Initial planning

The genesis for this exodus was a Christmas 2009 present from Frances in the form of a book covering the 100 best birding sites in the world by Dominic Couzens. We have visited 12 of the sites and (as she intended) I stared pondering which others needed a visit.  I was still feeling opposed to very long (ie more than about 15 hours) plane flights after the massive tiredness from our straight through flight from the UK which suggested somewhere in Asia was the go.

The entry for Sinharaja Forest in Sri Lanka looked rather interesting.  It was ranked #17 with the big attraction being very diverse mixed flocks. I liked the idea of getting a whole lot of ticks in one place.  Frances had also read somewhere about the excellent gardens in Sri Lanka so we seemed to have a definite combined interest.

A visit to Google for Bird tours Sri Lanka was the next effort.  This got me to a consolidator site who, as is the nature of such things bounced me on one of their 'operatives'.  This was Jetwing tours who, to my surprise got back to me within about 6 hours with a very pleasant communication.  They advertise in "British Birds' so were obviously not a total owl (ie fly-by-night) company.

A friend in the UK suggested another company to look at.  They were also very responsive to my approach and were headed up by Sri Lankas leading birder. 

I then started some reading, with an out of date copy of the Lonely Planet guide.  Looking at the places they recommended (other than the beach resorts which have no interest for me) gave me a good list of places.

Of course I also scanned the DFAT travel advisory for the country.  I was particularly taken by this comment

"The safety standards you might expect of transport and tour operators, including adventure and water sport activities, are not always met."

The safety standards I expect in such a country - or indeed from tour operators in any country -  are very skimpy so I expect they will be well met.

We decided that it might be nice to have some friends travel with us and floated the idea with a number of them.  One couple- Rob and Carol - have decided to join in.  This also defined our starting period: it seemed important to do the trip in April before all the migrants head off back to the North, and the male half of this couple has an appointment with a marathon in Canberra on 15 April.  So we are leaving on the 16th: this means Rob has chosen an aisle seat as he reckons he might have trouble climbing over people after six hours in an aircraft seat!

After some discussion of alternatives it seemed that both companies we were looking at went to similar places but the Jetwing team were more generalists while the alternative were more full-on birders.  Given that 3 of the 4 people in our group were non-twitchers the generalists seemed to be the choice and got the tick.  They were then very good about waiting a few weeks (OK, months) while we sorted out details at our end of the arrangement.

Payment of the deposit went very smoothly - mainly because after our trip to the UK I realised that the Westpac site was full of bull**it and all one really needed was an account number and a Swift code.  The arrangements for making the final payment were very civilised and the timing was determined by when we thought the Ocker had peaked against the Greenback.  (It did go up a bit more but then started dropping again, so we didn't do as bad as we have often done in trying to win on currency!)

April 18 To Sinharaja

After breakfast leave for Martin’s Simple Lodge, Sinharaja for two nights. Afternoon, birding at Sinharaja Rainforest. A UNESCO World Heritage Site for lowland endemics and mixed species bird flocks. According to a study of the mixed species bird on average 42 individual birds occur in the flocks, which makes this world's largest mixed species bird flock. The mixed species Bird flock study of Sinharaja forest has been continuing since 1981 and is considered as the World's longest studied bird flock study. Birding highlights include Red-faced Malkoha, Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, White-faced Starling and Scaly Thrush.

Up early as we had a 5 hour drive to get to Sinharaja and to do some birding in the afternoon.  The shower at the Villa was itself a work of art (yes, part of the room is open to the sky)

 On the first morning Frances had been having a shower when a Palm Squirrel ran across the top of the wall!

While having another huge breakfast our attention was drawn to a family of pigs trotting through the adjacent, vacant, block.  At a more delicate level we spotted this butterfly having its breakfast.

In fact the drive was going to be slow, as there was much traffic on the roads due to everyone going to visit their families for New Years. This seemed to particularly infest the roads with 

• tuk-tuks (here called 3 wheelers) on the one hand, driven surprisingly slowly – but then it is difficult for something powered by 150cc (basically a lawn mower motor) to drag a family of four and a few sacks of rice along at a great speed – and 
• buses driven at great speed and no respect for sanity - let alone traaffic laws.

Travelling at a fair speed (faster than tuk-tuks but slower than buses) were competitors in bike race led out by a series of cars full of people screaming at the traffic to get out of the way. Most of the bikes were more like M Poppins than C Evans but plenty of sweat was flying.

We went through a number of towns

including stopping to try to get some bread and also beer. Here we made a BAD decision and only got 12 cans of Three Coins (at Rs 100 ~ $A0.80 per can). An interesting aspect of the shop was a sign prohibiting photos. Why was this so- we thought the shops interesting but who would object?  This is a smaller shop featuring among its products references to another movie franchise

There were many adverts for TAFE type colleges, quite a few of which mentioned studying to work in Australia.  Frances noted one for the "Academy of Sugar Craft"

Back on the road with a few stops for interesting birds including Honey Buzzard and Crested Serpent Eagle.  Then we got to the place where we swapped vehicles from our van to a Jeep to cart us up a rather basic road to Martin's Simple Lodge. Some commentators on this Lodge had expressed concern about the road,

but I think I would have taken the Subaru up it with little problem and no damage. Whatever, we made it - included a stop to gawp at a Black Eagle out in the valley - and after settling in went out for a birding session with Hettie and our Forest Dept guide Chandra.

