Saturday 25th March

Noting the upturn in the weather, I suspended household duties and took a couple of birdwatching trips out.

On Thursday I drove down to Sizergh Castle on a twitching mission as it is a known venue for seeing hawfinches.  Setting off early I parked about 8.10 a.m. and joined the other twitchers in the cafe area, surveying an area of the car park that had been blocked off with cones..

Ater only about 10 minutes or so, a male hawfinch did appear in the tree immediately in front of me but only showed briefly before moving on.  A half hour later, what looked like it might be a female landed in the top of the same tree but proved to be a nuthatch, as did a couple of other visitors to

Bullfinch

nearby trees.

And that was it apart from a brief stir of excitement when this bullfinch (see picture) briefly visited the same tree. After that it was all tits and chaffinches. So it was a case of very mixed feelings - great to have seen a bird as rare as a hawfinch, but I didn't get a proper look and certainly no chance to get the binoculars or a camera on it.  It reminded me of the time I saw the goshawk at Kielder two years ago, when I did manage to see the bird the warden identified as a goshawk, but only at a mile range using binoculars.

Around the cafe there was talk of how bird food used to be put out for the hawfinches and the car park wasn't cordoned off. One chap reckoned he had been visiting for several years but had taken a long time to get a good sighting.  I had a quick walk around before leaving at 10.30 and met a Welsh lady who reckoned she had just had a hawfinch in her binoculars, but whatever it was had moved on when she looked again.

Today, with good temperatures forecast, I took a run on the bike to Ae and Lochmaben which was quite productive

Along the cycle track to Locharbriggs I heard several chiffchaffs singing, the first of the year for me though I know they've been about for around ten days. Over the moor at Amisfield, there were quite a few meadow pipits to be seen and skylarks to be heard though they seemed to be flying very high. Eventually, I did spot one parachuting down onto far end of the moor, plus a lone buzzard trying hard to find a thermal and a couple of curlew.

At Lochmaben I visited the bird feeders next to the Castle Loch in the hope of getting a view of a

Peacock

willow tit.  That didn't work as other tits and chaffinches again dominated but I did spot a reed bunting foraging on the ground underneath the feeders, not something I would have predicted.

Noting that the temperature was getting as high as 14C (wow!) I had wondered if this might be the day when I would see my first butterfly of the year and sure enough there were three peacocks on the road past Amisfield Tower, two of them sunning themselves on the road.

That alone made it worthwhile getting out and forgetting about the state of the loft for a day or two.

Wednesday 22nd March

A little epilogue to my Sri Lanka trip.  Here's the photos I didn't manage to get myself, rolled into one.

Many thanks to Martin Warren for supplying these shots:

Saturday 18th March

Red kite in treetop

Back over two weeks since Sri Lanka now and, in terms of nature, it's been a fairly typical welcome home - some pretty iffy if slightly warmer weather and a large number of red kites on my first trip out in the Loch Ken area. I think I must have seen twenty in the space of about half an hour.  One of them even settled in a tree. Though I did not manage to get a very good photo, I haven't seen one do that before.

Before I went on holiday I put up a nesting box in the little silver birch in my front garden.  One or two tits have given it the once over but there is no sign of anything building a nest. Maybe it still smells a bit new.

Obviously I have done my best to detail the highlights of the Sri Lanka trip in the preceding posts, but there are still one or two issues of a more general nature to discuss.

One of these is climate change.  Obviously Sri Lanka does have quite a high rainfall but the time of our visit at the end of February should have been a dry period and is generally acknowledged as the height of the tourism season in the South East of the country. Our guides were concerned about the fact that there had been a long period of drought delaying what would normally have been the monsoon season, which arrived late and explained the continuance of heavy downpours into the holiday season. We didn't gain any information about the effects on wlidlife to date but there are grounds for apprehension.

It is obvious that the Sri Lankan government has introduced a lot of environmental protection measures.  Catching butterflies and using moth traps are for example illegal and there has been a clear policy of establishing Nature Reserves and regulating their use.  So it is now illegal to bring food into the Sinharaja Forest Park because of some of the undesirable substances found in bird droppings, and we weren't allowed to get out of the jeep in the Wasmaguwa reserve.  It might be added that the government has also maximised the profits from the tourist trade at such locations, as the charges for entry are very much higher for tourists than for local people.

