After the excitement of the Blue-and-white Flycatcher this morning we drove to the Lake View Hotel which was a 30 minute drive to the entrance of Uda Walawe. The hotel was wonderful, very classy with a stunning room, wasted on us though! Firstly – we had a date with a couple of Indian Scops Owl in the hotel gardens. Chami took us to a clump of trees and said “right you have got five minutes to find them”. Well we searched and searched and he had to show us the birds, to be fair I was using my experience of European Scops Owl and was looking for a bird resembling a broke branch! After five minutes he showed us the birds!!!
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Indian Scops Owl.
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After lunch we headed to the Reserve changing vehicles to a open Jeep from which we birded, and we birded. It was stunning, Ron’s camera was red hot we hardly got halfway around before we had to turn around and head out. But in the meantime we had some tremendous birding. At the entrance we saw a Crested hawk-eagle in a tree that performed wonderfully. We also saw Blyth’s, Richards and Paddyfield Pipits, Jerdon’s Lark and a host of other birds.
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| Crested Hawk-eagle |
One of the birds we most wanted was Sirkeer Malkoha and we didn’t have to wait long to get one. We also had Yellow-eyed Babbler, Ashy Prinia and 50 odd Indian Peafowl.
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| Indian Peafowl |
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| Little Green Bee-eater |
There were also herds of Asian Elephant everywhere and Rufous Mongoose! Bird wise there were Bee-eaters everywhere. All the camera’s where working overtime, with Ron specialising in a variety of squeeks and mantera’s, every bird seemed to bring new noises out of him from “Ohh, Ohh, Ohh”, to “Keith, Keith” and the ever present “I need that” but said with so much excitement that it is hard to convey in print! Needless to say, to anyone that knows Ron, after six days my ears were bleeding!
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| Sirkeer Malkoha |
When we left the park we stopped for tea and coffee with Chami pulling the Ginger Nuts out again, there seemed to be an endless supply.
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