Hiking and Birding - Sri Lanka - part 3

In the final part of this report we'll be leaving the mountains and heading for the dry-country, the coast and Yala national park.

Our journey to the coast started with the best hike of the trip - all the way down the east slope, first through tea plantations and then on forest paths. Even before we got to the start of the walk we'd got up close and personal to a pair of Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters, White-browed Fantails and Indian Robins. Our guide was the village headman - who spoke about two words of English. For once it didn't matter, he was great company and lunch with him and his wife was outstanding.

Chestnut-headed bee-eaters

The quality of the birds more than made up for their low numbers and I had some fun stalking an elusive Indian Peafowl, followed shortly by an Emerald Pigeon. We also scored two more endemics, Sri Lanka Grey Hornbill and Yellow-browed Bulbul. A Coppersmith Barbet was quite literally a pain in the neck as it happily pecked away at the top of a tall tree.

Coppermith Barbet

That night we stayed at a small lodge which had a couple of tower hides overlooking the paddyfields - ideal for watching the peafowl parading. An Indian Pond Heron settled on to its roost on one of the trees in the grounds. Waking up next morning to the cries of the Peafowl we had a quick recce of the grounds and there in a tree was my favourite bird of the trip, a Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot. They're tiny and almost unbearably cute. Not so cute was the world's rudest Palm Squirrel.

Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot

Our hike hat day was through dry agricultural land, with a completely disinterested local "guide". It was long, hot and boring, enlivened by a few good birds, particularly around a lake fringed with dead trees. These contained Grey Heron, Purple Heron, Asian Open-bill and an Intermediate Egret. Other new birds were Greater Coucal, Indian Roller, Malabar Pied Hornbill, Ashy Prinia, Oriental White-eye and Black-headed Munia.

Indian Roller

After that was over we headed to Arugam Bay. I'm going to cover both the drive there, a drive behind the bay and the trip through Block Five of Yala National Park as one, because the environment of swamp and flooded paddy was identical, as were the birds - mostly waterbirds oddly. There were also some larger (and in the case of the Crocodiles, more toothy) creatures around, including Water Buffalo, a Golden Jackel, a large Mongoose and a toll Elephant, which blocked the road until offered fruit.

The birds: King Quail; Lesser Whistling-duck; Painted Stork; Woolly-necked Stork; Asian Open-bill; Crested Serpent Eagle; Purple Swamphen; Common Moorhen; Black-winged Stilt; Yellow-wattled Lapwing; Pacific Golden Plover; Lesser Sand Plover; Pin-tailed Snipe; Black-tailed Godwit; Gull-billed Tern; Orange-breasted Green Pigeon; Crested Treeswift; Indian Roller; Stork-billed Kingfisher; Pied Kingfisher and Jerdon's Bushlark.

Yellow-wattled Lapwing

Our hotel in Arugam bay was right on the beach. When the fishing boats came in there was three way fight between the White-bellied Sea Eagles, Brahminy Kites and House Crows for the catch. It's a spectacular sight and a definite birding highlight. Offshore, Gull-billed and Greater Crested Terns flew past, while in the lagoon, a solitary Common Kingfisher sat on a rock, watching an Indian Pond Peron try to eat an improbably large fish.

White-bellied Sea Eagle

Brahminy Kite

We'd been looking forward to our trip to Yala National Park (the famous bit) but in several ways found it profoundly disappointing. Something like 500 jeeps are allowed into the park and most of them use the same tracks which are incredibly rutted (they do overturn occasionally). Our driver seemed to have little interest in the wildlife, only deigning to stop for Elephants, Wild Boar, Water Buffalo and deer without some serious prompting and then not for long. We did score a good Monitor Lizard, the land, not water variety, but that was completely across the track!

There were one or two good birds aound, I'll miss out the waterbirds we'd seen before. A pair of Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters were excavating a new nest hole (or at least one of them was, the other seemed content to watch. A Greater Coucal glared at us from a bush while Malabar Pied Hornbills clambered around clumsily above. It was difficult to see smaller birds, but we spotted another endemic, a Sri Lanka Woodshrike, while Common Hoopoes are a bit hard to miss.

Sri Lanka Woodshrike

Crested Hawk Eagle

As it was getting dark we raced (why yes, that is as uncomfortable as it sounds, my back may never recover) to leave the park. On the way though we did stop for a Crested Hawk Eagle and the last rays of the sun illuminated three Lesser Adjutants standing in a tree.

That as about it for the holiday and for new birds, with the happy exception of a Eurasian Spoonbill on the road to Galle.

For a hiking holiday it wasn't a bad birding one, a handful of endemics and a lot of  other wonderful lifers. Of course, I missed dozens of species, including some really common ones. Oh well, any excuse to go back one day!

That's all folks!

The route - green is for driving, red is for hiking.