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