David Chandler
This teardrop-shaped island off India’s south- east coast measures around 270 miles from top to bottom and 150 west to east. Much of it is lowland but there are mountains in the south that peak at higher than 2,500m. It has a wet zone, a dry zone, an intermediate zone between them and about 380 birds listed as regulars. My March visit was my first time in Asia.
Sigiriya and thereabouts
This World Heritage Site sits in the dry zone amid evergreen forests. We are seeing endemics from the first afternoon – Blackcapped Bulbuls freshen up in the birdbath, while we eat lunch; and there are Browncapped Babblers between a parked motorbike and a tuk-tuk. A non-endemic male Asian Paradise Flycatcher is more spectacular, though – with a crested black hood and impractically elongated tail streamers. A White-rumped Shama, glossy, long-tailed and orange-bellied, responds to my guide’s whistling. A Sri Lanka Junglefowl calls (it’s an endemic chicken). Indian Peafowl adds a touch of pub garden (they’re wild and common here), and Malabar Pied Hornbills certainly impress.
There are two – big, with a casque on the upper mandible, a status symbol and boom box rolled into one perhaps. Coppersmith Barbet came later – a beautiful bird.
Then Indian Pitta on the forest floor, Tickell’s Blue Flycatcher, Orange-headed Thrush and more endemics… Crimsonfronted Barbet, Lesser Sri-Lanka Flameback (a woodpecker) and a trio of Grey Hornbills.
After a night in an upmarket treehouse, where Asian Elephants stroll by and Toque Macaques can enter and help themselves (they didn’t) we set out at 6.35am to climb
Sigiriya, an ancient marvel of civil engineering. There are birds to be seen before we begin the climb, including more endemics – Sri Lanka Green Pigeon and Sri Lanka Woodshrike. Getting to the top and the 5th Century rock fortress is quite a climb – not for the faint or weak-hearted but worth it.
A Shahin, a Peregrine subspecies with orange underparts, flies onto the rock face and I look down on Little Swifts, white rumps splitting black uppers, the same species that I’ve seen in southern Spain.
We descend and drive to breakfast past a Blue-faced Malkoha (a sort of non-brood parasitic cuckoo) and a metre of Water Monitor bearing little resemblance to the milk monitor of your school days.