Eight Owls a Week 

 Just got back from Sri Lanka where I was too busy birding to write anything. I went on an organised tour with Rockjumper and found my old friend Stu Elsom was one of the leaders. From a young, ultra-keen twitcher he has become head of his own Independent Ecological Consultancy, and is a very busy man. Thankfully most businesses are now saying "what do we need to do?" rather than "how can we get round the environmental regulations" which is a step forward, and I can only applaud people like Stu for the work he is doing.

As if running his business weren't enough, Stu still twitches, and has led tours for many years, first for Sunbird and now Rockjumper, quite honestly the Sri Lanka tour was the best I have been on, although most of my travels have been expedition cruises or self-organised. The main reason was a team of local guides, led by Ashoka Jayarathne, who were looking for certain species in advance of our going to the sites. One morning he started at 1.30am to locate Sri Lanka Bay-owl, a rarely-seen near endemic. His team apparently found one at about 8.00 am, and he then accompanied us all day until we were shown it just after lunch. Amazingly it was only about 20 metres from the road, but so much of the area remains forested there are plenty of spots for an owl to hide, especially one that moves its roost site regularly. Mind you, photographing the little gem wasn't possible from the viewing position, we had to enter the forest and be helped up a muddy slope, clinging on to saplings or logs, to photograph it from one side where a clear(ish) shot could be obtained. This had to be done one person at a time due to space limitations and to avoid disturbance.

Similar tactics were employed for another seven owls, all seen at daytime roosts. This included two endemics (Chestnut-backed Owlet and Serendib Scops), Brown Wood-owl, Brown Fish-owl, Indian Scops, Jungle Owlet, and Brown Hawk-owl. The first (Indian Scops) was a stop in a hotel garden on our first day, where we were invited to find them (two) ourselves; obviously these were the easiest. All of the others entailed muddy walks of varying lengths in to the jungle, and views ranged from partly hidden but generally visible by moving position, to Jungle Owlet which, typically for the species, sat in the open looking at us. Serendib Scops Owl showed in a slot between palm leaves, I photographed the top except the very top of the head, and the lower half and feet by moving position, and am hoping to join the two in Photoshop. In all five of these birds were ticks for me, we could have had another, the only one which had to be called after dark as it was an Eagle-owl (Spot-bellied). Sadly it didn't materialise, and the guides were (rightly) very strict about the overuse of tapes. Still, eight makes for a better title if you're old enough to remember Beatles songs. In fact the tour was eleven days, but there were three days when we didn't look for owls.

In addition to the owls we managed to see all 33 endemics, plus my own personal targets which were to photograph four waders. Great Stone-plover and Indian Stone-curlew were my last thicknees, Pintail Snipe one I've seen but never photographed, and Pheasant-tailed Jacana at last in breeding plumage. A funny incident helped with the last, we were viewing birds distantly so I went back to the bus for a converter. The driver chose that moment to drive to a better parking position about 150 metres further on. Whether he didn't realise I was on the bus or was having a joke I don't know, but when I got out there was a jacana much closer, and the rest of the group were still looking at distant birds. Yes, I did call them (after I'd taken photos).

I can thoroughly recommend Sri Lanka for a short birding trip, especially if you haven't been to India. Guides are available if you don't want an organised tour, we several times bumped in to Tim Appleton (of Birdfair fame) with a personal guide, he was on his way to see his daughter in Thailand for Christmas, and very nearly gripped us off for our last endemic! I shall be writing an illustrated report on my website in time, but I've got a lot of photos to process first! 

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