YOUNG BIRDER'S NOTES: SUMMER BIRDING TRIP: Day 11/12: Nuwera Eliya

After visiting Zimbabwe and Botswana, we travelled to Sri Lanka to meet up with family. During this time, we were staying in a town about an hour's drive from Nuwera Eliya, where my father's parents live. A friend of ours informed us about a new place to see the rare, endemic Sri Lanka whistling thrush. Since we had dipped on the bird many, many times before, with at least 8 visits to various sites in Nuwera Eliya and Horton Plains where the bird 'regularly' appears, we decided we'd give the new spot a try. So we drove towards this site in the afternoon.
Along the way to the new site, we stopped over at another site we know for the bird. This site consists of an area of forest surrounding a small stream. A path through this forest starts just behind a row of stalls selling food, only about 5 minutes drive from central Nuwera Eliya. Here, we met a friendly biologist studying the thrush, who informed us that our strategy for seeing the thrush (walking down the path, scanning the forest around the stream, waiting, then walking back up) was outdated. He showed us an area of shrubs just beside the path. Apparently, the thrush regularly comes to these shrubs, so it can eat rice left by the owners of nearby stalls (who know the bird well). Just a few minutes after we arrived, a stunning male Sri Lankan whistling thrush hopped into the shrubs in front of us! We waited for a while, watching a female Indian blue robin, an endemic dull-blue flycatcher, some cinereous tits, several dusky palm squirrels and an Indian blackbird visit the shrubs. Then, after about half an hour, the whistles of the thrush sounded from the undergrowth, and the male hopped in front of us again! Since we needed to rush back to the town now, we couldn't stay any longer. Unfortunately, bad lighting had ruined many of the photos we'd taken. The biologist told us that the thrush would almost certainly return the following morning, at around 6-8 am. He said he'd wait for us there and let my father borrow a lens that would work better in the conditions.
The next morning, we arrived early. Perhaps too early. All the species we'd seen the previous afternoon were present, apart from the whistling thrush! Just as we were about to leave, the biologist told us the thrush would almost certainly arrive soon. As he predicted, within 5 minutes the Sri Lankan whistling thrush male was showing himself off. Though he told us that the female would probably follow after the male, we had to leave quickly. We drank some tea, then headed back, satisfied.