Sri Lanka,
December 2004 - January 2005
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This trip report is a record of an ultimately frivolous and unimportant fortnight in the lives of two very, very lucky, relatively wealthy and rather humbled European tourists. It is dedicated to the memories of the 250,000+ people who lost their lives in the tsunami of 26th December 2004 - Europeans (certainly including people out birding), Indonesians, Thais, Burmese, Indians, Somalis, but above all in our hearts, over 34,000 Sri Lankans. This was one birding trip we shall never be able to forget. |
We were incredibly fortunate to have arrived in Colombo just hours after the Great Tsunami - we were not affected directly in any way. We had seriously considered travelling exactly a week earlier - had we done so, we would have been in Yala NP on Boxing Day: many foreign tourists died there that day. We found some caked, torn and blasted pages form a bird book among the ruins. If you ever feel that missing a rare endemic bird even approaches being bad news, this sort of thing will make you think again.
Sri Lanka offers easy winter sunshine (and a bit of rain!), good logistics and hotels, but above all a wealth of tropical oriental species, including upwards of thirty endemics. We saw almost all of them! Big highlights were Red-faced Malkoha, Green-billed Coucal, Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, Sri Lanka Myna, White-faced Starling, Sri Lanka Whistling Thrush, Spot-winged Thrush, Legge's Flowerpecker, Sri Lanka Shama and many more. Many of these were in the very humid, leech-infested forests of Sinharaja. Non-endemics 'specials' included Pied Thrush, Brown Wood Owl, Kashmir Flycatcher, Sykes's Warbler, Sirkeer Malkoha and more.
Mammals were also good: Asian Elephant, wild Water Buffalo, various deer and monkey species; and an Indian Cobra was another 'highlight'...
Read the full blow-by-blow report!
Near Nuwara Eliya
