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 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?