SRI LANKAN BLUE MAGPIE Urocissa ornata
The Sri Lankan blue magpie Urocissa ornata is a rather colourful bird endemic to Sri Lanka. It inhabits dense temperate rain forest and hill forest, and is declining due to loss of this, its habitat. It is normally a very shy bird but is rather tame in some places, like Martin's Lodge and other parts of Sinharaja forest where it will beg for food from people. It mostly eats small frogs, lizards, insects and other invertebrates, though it will take fruit. It is about the same size as the common and well-known European Magpie, in other words about 42 to 47 centimetres. Adults are blue, with a chestnut head, chestnut wings and a long, white-tipped tail. Their legs and bills are red. Young birds look duller. This bird has a variety of calls. These include a loud chink-chink and a rasping krak-krak-krak-krak, and it will also mimic the calls of other birds. It builds a cup-shaped stick nest in a tree or shrub, laying three to five eggs in most cases. These eggs are white, heavily spotted with brown. Both parents build the nests and feed the young, but only the female incubates the eggs in the nest. In Sinhalese, this bird is known as the kahibella or kehibella. The loss of its habitat and its rarity outside of good habitat is why this bird is considered internationally Vulnerable.
HOUSE CROW Corvus splendens
Much drabber and commoner is the house crow Corvus splendens. Also known as the Colombo crow (it is in fact abundant in Colombo), it grows roughly 40 centimetres long. Most of its body is black to blackish-grey, but its neck and breast are a much lighter grey-brown. This crow replaces the large-billed crow along the coast of Sri Lanka and its range is expanding. There are several subspecies, with the Sri Lankan subspecies protegatus also found in the Maldives and southern India, though Maldive birds are sometimes considered a different subspecies, maledivicus. The house crow can be found in a lot of southern and south-eastern Asia. It has been introduced to parts of east Africa, and once arrived in Australia by ship but was then exterminated. There is also now a breeding population in the Hook of Holland, and a small population around St. Petersburg in Florida. In all its range it is associated with large human settlements. In Colombo if you stay for a day and cannot see any of these, you are either shut up inside or have your eyes tightly shut. Their nests are frequently parasitised by the Asian koel, a species of cuckoo.
LARGE-BILLED CROW Corvus (macrorhynchos) culminatus
The large-billed crow Corvus macrorhynchos, also known as the jungle crow, is a species of crow widespread in Asia. It is very adaptable and eats a variety of different foods. It is also known as the thick-billed crow or jungle crow. There are eleven different subspecies, some of which are distinctive enough to sometimes be considered different species (the eastern jungle crow Corvus levaillantii, the Indian jungle crow Corvus culminatus and the large-billed crow Corvus macrorhynchos.) Of these the Indian jungle crow can be found in Sri Lanka. It is the commonest crow in inland Sri Lanka, sometimes considered the 'crow of the wilderness' though it is still attached to human settlements (however I have sometimes seen them in national parks like Wilpattu and Horton Plains). Asian koels also parasitise the nests of these birds, but much less than the house crow.
Those are the corvids of Sri Lanka.
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