 is about 8km from Siem Reap town, available from November to December & May to July due to those birds generally migrate out of Boeung Pearaing to other sites of Tonle Sap’s mangroves (mainly to Prek Toal) but you won’t see as many as birds like Boeung Pearaing. This is a guided walking tour on the rice fields, see beautiful landscapes, animals and rural activities.

Alternative: Prek Toal Bird Reserve
Prek Toal is one of the most important conservative breeding areas for the large threatened water-birds within Tonle Sap biosphere reserve as well as the home for rich biodiversity and its rare endangered water-birds including greater adjutants, black headed storks, milky storks, oriental darters, black headed ibis, grey headed fish eagles and etc. Prek Toal can be accessed from Chung Kneas or Mechrey village in Siem Reap if you take one of community’s boats, takes approximately 1 hour and half (70km) ride. Either Chung Kneas or Mechrey village, both offer fantastic sightseeing when the boat cruising pass floating communities where you can see a lot of fishing activities come to local life. By overland before reaching one of these villages, Mechrey is more suitable because the journey goes passing beautiful rice paddies which is considered as the best landscape of all.
More: Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary Tour