Guiding Kate and John Holland

20 February to 5 March, 2012, saw me guiding a 15-day wildlife tour with John and Kate Holland, from England. Both were keen birders, and this was their first visit to Sri Lanka. Kate sported the latest Swarovski SLC 42 HD binoculars, which were superb in clarity. A birthday gift from John, it was on its first overseas trip.

Our final trip list of birds stood at 236 species and that included all 33 endemic birds and 10 out of the 15 resident night birds. Our top wildlife highlights included a couple of Leopards at Yala and several Blue Whales off Mirissa. The photos below show these highlights and more.

Lesser Adjutant

We saw this lone Lesser Adjutant at the Yala National Park, and it proved to be the only sighting of this rare resident bird for the whole trip. 

Asian Paradise Flycatcher

We had this species at several locations, and this individual obliged outside the Udawalawe National Park. The white coloured males of this species comes all the way from Northern India during the migratory season. I usually get one of these turning up in my home garden, but in the last season I had none.

Asian Brown Flycatcher

Another regular migrant, Asian Brown Flycatcher usually likes tops of trees with ample lighting. When we found this individual, we were on a second floor of a building, and from our position it presented us with nice eye-level views. 

Sri Lanka Blue Magpie

Some of the Sri Lanka Blue Magpies at Sinharaja are quite confiding. This one came to land on my scope, when we were having a break near the research station.

Here's a close up of his head. 

Sri Lanka Frogmouth

This juvenile Sri Lanka Frogmouth was huddled together with its farther at Sinharaja rain forest. It was too close for my lens.

The Blue Whale


We had aout fifteen sightings of Blue Whales, consisting of about eight individuals. This was one of them with a limora fish haning on its tail. The whale watches approaching from behind, scared it off.

The clay girl

At Tissa, this girl is the youngest member of a family that engage in pottery. Her play area borders the Tissa wewa, where we go birding. She used to have a pair of Indian Scops Owls in her garden. But as of recently the owls have vacated the roost.

Leopard

This female cub gave us prolonged views at Yala. For a good length of the time, we had it all for ourselves, which was nice. I hate the big crowds and traffic jams at Yala.

Asian Groundling

We saw a good array of dragonflies and this Asian Groundling gave an easy photo opportunity. 

Absolute Birding in November, 2011

I am back after guiding my first birding tour for the winter tour season of 2011/2012. It was a 14-day Absolute Birding tour with Brice and Gail Wells from Perth, Australia from 1–14 November, 2011. Brice, 78, became the oldest birder to survive my Absolute Birding tour.

Our final tally of birds stood at 231 species. We saw all thirty-three endemics extremely well. As usual, we did well in the night birding department, scoring ten out of the fifteen resident night bird species. These included seven owls. Brice had never seen that many owls on a single birding trip before, so he was really pleased.

The rain gods were kind to us: barring the first two days, we had beautiful weather throughout the tour. Several mixed-species bird flocks were seen in full swing at Sinharaja. These yielded all the flock-associated specials such as the Ashy-headed Laughingthrush. Which laughs alright, but never smiles.

This Sri Lanka Swallow didn't mind the wet weather at Kithulgala; it was collecting mud for nest building.

This Sri Lanka Wood Pigeon was fearless when it came to drink in a 'waterhole' on this tree at Welimada.
Right time, right place.

The Grey-headed Fish Eagle was sentinel at Bundala National Park in bright light.

It is only fair to say that we had an impressive array of non-feathered attractions.

One of them is this gleaming elephant in pretty light at the Bundala National Park. Unlike the ones at Yala, the elephants at Bundala are a bit grumpy. So you have approach them with respect and caution. It looks like the ones at Bundala seem to have some 'issues' with the local fishermen who are allowed to enter the park in bikes to engage in fishing.

This elephant made a roadblock to assert its dominance, keeping us, and a few fishermen ahead, waiting.

We had to wait for about fifteen minutes, until it decided to clear the traffic at its own terms!