In particular, we were impressed that measures have been taken to end the cruel practice of taming wild elephants as it is quite apparent that this can only be achieved by totally breaking the spirit of the animals.  It was explained to us that the herding and sexual instincts of elephants are extremely strong and can only be kerbed by a systematic programme of cruelty over a period of several months.

There were some domesticated elephants working near the hotel at Sirijiya, but I declined to take pictures of them.

Sri Lanka Day 8

Our last trip was to the Kaludiya Pokuna Forest near an old Buddhist site and again gave us the chance to walk around a good deal in search of new species.

Once again there was a lot of blue flashes from blue mormon and common jay (of which I got the best shot to date) and we caught sight of the attractive mime butterfly, a new addition.  Blue glassy tiger was another one I got in the camera, probably by now forgetting what I'd photographed and what I hadn't.

Blue glassy tiger

Common jay

Once again also I fell victim to a bit of elusive butterfly chasing when a couple of chestnut streaked sailors turned up but all I got was a blurry in-flight shot rather and an unconvincing profile of a bedraggled specimen when it settled. The other new sightings were the tamil yeoman and the white-banded awl, plus I got another snap of the peacock pansy.

Chestnut streaked sailor

Peacock pansy

However, it should be added that the butterfly we saw most of today and everyday since we left the wet zone  was the common crow. This butterfly was absolutely everywhere in big numbers and, by the last few days we weren't even paying them much attention. There was also an interesting black and white day-flying moth which I don't have a record of but it was quite a striking wee fellow.

Moth

By Day 8 we were almost dividing into a group of three who were chasing butterflies and the other three who were more focussed on birds, some of which I missed.  I was however pleased to spot a rosy starling in flight as I have often hoped to see one somewhere in Europe.  Apparently they are on the increase in Sri Lanka but I think that no-one else saw it.  There was also further confirmation of the white-browed fantail, which I had seen taking refuge in treetops on a couple of occasions when no-one was around to confirm.

A lot of the birds replicated previous sightings but I was pleased to see a black kite once again.

I couln't leave without getting a photograph of one of the shelters the rice farmers use at night when they are on the lookout for wild elephants.  We saw several of these.  It seems elephants are very keen on rice as it nears harvesting time and can cause mayhem.

Elephant shelter

Putting down bait for the butterflies didn't work today, so eventually we started the trail back to Katanayike via lunch.  There was still time to see this land monitor and nesting sea eagles en route.

Land monitor

Sea eagles

Sri Lanka - Day 7

Having woken somewhat early, I took a look outside to see if there was anything interesting about.  I saw nothing but a couple of the waiters drew my attention to this massive atlas moth lying motionless on one of the grassy areas.

Atlas moth

Other members of the group came over and after a while it started to move around and attempts were made to put it somewhere safe.  I can't fail to stress the size of this creature.  It had a wing span the size of a medium dinner plate!

After breakfast we headed to the Ritigala Nature Reserve, where we did a leisurely walk in some of the warmest weather so far experienced.  Getting a little battle-weary now I found it slightly hard to remember what was seen when!

Indian sunbeam

A couple of new spots on the track were a strong-flying indian rajah and an indian sunbeam. Unfortunately for the latter, it was almost immediately flattened by a passing motor scooter while everything else cleared out of the way!  Another had a bit of a lucky escape when it landed right next to someone's trainer (see extra photos below).

The more spectacular members of the Papilionidae family were very much in evidence, notably common jay, bluebottle, crimson rose and common rose and a particular highlight for me was catching a glimpse of a blue mormon and actually seeing the flash of blue as it passed.  It was only a momentary experience but nevertheless memorable.

This was however somewhat eclipsed at the end of our picnic lunch when a Sri Lanka Birdwing - the biggest of the lot - virtually flew straight into my face.  Again it was a momentary experience but I could clearly see the yellow pattern of its lower wings passing me at head height.

The lunch break was itself something of a novelty as we ate ringed by a group of toque macaques in the surrounding trees, just waiting to pounce and steal some food.  Keener members of the group stood guard with large sticks.

Toque macaques ready to pounce

These monkeys are the most confident and intrusive of the Sri Lankan species and, at first charming, can clearly be a real nuisance. They were often found running around the roofs of hotels and when we arrived at Sigiriya later, there was a uniformed member of staff sporting a rifle to chase them off.

I seem to have focussed more and more on butterflies as the trip went on and further new sightings were peacock pansy, common silverline (which excited a burst of extensive photography from the experts) and lime blue. There were several lesser albatross butterflies around too, slightly larger and flying more strongly than the other whites and yellows.