This went pretty well and a number of species were recorded. I reckoned that from 3pm we were entitled to regard it as no-carbon birding so this becomes another green day.
 I didn't take any bird images but this orchid was very spiffy:

There were a few "home comforts" out in the forest including well designed shelters

 and a well designed, but leech infested, dunny.

When we got 2km out it started to rain. In fact it poured down and we all got thoroughly wet except Frances who was wearing rain pants. The road effectively transformed from a dusty track to several modest streams within about 10 minutes.
We were also all, except Chandra, wearing Leech Socks which are supposed to keep the little suckers at bay (or at least visible so they could be flicked). This seemed to work for most of us although Rob got well sucked and bled for about 4 hours. (Chandra was not fussed by the leeches: she seemed to feel them creeping around and flicked them off wioth a handy twig.)

Evening meal was enhanced by some of the beer purchased earlier and was quite good although the food was a little blander than we were expecting.

Bird of the Day: Black Eagle

Other Vertebrate of the Day: Ruddy Mongoose

Pattern of the day:  the table top at Martins.

Bad taste of the day:  leeches (The leeches probably rated the leech socks as bad taste of the day!)

Read on

April 19 Sinharaja

Full day birding at Sinharaja Rainforest.  This may be green birding day in Sri Lanka.

I had a fairly ordinary nights sleep, possibly being a little dehydrated and not having a big enough pillow.  Of course at dawn I was solidly asleep and as a result I was not up early enough to see the Sri Lankan Blue Magpies come to feed on moths in the breakfast area. I did get a good look at the rainforest however ....

... and a Junglefowl came to visit.

The place is quite well set up as an eco lodge with solar hot water and his own mini hydro-electric scheme.  It is certainly 'simple' but is also very close to the forest and wildlife (which is the reason for coming here) and all other accommodation is at the foot of the hill about 40 - 60 minutes jeep drive away.  Surprisingly for such a remote place there was good cellphone coverage. Perhaps Telstra should send a mission to Sri Lanka to work out how to do it?  (See below more significant comment on this!)

As no-one had been able to acquire bread yesterday our breakfast included coconut roti: while it looked a bit like dwarf bread (which is inherited not baked) it tasted excellent. It was enhanced by application of Woodapple jam.

The aim of the day was to walk up and down the road to the Research Centre and visit a couple of other places of interest. The first of these was to try to locate the Serendib Scops Owl. We failed, but did find a beautiful green pit viper under a bank.

The other snake species seen on this day was a Keelback.  Nowhere near as attractive or venomous.

As we walked out to the Centre we found some Malabar Trogons. I really like this genus: like parrots but "softer".  Unfortunately they stayed out of camera range. Several of the other endemics were located until we found a gang/family of Sri Lanka Blue Magpies.

It seems that several of the guides feed them at this point, including one bloke who turned up with two German clients. He had the Magpies feeding off the top of his telescope.

This group ended up at the Centre at the same time we did. Then their equivalent of Chandra turned up to say he had found the Sri Lanka Frogmouths. The guide counselled his female client that it would be muddy getting there and that if a leech got her she wasn't to scream as it would scare the froggies. She immediately found a leech on her and screamed which scared the pants off all of us and caused her spectacles to crash to the ground. It was a bit of a struggle getting to the Frogmouth position and very muddy.

Note the white 'spats': they are in fact leech socks which seem to deter the little beasts from going up your leg.  They have other ways in however so constant vigilance is required.
The Frogmouths (an endemic species) were a lot smaller than our home crew and very cute.

At least the Germans were interested in Nature. We saw a Pommie couple who looked very miserable (and totally inappropriately dressed). This was not improved by the large patch of blood on the female's backside where a leech had obviously had a good feed. Two other large groups charged through – one set of Pom blokes wearing shorts and a group of Russian females, some of whom at least were wearing jewel enhanced thongs – in a rain forest!!!
 There were a lot of orchids around.  One species (unidentified) was called 'ground orchid' ...

... while the other, shown in close up yesterday, was Arundina graminifolia was rather tall!

Eat your heart out, Little Dumpies!
Also of interest in the plant department were some Pitcher Plants.  We could distinguish two species, the first of which was quite tall ...

 ... while the second was low, almost on the ground.

We had also enjoyed the masses of butterflies around of which two of the smaller species seemed to take a liking to my shoes. 

Three-spot Grass-yellow

 Angled Pierrot

They were easy to photograph while some of others were impossible. We particularly liked the Tree Nymphs - large, back and white beasts that floated like something out of Avatar! Butterflies will have a separate summary page.
I enjoyed this monster snail

 ...  and this attractive spider species popped up at various points throughout the trip.

A few other arthropods were also of interest, especially the millipedes. These were a contender for pattern of the day.  Rob took the snap, and marvelled that anyone - in this case Frances obliged - would put their hand in that close for scale.

 I also liked the shapes made by the vicious thorns on this rattan palm.

We had walked halfway back to the Lodge when a flock came through so beetled off to look at it. A Red-faced Malkoha was found as part of theflock: very pleasing as our trip was based on a Jetwing standard “Malkohas and Leopards” outing. We then went back to the Research Centre. While there we noticed the cloud building up again and sure enough got wet again. Taking off my leech socks and checking my clothes and body I found I had carted 10 leeches back to the Lodge. Yecccch!
Bird of the Day:  Malabar Trogon (the Magpies were semi tame)
Other Vertebrate of the Day:  Green Pit viper
Pattern of the Day:  Can't remember!!
Bad taste of the Day:  Bejewelled thongs on Russian tourists.

Read on