A similar standoff happened outside the Bundala National Park on another day. This time, it almost cost a few birds for the trip. Regardless, we scored 100 plus species of birds on that day. A bloke from the wildlife department, who happened to use the same road, came to our rescue; he used a couple of fire crackers to 'neutralize' the situation.

At Yala, we saw five Leopards in just two game drives (one in the first and four in the last) all which posed well. On our first visit, some real-time ground intelligence led to this lone young female on a tree close to the Akasha-chaitya junction. We had it for a good fifteen minutes.

Our no.2 and 3 Leopards came together. And in the process, nearly took our breath away!

That was when these two big boys crossed the road in the Jumburagala road. The one that took the lead was blind in the left eye.

Too bad we were at the wrong side of the light.

Otherwise, I could have absolutely nailed them!

No, we photographers are never happy!

As our jeep driver correctly predicted, one of the Leopards, as it turned out the bigger one, settled on a distant rock to nap. Driving on from there minutes later, we had the One-eye, walking along the track marking its territory.

He was a grumpy old fellow. A walking-wounded of sorts. Every now and then it paused to pose. Even the point-and-shooters had a field day.

We were compelled to take a comfort break close to 5.30 p.m. While we were busy, we heard a deer alarm. Quite close! We were making our way out of the park, having had a superb day. Too close and precious to let go, we drove in the direction of that alarm. And minutes later, we found this female.

If not for that desperate leg-stretch, we would have not heard the alarm, which led to this beauty.
Which drove home a golden rule in the jungles: when you want to go, go you must.

Anyway, the female having noticed us, crossed the road and disappeared. Once again, our driver predicted that it may climb a rock nearby, and he made a beeline to that spot.  Not even a minute passed by, and the female materialized on the rock in front of us, giving us a bemused stare, "how did you know ...?!"

Our jeep driver said he heard the female calling to its young. So we expected she will soon have some company. About five minutes later, this cute little female cub appeared on the rock!

But, before reaching her mom, she paused to check us out.

At her own pace, she joined her mom.

Some quality family time followed

The little one got a nice clean up, presumably before the evening activity.  In the shade of a fig tree, this rock had a peaceful setting of a Buddhist temple. Two Malabar Pied Hornbills whooshed pass vying for their attention. It was nice to see how mindful the Leopards were—even watching birds! We left them there to make our timely exit and to end what a fabulous day with big cats.

While the above passed as our best wildlife day, our best birding day was day-thirteen at Sigiriya. It was significant because of a late afternoon birding session, which produced an avian bonanza consisting of eight new ticks for the trip.

The goodies were Shaheen, Cotton Pygmy-goose, Orange-headed Thrush, Black-backed Dwarf Kingfisher, Indian Blue Robin, White-rumped Shama, 'Fork-tailed' Drongo Cuckoo, Indian Pitta, Jerdon's Nightjar, Spot-bellied Eagle Owl (which was expertly spotted by Brice), and a one-for-the-road Brown Fish Owl.

In terms of numbers, our day-seven was the best with a whopping tally of 118 species.
Birds were superb alright, but I must say those leopards really took the cake on this tour.

Thinking about that day in Yala, I still can't wipe the smile off my face.

Leopards and Scrabble Tour

22–29 October, 2011 saw me guiding my first "Leopards and Scrabble" tour. It was with Diane Lofthouse from Sydney, Australia. The trip centred around Yala National Park—the celebrated wildlife hotspot in South East Sri Lanka.

Diane had turned 70 just days before the trip. And seeing a Leopard in the wild I was told was on top of her "bucket list!"

She was able to achieve that on the first game drive itself—seeing not just one, but three Leopards. They were—surprise, surprise—the celebrity Rukwila cubs (two out of three) and their "supermom."

Born little over an year ago, the Rukwila cubs are too bold, too photogenic and too ignorant that they are Leopards. And as most Leopard cubs at Yala, they have still not come to realise that as Leopards they are supposed be shy and elusive.

