Ripleys, believe it or not

had a very good time in their 4-day natural history trip with me last month. We are talking about Dave and Rose Ripley from Wales and their girls, Celyn and Ceinwen, aged 13 and 12. Before the tour, Dave wrote to me “My wife and I enjoy birdwatching, the children not so much...”. And he added “...they would certainly enjoy elephants, snakes, lizards, insects, and birds in moderation.”

We agreed to combine the best of dry and wet lowlands by visiting the Udawalawe National Park and the Sinharaja "World Heritage" rain forest, with more emphasis on the latter.

Our dry zone leg gave plenty of the hoped for Asian Elephants. With Elephants found year-round, in their 100s at times, Udawalawe was a sure bet for seeing them. Additionally we saw Wild Boar, Wild Buffalo, Spotted Deer, Hanuman Langur, Jackal and Ruddy Mongoose. Land monitor, Flap-shelled Terrapin and Mugger Crocodile were some of the reptiles seen at the first leg.

With my 'oozing coolness' , I got the gals in my side and soon witnessed them actively getting involved in spotting birds, with enthusiastic support given by their parents. This resulted in us raking in nearly 100 species of birds on our day 01. These included Malabar Pied Hornbill, Lesser Adjutant, Grey-headed Fish Eagle, Blue-faced Malkoha, Sirkeer Malkoha, Pied Cuckoo, Plum-headed Parakeet, Crested Treeswift, Orange-breasted Green Pigeon, Sri Lanka Green Pigeon, Green Bee-eater, Barred Buttonquail (many), Indian Pitta and Indian Jungle Nightjar.

We also saw a large dragonfly named Elephant Emperor Anax indicus, which was my top highlight for day 01!

Our rain forest leg called for a different approach to get the girls involved – as it entailed exploring the forest on foot. I gave my Swarovski Binocs to Celyn, which she liked a lot.

And I taught young Ceinwen how to do macro-photography using a point and shoot digital camera, which kept her constantly lagging behind. Both girls were sharp-eyed and got involved actively spotting things, which made my job a lot easier. They proved very good companions to have on a rain forest walk. Ceinwen spotted this critter, which was barely 12 mm in length.

I was conveyed a joint communication by the girls that they’d love to see rain forest snakes. This request was met with enthusiastic support and we ended up seeing 9 snakes with 7 of them being found by yours truly. They belonged to 5 species out of which 3 were endemic. They were:

Green Pit Viper Trimeresurus trigonocephalus One lazing individual was found by me in the undergrowth by the roadside. Heard the girls going "awesome".

Green Whip Snake Ahaetulla nasuta – 2 individuals gave amazing views.

Barnes’ Cat Snake Boiga barnesii– A couple of this scarce endemic was found by me in a courtship behaviour. They are called 'cat snakes' due to their vertically elliptical pupils similar to those found in cats. This is a smaller relative of the infamous Brown Tree Snake Boiga irregularis, which caused avian carnage almost wiping out all the native birds of Guam, where RD is known to be working these days.

Common Bronzeback Tree Snake Dendrelaphis tristis - The individual that Ceinwen spotted first of this snake eluded me but this one that I found posed well for everybody.

Sri Lanka Keelbacked Water Snake Xenochropis asperrimus – 2 individuals at the usual spot. Endemic.

Our birding specials included 2 animated Chestnut-backed Owlets – the first of which was spotted by Dave at dawn.

With several decent mixed-species bird flocks, we saw almost all the specials expected to be seen at Sinharaja such as Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, Red-faced Malkoha, Sri Lanka Scaly Thrush, Malabar Trogon, and Crimson-backed Flameback

We also saw a brooding male Sri Lanka Frogmouth in a nest built on a tree branch above a trail. Observing it in the scope we noticed a ready-to-fledge chick. The angle of light did not allow good photography. But you can click here, here and here to see my previous photographs of this species.

We saw plenty of beautiful butterflies, which included this Rounded 6-Lineblue Necaduba berenice ormistoni.

Dragonflies too were out in good numbers. My top highlight was this pair of Sri Lanka Sabretails Megalogomphus ceylonicus in wheel position. This was a dragonfly-lifer for me.

Additionally we saw Amber-winged Glider, Rapacious Flangetail, Dawn Dropwing, Spine-tailed Skimmer, Asian Pintail and Marsh Skimmer.

We saw three species of Robber flies and the best-looking one of them is shown below. The body length of this excluding limbs was about 6 cm as you can judge from scale of the Clidemia hirta leaf on which it is resting. It looked formidable enough to tackle even a Sabretail!

We also saw plenty of amphibians. They'll have to wait for another post as this has already swollen a bit.

Macro Monday

This Robber fly was captured by me at 3 times the life size in my garden. No tripod was used. I got a person to hold a sheet of A4 paper at the background to prevent it from being dark as in these pictures.

Macro Monday HQ is at Lisa's Chaos.

Macro Monday

I shot this one to be used one day,

in a themed post named ‘Macro Monday’.

One of the good-looking Rhacophorid members,

Common Shrub-frog is found in big numbers.

Frogs cannot get sweeter than this, can they?

Macro Monday HQ is at Lisa's Chaos.