On the birds front, the greater coucal made itself heard several times and I got as good a view of as I ever did even though not much more than a slhouette. Plus the pheasant-tailed jacana was an interesting sighting but I was disappointed not to see the crested honey buzzard as I haven't seen a honey buzzard before.

In the evening we had the extra bonus of a night ride during which we spotted a sivet, a brown fish owl and the rear end of a wild elephant before it reacted to the torches. There was then a brief debate about whether to reverse up the van for a better view but we decided against.  There was no fence and it might have charged the vehicle.

Wild elephants are pretty common in the Sigiriya area and they actually use the main road that goes past the hotel grounds.  A curfew is in force after a certain time at night and the road closed. We had a good discussion with our guides about elephant behaviour and instincts. There are still a small number in the Sinharaja Forest but they are condemned to die out as there is no interbreeding between herds.

Some scenes from Day 7:

Laying butterfly bait	Blue flash - common jay	Indian sunbeam and trainer!
Photographing common silverline	A clutch of whites	Unidentified - any guesses?

Sri Lanka Day 6

Our next visit was to the Wasgamuwa National Park, which is nominally in the dry zone and we had been warned to bring scarves to protect ourselves against dust.  However the tracks were all still damp from the continuing rains.  This didn't change the fact that this park contains an immense diversity of wildlife and, unlike those with more obvious big game targets, it is far from overcrowded.

More or less immediately on entering the Reserve, we saw a huge mugger crococile slide into a small lake to a backdrop of spotted dear and cattle egrets while a couple of ducks swam around nonchalantly. It all seemed a bit incongruous.

White-fronted kingfishers

Next we were treated to a display by a group of spotted weavers servicing their inverted nests in the nearby rushes, while various other kingfishers, bee-eaters and others moved around the scene. I looked along to a wee bridge where a white-fronted kingfisher was sitting and in a few minutes there was two, then three of them and a pair of indian robins on the other side.

Crimson rose

Turning a corner where there were a couple of birds of prey, we saw a tree with three parakeets in it and were then treated to several close views of male and female crimson rose butterflies nectaring, and I think it has to be the crimson rose that qualifies as the most beautiful butterfly of the whole trip. It cheapened its value somewhat by appearing somewhat regularly from this point on, but the colouring on the male is frankly startling.

On the move again, we quickly stopped again because we sighted a wild water buffalo on our left. And he sighted us too!  He stood up and gave us a jolly good once over before moving off into the trees.

Water buffalo

In fact it is quite clear that big game of other kinds are present on the reserve.  We saw some elephant paths and one of our party identified a leopard dropping.

And so the thing went on really.  Almost at every turn there was something noteworthy or new.  There were scores of butterflies feeding on fruit and urine bait on the road, several wild peafowl, which apprently eat snakes, every kind of heron, various birds of prey and pretty little birds filtering through the tops of trees.

Ultimately it gets difficult to deal with it all systematically.  Here are a few more of the things I managed to photograph:

Angled coster	Butterflies on jackfruit
Common pierrot	Forget me not
Glassy tiger	Green bee-eater
Peascock	Plain tiger
Streaked weaver	Tawny coster

To which we need to add the various species that interested me, but didn't get captured on film: Pioneer, Dark wanderer, Ceylon lace wing, Black winged kite, shikra, grey-headed fish eagle, Asian koel, Drongo cuckoo, Sri Lanka hanging parrot, White-browed fantail, Tri-coloured munia, Paddyfield pipit.

Quite a day overall!

Sri Lanka Day 5

Fortunately the weather held out much better and we were able to play catch up in the Riverstone area.

Red pierrot

On getting up for breakfast we caught sight of a couple of mongooses crossing the approach road and soon a changeable eagle owl was keeping a careful eye on us until mobbed by crows.
Our departure for the hills was delayed by the arrival of a wedding party but when we finally got there, I was able to catch up on some of the photos I had missed out on the previous day, notably red pierrot, great eggfly and painted sawtooth though the blue mormon again proved very elusive.

One of the group noticed a small yellow, so I made sure to take a quick snap and it was later identified by our leader as a spotless grass yellow, the first time we sighted this species.

This was all while foraging around the same area as yesterday but after lunch we walked up the moorland a startling viewpoint.  We quickly saw an endemic species of frog and soon I had finally got an albeit poorish snap of the leopard butterfly that I missed out on several times in the Sinharajah Forest.