The handsome one above was seen on our seventh and last game drive on 28 October. We drove along the Patanangala bungalow road from the seaside and found ourselves stopping behind a jeep that had arrived earlier. The one above was sitting in a roadside thicket first.

That was while its sibling was resting on the track farther away. It was out of photographic reach for us because the track ahead snaked just enough to obstruct a direct view. A few jeeps, which had come from the main road side, were behind that Leopard cub. Which to their dissatisfaction, faced away from them.

As more jeeps crowded the scene from the main road side, the lounging individual got up and ambled to towards the one sitting in the thicket near us. Soon, it veered off and retreated to the thicket.

In the meantime, the one near our jeep got up and walked in the opposite direction—that is, towards the jeep track in front of us.

It then sat there giving us jaw-dropping views!

It was almost as if it was rewarding our good behaviour—by that I mean us being not too under its nose. And from 6.21 to 6.41 a.m. we had it posing for us beautifully. It was such a sweet reward for our patience and field craft.

Soon, more jeeps arrived from our end, eventually forcing the poser in the direction of more intimate company.

After this superb sighting, Diane told me that she can finally die happy!
 
Dying happy, unfortunately, was not case for one of the Leopards at Yala in October this year. We learnt, to our sadness, that a female Leopard cub had been found dead by the main road. This had happened before we arrived at Yala. It was first rumoured to have been killed by a Wild Boar. We were told that the carcass had been taken away by the wildlife department to conduct an autopsy.

There is some confusion as to whether the deceased was one of the Rukwila cubs or a different cub that had been near their territory. This is because of a few alleged sightings of all three Rukwila cubs together since the incident.

But I have my doubts about those alleged sightings.

Diane and I visited the Yala park from 23–28 October doing seven game drives. When ever we encountered the Rukwila family, the maximum number of individuals seen by us did not exceed three. And when all three were seen together, they included a markedly bigger individual. Which appeared be the mother of the cubs.

In the meantime, I got to know after returning home through Namal that the autopsy carried out by the animal hospital in Udawalawe had concluded that the cause of death to be a result of it being hit by a vehicle. Apparently, it had suffered damages to its ribs and internal organs—with very little damage to its exterior! If that autopsy is accurate, this death marks the second such case this year. Very, very sad. 

I fear this kind of incidents may happen again.
This is because jeeps exiting the park at dusk/evening are requested to keep their front lights switched off to "minimize disturbance to animals." As some jeeps try to hurry their way out to keep to the time of exiting the park, this kind of tragic accidents would be hard to avoid. Allowing front lights to be kept on in the vehicles (in a dimmed-state) when visibility drops, and having strict guidelines to avoid speeding inside the park at all times may help to avoid accidents like this in my opinion. Bringing the time to exit the park forward would be the wrong way to do things. 

Coming back to our tour, we had about twenty sightings of Leopards involving seven individuals. Most of the sightings were of the celebrity cubs of Rukwila, seen in all sorts of postures!

And scurrying across the track, sandwiched between jeeps.

In addition to Leopards, we saw plenty of wildlife, which included Sloth Bear and plenty of Asian Elephants.

More tragic news, I got thrashed 3-1 at Scrabble!

Which, take my word, had not happened for a long time. I lost 280–292 in the first game and got totally steamrolled 280–362 in the second.

I came back to win the third 328–314 in a close battle, but she had the last laugh with a runaway 368–298 win in the final game.

Owls, Leopards, Blue Whales, and Rapacious Flangetails

I am back after leading several exciting bird and wildlife tours.

My last tour for the season ended was a 15-day Natural History tour from 9 to 23 April, 2011 with Barry Barnacal, Gary Bellingham, Katrina Hay, and Andrew Vinson from the UK. The three gentlemen of this group were very keen photographers, and they carried serious photo gear, including Canon EOS 1D Mark 4s and lenses that ranged from 100mm macro to 500mm telephoto.