Bagging the Blue Whale

Sri Lanka is one of the best places to see the Blue Whale Balaenoptera musculus in the entire world according to the marine biologist, Dr. Charles Anderson. He is based in Maldives since 1983 and his research on whales in the Indian Ocean led him to believe that Blue Whales should be present off the south coast of Sri Lanka in April, a hypothesis which he confirmed with pelagic trips done in April 2007 and 2008. In the last of these trips, he has had Blue Whales on all 14-days he spent looking for them, with an average of 4.5 sightings per day!

Sri Lanka as you are aware is a continental island, which had been connected to India for much of the geological past through episodes of lowered sea levels. The continental shelf that it sits on begins to slope after 3 nautical miles off Dondra, the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka, which is also the southernmost point of the whole of Indian subcontinent. Due to this oceanographical reality, ships plying between east and west have to circumnavigate Sri Lanka, passing by Dondra instead of cutting across the Northern Sri Lanka where seas are shallow. According Dr. Anderson, the cetaceans migrating between feeding areas in the east and west of the Indian Ocean also take the same route as the ships. This according to him happens between December to April, with clear peaks in December and April.

With this beging the state of affairs, Peter Kaestner who at present is the world’s 7th ranked birder came to Sri Lanka on a 9-day holiday with his family in early April - with seeing Blue Whales being on top of their agenda. According to the latest numbers listed in Surbirds.com, Peter has seen a whopping 8,180 species of birds, out of 10,000 or species found in the world. In 1989, he was fortunate to discover a bird species entirely new to science, from Columbia, which came to be known as Cundimarca Antpitta Grallaria kaestneri.

This was Peter’s second trip with me. The first was in Sep, 2007 when he came on 3-day weekend birding trip wanting to clean up 8 Sri Lankan endemic birds missing in his world bird list. Before this, he had been on a solo birding visit to Sri Lanka in 1981 – round about the time when I was getting ready to go to the kindergarten.

In the 2007 trip we managed to see 7 of those 8 targets, namely the Serendib Scops Owl, Ashy-headed Laughingthrush, Red-faced Malkoha, Sri Lanka Spurfowl, Green-billed Coucal, Sri Lanka Bush Warbler and Sri Lanka Whistling Thrush – arguably the toughest members of the endemic clan, with two of them being in the “endangered” club. The one we missed out was the not-so-elusive, Brown-capped Babbler. This miss was because some of those rare species we sought were found in two ecological zones – the lowland wet zone and highland wet zone respectively and because some of them being rare birds demanded time. And because, we encountered foul weather throughout in this particular tour due to the period of travel coinciding with a monsoonal high.

We commenced our 2009 trip in the southeastern Sri Lanka with 2 game drives to the spectacular Yala National Park hoping to go 1-nil with the Leopard. Unfortunately we drew a blank with this elusive cat this time. However, I managed to find the Brown-capped Babbler at one of my sites near Tissa to make amends.

Next came the pelagic leg of the trip to see our main quarry, the Blue Whale. Having started from Mirissa at 7.15 a.m. on 5 April, we had evidence of our first Blue Whale after travelling 4 nautical miles towards Antarctica! It was a distant but unmistakable view of a characteristic high vertical blow. Tickable views were obtained around 5.5 nautical miles off. We had at least 4 good sightings of just an individual after we reached the hotspot and started looking intently. We knew it was the same one as it had a characteristic white marking in the tail, which showed up clearing with each surfacing. Here's a crude video of our Blue Whale.

At one point it was seen as close as 20-30m from our boat as it surfaced to breathe, almost taking our breath away. It performed well for us as well as for people aboard 3 other boats that converged at this hotspot for the same purpose. One of those was full of familiar faces with members of a local nature club. They at one point were very lucky to get a pretty close sighting. By the way, the terra firma you see in the picture below is Sri Lanka, just in case if you are wondering whether it is Antarctica.

I did not take my dSLR for this trip as I wouldn't have found much use of it with my macro only lens set up(Canon 300mm, I am thinking about you). So, all these pictures shared here were taken by my trusty Panasonic Lumix FZ-18, which is also the model that Peter uses as his carry on camera on his globe-trotting birding adventures. I bought mine after seeing this amazing shot he got by photographing the Serendib Scops Owl at night using an older Lumix version.

A day trip we did following this to Sinharaja rain forest to see Sri Lanka Scaly Thrush and Crimson-backed Flameback was successful. The former responded aggressively to my rendition of its contact call by flying straight towards my head, indicating it may be busy nesting. These two birds together with Sri Lanka Woodshrike and Common Hawk Cuckoo seen on this tour by Peter went as ‘bank birds’– ones which do not get added to his bird list immediately as the ‘Clements checklist’ that he uses to keep track of birds species has not yet accepted these recent taxonomical splits/potential spits (announced in various ornithological literature) as valid or ‘full’ species of birds. Now that he has seen these birds they would increase his tally once they are accepted as valid species in the future by everybody.

I nearly forgot, Peter became the first birder to see my garden's roosting Brown Hawk Owls.

Related posts:

Finding lifers for Peter Kaestner

Nannophrys ceylonensis