Banded peacock

Around this time a large butterfly was seen flattering around a bush with a strong flash of blue.  I immediately got a bit excited thinking of the bluebottle. It turned out to be a banded peacock and kindly landed for a good while, allowing us to appreciate how spectacular it was. There are not many butterflies that are totally green and the interesting thing is that it wouldn't normally be seen in this area at all as it belongs more to the plains of the dry zone. As we were starting to appreciate, climatic conditions in Sri Lanka are becoming less predictable. Overall, this was thought to be to the top spot of the day.

A new bird turned up, the red-wattled lapwing, though two of us were sure we had seen some sort of pipit instead.  A little later I added a pretty lemon pansy to the chocolate pansy I had seen at the hotel earlier.

Another interesting sighting was a plumbeous silverline, in that there was a long debate at the end of the day as to whether it may instead have been a common sliverline. This was strange in that, after just a quick look in the books, I had no doubt whatsoever that it was the plumbeous version!

Unfortunately we were again caught by a shower after visiting the viewpoint, a sheer drop of several hundred metres over the edge of the rock face.  So we were forced back to the van, at least having had a lengthier spell of time in the area.

Heading to our next destination at Wasgamuwa, we stopped at a bridge over a river where we caught sight of a Sri Lanka keelback watersnake hiding in the bankside as well as a couple of spectacular damselflies. Trying not to embarrass a couple of ladies bathing, we also checked out another bird of prey, which turned out to be another crested serpent eagle (juvenile) so presumably it hadn't spotted the snake.

Just short of Wasgamuwa, we took a walk alongside a watercourse where several birds were visible. Not really sure why I didn't get the camera out but perhaps it was because I was already familiar with the likes of purple heron and the various egrets from my trips to France.  Prominent also were whiskered tern, asian openbill, black-headed ibis and some sunbirds.  Or maybe I had just decided it was the butterflies that made the day.  It can't be emphasised too much that it's nigh impossible to take in everything on a day like this.

Anyway, here is a movie of what I did take in:

Sri Lanka Day 4

From Kandy we struck out to Matale to pick up a packed lunch en route for Riverstone in the Knuckles Mountain Range, a known butterfly spot.  The day started out quite well when a rather polluted looking watercourse produced a snarly congress of large water monitors, plus white-throated and stork-billed kingfishers as well as a selection of egrets.

While travelling we have become increasingly aware of the large number of dogs that hang aroung on the roads, all very placid, as if hoping for a titbit from the passing cars and only evading them at the last second..

From the hotel garden, overseen by a huge Buddha in the rocks, the weather looked promising and we were able to view black-necked stork and Layards parakeet. But once we got up high, the peaks were shrouded in heavy mists and we were lucky when they lifted for a half an hour or so to allow a frenetic period of butterfly spotting in an area of scrub by a building site.

The red pierrot (one of my identified targets) and great orange tip turned up though not inclined to hang around.  Neither was the great eggfly I nearly stood on in pursuit of them.  There were also a number of brown shrikes in the area, so small and inoffensive that you would not have thought of

Female mormon posing as common rose

them as predators.

When the hazy sunlight faded we made the best of it by cresting the mountain and heading down towards a village where we had planned to walk and laying bait for butterflies on the way back,  A brief interlude of reasonable light allowed sightings of common and blue mormon as well as common rose, but perhaps the most interesting was a female common mormon imitating the common rose as she went about laying her eggs.  Our guide Indike explained that they do this to ward off attacks as the common rose is poisonous.

Unfortunately the weather really closed in and we had no option but to hightail it back to the hotel through a horrible combination of thick fog and torrential rain that made me pleased I didn't have to drive the van.

I'm aware this is a rather fragmentary account of a fragmented day that left us wondering what would happen if the repeat visit to Riversone on Day 5 drew a blank.

Large water monitor

White-throated kingfisher

Bedraggled pea blue

Common gull

Sri Lanka Day 3

Mercifully it was a later start today. Sitting around on the balcony before breakfast I got a clear view of a black-hooded oriole flying around.  This made me happy as I narrowly missed the one fleeting chance to see a golden oriole when I was in France a couple of years ago.  There were also quick views of the Common Tailorbird and the Sri Lanka White Eye  (thanks to one of our guides) before boarding another jeep for a quick return to the Singahara Forest outskirts en route for Kandy.