They came to me through a referral by Barry’s pal David Clugston—an avid birder and a worldlister with nearly half the world birds in his tally; he did an Absolute Birding tour with me in November, 2009. David was a pure birder, and did not do any photography while in Sri Lanka, opting just to watch birds and finding more of them. This explains why were able to rake in a massive 14-day tally of 252 species of birds, including all endemics.

The Brown Wood Owl Strix leptogrammica that I discovered thanks to a mobbing party of birds at Welimada.

Coming back to this tour, it was designed to focus on four aspects: birds, Leopards, Blue Whales, and other natural history.

After arriving in Sri Lanka, Barry, a former wildlife tour leader, wasted no time in briefing me that he and his group were not like their good friend back home! And that they certainly did not need to end up with a huge triplist. So, for them the success of the trip did not depend on making a clean sweep of special birds that most birders come here to see.

One of the main reasons why my visitors chose to visit Sri Lanka in April was to improve their chances of seeing the Blue Whale, as it is arguably the best month to see it, with almost a 100% success rate reported by whale watching operators. April also happens to be one of the best months for observing dragonflies and butterflies in Sri Lanka, as it sees most seasonal specials taking
wing. Being the tail end of the migratory season, April is not bad for birds either. And April is certainly not bad Leopards, which can be seen year round at Yala. So, the timing of the visit fitted perfectly with the broader requirements of the group.

So, with this rambling preamble, you may want to know how we fared.

Not too badly.

We ended up seeing 223 species of birds.
These included all 33 endemics and 10 out of the 15 resident night birds. And we bagged four Leopards at Yala, and four Blue Whales in the big pond 12 nautical miles off Mirissa.

Yes, it was real bagful!

As it is usual for April, we had good “viewing and photographic weather” in the first half of the day, with rains experienced during most afternoons. Which gave a lot of siesta time. This provided a nice balance because we found ourselves getting up early to take advantage of the conditions. And chill indoors during afternoon rains. Daylight was early, with the dawn chorus begining roundabout 5.30 a.m. At Sinharaja, the Blue Magpies coming to clean up the moths under lights at our lodge were punctual at 5.45 a.m. on both mornings we were there.

Gary wrote to me after the trip to say that he downloaded some 80GB of photos! I am sure others were not too far behind.
I too clicked a few here and there. Some of them are shared below.

Serendib Scops Owl Otus thilohoffmanni

I found a single bird in a day roost on day 1. Which, needless to say, got the tour to a terrific start. On day-2, there were two birds in the same roost, presumably male and female, and the picture above shows that.

The iris colour of the males of this owl is orangey, and yellowy in the females. After studying a picture taken by Andy, which he shot when the birds had briefly revealed a bit more of their eyes, I came to the conclusion that the top bird was probably a male, and the other, probably a female. The latter, as captured in this picture, was a bit more darker than the top one in real life too. Other than the eye colour, and differences in vocalisations of the two sexes, published literature on Serendib Scops Owl do not reveal of any diagnosable morphological features proving sexual dimorphism in this species.

Leopard ("Sri Lanka Leopard") Panthera pardus kotiya

Our first sighting was of two adults guarding over a Sambar Rusa unicolor carcass. By the time we visited the park, news of these two Leopards seem to have spread fast, judging by the traffic of safari jeeps. The Leopards were very much hidden in the vegetation and were not too photogenic. Shown above is one of the two Leopards taking us in amidst all the commotion created by the jeeps muscling for better viewing positions.

Soon, we wisely left the big traffic jam to look for other things.

With no local guide available because of new year holidays, I moved to the vacant front seat of our jeep. After finding Brown Fish Owl in a day roost, we arrived at a spot named Gonalabbe Kalapuwa, where Gary spotted a distant Black-necked Stork. After that we drove around for a while stopping frequently for various subjects.

And about an hour later, we found ourselves back at the site we saw the big stork.

Pausing there, we hit gold between 5.19 to 5.21 p.m. This was when Garry expertly spotted a Leopard ambling through the low vegetation towards the road where we were parked.

