Nine-year-old twins on a quest to cover 450 birds of Sri Lanka

Thinev and Mihela Danansuriya, nine-year-old twins from Grade 4 of Royal College, Colombo hope to cover all 450+ birds of Sri Lanka in their video blog.

During one of many unexpected holidays in 2022, they started a fun project to create a two-minute-educational video blog about each of the birds they have seen in Sri Lanka. They have covered quite a lot of

Sri Lanka’s map already. They turned bird lovers at 4 years old when they received the book “Birds of Sri Lanka” as a gift and this passion has been growing ever since.

What started as a fun project turned a bit more serious and they have so far completed about 150 videos, published 120 online, where a new bird video is released daily.

They hope that people including foreigners who visit Sri Lanka see their videos and develop an interest into the world of “Bird Watching”.

“Bird watching is a really fun activity and there are lots of birds anywhere you go. Knowing more about the birds makes it really interesting”, said Thinev, the elder of the twin brothers.

Younger of the two Mihela explains “All our videos have different parts, at Àrst we introduce the bird with information like whether they are endangered or not, then we explain where else in the world this bird can be spotted other than Sri Lanka. Of course, some birds are endemic to Sri Lanka. Then we explain their plumage (feathers) and variations among male - female, adults - juveniles, breeding - non breeding likewise. Later we explain their behaviours, sounds and what they are called in Sinhala.

At the end of each of our videos we say whether we have seen this bird or not, if we have seen then we say where we have seen them. If not, we talk about the places that you can actually see them.”

They hope to cover 250 birds by their 10th birthday and by their 11th birthday, they hope to complete all 450+ birds of Sri Lanka.

Thinev and Mihela hope that many who see their videos turn bird lovers and see Sri Lanka as a destination to travel.

You can Ànd them online by searching for “Birds of Sri Lanka with Mihela and Thinev”.