We had stayed the night at the rather dingy Seasons Hotel, and I was eager to see what was outside. In the garden of the hotel the first bird of the trip started calling-a yellow-billed babbler.
YELLOW-BILLED BABBLER
With the sun behind it it looked very much like an endemic rufous babbler, but when it flew to the ground I soon realised what it was. I kept walking forward and eventually reached a lake. A line of rocks separated a shallow part of the lake from a deeper part. On those rocks were three birds-a common sandpiper, an Indian pond heron and a little egret. I heard a call I remembered from
COMMON SANDPIPER
the last time I had been to Sri Lanka and realised that there was a brown-headed barbet in the tree above me! It quickly flew away. A common kingfisher perched on a twig shot off like an arrow from a bow. I was getting used to the common birds that I had seen on my previous trips to Sri Lanka. A house crow cawed from a wire as three parakeets flew overhead.
HOUSE CROW
Then we got back to the hotel. I was bored, so I opened the balcony door and stepped out, looking for any birds. I looked carefully at a tree and I saw . . .
The endemic Sri Lankan grey hornbill!
They stayed for a while, building a nest in the tree. Perching above the male was the duller female bird. Both flew over to trees and plucked out the leaves. They were there until lunch, when we had to leave to go to Ulagalla Resort, for a whole new world of birding . . .