We backed off a little to get a clearer view of it. There was not a single jeep nearby, and we had this Leopard all to ourselves in the first minute or so.

It was our Leopard!

When it looked as if it was just about to cross the road behind our vehicle, a jeep came rushing behind us, apparently unaware of the big cat. The team wisely signaled to that jeep and brought it to halt just in the nick of time, before it could get too close to disturb the animal.

Everything seemed to work really, really well.
Seconds later, as expected, the Leopard nochanatly crossed the road between the two jeeps.

A moment of magic!

Had our four Mark 4s fired live GPMG rounds, this Leopard would have ended up in a pretty bad shape!

That’s why I like photography; it is such a bloodless sport.

Blue Whale Balaenoptera musculus

Travelling 12 nautical miles into the deep blue seas off Mirissa in beautiful weather, first signs of a Blue Whale were detected when we saw their diagnostic vertical blows. (On the whale watching trip done in April, 2009 with Peter Kaestner, as blogged by me before, we had first signs after travelling just 5.5 nautical miles.) After approaching this sighting, we detected two individuals moving together. Only one of them was noted by to lift tail fluke in its diving sequence. 

The above shows the two individuals seen closely. Two more were found farther away at the same time.

Compared to their massive body size, the Blue Whales are endowed with puny dorsal fins, which can be seen above. They are located roughly about three-quarters along the length of the body, and are visible when they are diving to reach deeper waters after breathing near the surface.

Indian Fritillary Argynnis hyperbius

We encountered this thirsty highland butterfly at Hakgala. It was very pretty in the underside.

Rapacious Flangetail Ictinigomphus rapax

I spotted this large dragonfly at the Bundala National Park in a patch quite far from freshwater. It was very much distracted by its large prey. Taking advantage of that, we photograpjed it from our safari jeep.

Sri Lanka Tree-climbing Crab Perbrinckia scansor

Katrina spotted this one and only tree-climbing freshwater crab at Sinharaja in a spot not too far from where we found the same species in the Absolute Birding tour that I guided in April, 2010 with Dr. Gil Ewing from the USA.

More posts of this tour will follow.

Kudu Tour Highlights

The Kudu 2010 Sri Lanka tour, that I guided from 9–20 January, was rich in wildlife and other moments. Most of them came during our two visits to the amazing Yala National Park in the southeastern Sri Lanka. There were 11 British visitors on this trip, which included the indefatigable Tour Leader, Frances Fedden who's led all Kudu trips to Sri Lanka since ancient past.

Our first highlight of the first game drive was this pair of Leopards crossing the main road, minutes after entering the park. Only one is clearly visible in this picture, with the other showing just the rear bits disappearing in the bushes to the right.

They were a bit distant, and the light was a bit low to get a perfect view, but that was enough to tick Leopard off the checklist—for those of us into listing.

Then we had these two Land Monitors in combat close to the main road. They were both were equally matched in the pugnacity, and we really couldn't judge who the winner was.

Next, we witnessed a courtship behaviour of a pair of Black-winged Stilts, where a male performed an endearing head-bobbing dance in front of a female to send her into a posture of submission. I alerted everybody to be ready for some action, and as predicted we had them in flagrante delicto.

The full paparazzi complement was shared by me here.

And then, there was this Ruddy Mongoose—enjoying a lie-in on a Palu tree, looking pretty and relaxed.

Fresh after rains, the park was teeming with wild flowers. These included the suggestive, Butterfly pea Clitoria ternatea, lending colour to the lush undergrowth. This species is named after the spice island, Ternate in Indonesia. The genus is named after an intimate part of female anatomy.

Crocs were in force as usual, and this one looked very well-fed.

The star of the show, however, was this male Leopard, which was seen by the people who were in the jeep that I was in. We found it very, very close to the jeep, just minutes before it was time for our exit on the second game drive. Frances and others who were in a separate jeep missed this, but roundabout the same time we had this one, they'd got a Leopard resting on the rocks at Kotigala. So we were all square, and happy!