Butterfly-wise it was mainly about spotting numerous blues and skippers settling on the path and neighbouring bushes.  Unfortunately I fell at one point and gashed my wrist which may have reduced my enthusiasm for the process. Suffice it to say that we identified a total of seven blues and six skippers.

I did manage to get good views of the angled pierrot and also our first pansy, the grey pansy.  We were to see several more pansies in the following days, but I think this was the only appearance of the grey pansy.

Angled pierrot

Grey pansy

Grizzled giant squirrel sleeping

There was also a first appearance for the common rose, which we got good views of fluttering about on its food plant.  

Birds we sighted briefly included the crimson-fronted barbet and the crimson-backed flameback and we got a longer view of this grizzled giant squirrel, which was totally motionless and presumably asleep on the branch of a tree. Apparently it is very rare to see one sleeping in the daytime when it would be vulnerable to predators.  We also heard quite a lot of but barely sighted the greater coucal.

On the way to Kandy, we stopped to view a Buddhist temple, which amusingly had a white-crested kingfisher perched on the head of one of the ornamental lions and provided a first sighting for the chestnut-headed bee eater. 

It was good that we did the sightings early in the day as we were driving through a tropical downpour a lot of the way to Kandy.  Here we had our first cultural outing to visit the Temple of the Tooth, one of the most revered Buddhist relics. The Tooth festivities climax each year in an annual parade of tamed elephants, which is becoming something of an environmental issue as Sri Lanka has now banned the cruel practice of 'taming' elephants for all but existing practitioners.

Sri Lanka Days 1 and 2

I'd been hoping to take a big nature holiday at the end of the winter and signed up for the Naturetrek Butterfly Tour of Sri Lanka 25th February to 6th March.

Due to works at the airport we only arrived at Colombo at about 16.30 on the 26th, which left little time for any sightings en route to our first destination at Sinharaja Forest, as darkness fell fairly punctually just after 18.00.  However we did manage to see little egret, brahmini kite, crested serpent eagle and indian flying fox and saw our first butterfly while settling down to eat - the evening brown, which apparently only comes out an hour before dusk.

An early 6.30 a.m. start took place the next day and before we had even set out we had seen Sri Lanka hanging parrot, tree swift, drongos and and a preying mantis.  Unfortunately the weather was overcast on reaching the entrance to the Sinharaja Nature Reserve, so we hung around the entrance area bird watching for a while and it was soon apparent what a profusion of wildlife there is in the area. I unashamedly plump for the the more exotic species and found straight away that the Blue Magpie was even more spectacular than I had been expecting.  These birds' feeding patterns seem to have been affected by contact with humans and, until recently, they often turned up in the hotel we stayed at.

Also in the spectacular category came emerald dove, yellow browed bulbul, and the grey hornbill.

After a time, hazy sunshine started to appear and so we set off up into the hills, a jeep ride over rough and bumpy tracks.  It didn't take long for butterflies to appear and we soon saw our first - a common sailor.  We stooped to investigate a meadow area and I was pleased to see good numbers of one of the species I had been keen to see - the common jezebel.  Frustratingly I could not with my relatively downmarket gear get a good photograph, as it refused to settle for long enough to get a decent focus.

Further on up the trail, I was first to spot the Sri Lanka Tree Nymph but had a similar photographic experience as it wavered its way among the trees in an elusive manner, resulting in multiple blurred shots and total misfires.

In between times we also made the acquaintance of the gladeye bushbrown, Sri Lankan Jungle Fowl, lesser yellow-naped woodpecker, asian paradise flycatcher, as well as the first of many fleeting encounters with blue mormon, common rose, blue tiger and Sri Lanka birdwing.

There were also a profusion of blues that needed very careful; identification by our guides and a number of yellows that I personally find difficult to disentangle, particularly the one spot, two spot and three spot grass yellows. Plus we encountered purple-faced leaf monkeys, squirrels, lizards and snakes.

Eventually we ended up at a lodge where there was a large water monitor at a nearby stream, but I was fortunate enough to return in time to see another two of my target butterflies, the spectacular bluebottle and the commander.  Then the sky clouded over and we headed back to the hotel.  In the evening, with camera on charge, I took a brief walk nad got good views of purple-faced leaf monkeys, the oriental magpie robin, and the red-vented bulbul.

Here's a video of what I did manage to capture on camera.  I hope the captions are correct.

Overall, I think the most exciting part of the day was to see the sudden flash of the bluebottle flying around at speed.