April 17 Recovery and acclimatisation

Morning, relaxation. Afternoon, visit Talangama Tank to look for birds.

We met our guide (who we call, at his request, Hettie – rather than use his family name Suchithra as advised by Jetwing) after getting the money and joined the chaos in the pick up area while he got the Jetwing van. We then had an hour of touring from 35km N of Colombo through the city and then 15 km east. On route we noticed:

• Many statues of Buddha, many with flashing blue and red LEDs forming a halo around the head;
• Lots of turf accountant premises. The first three had police stations opposite which we thought might be a pattern, but then the bookies continued and the copshops disappeared;
• it was raining and most people carried brollies (even the cops in uniform).
• There were lots of cattle wandering around and at one point a dozen of them loomed up like the zombies in a Living Dead movie.

Then we got to Villa Talangama. Caesar Augustus would be jealous of a villa as great as this. It is a huge place with just us in it. The staff had stayed up until 2am to greet us, give us a juice and cart our kit around. Excellent. We agreed that breakfast would be at 10 am if we were up by then which we were. This was a huge meal of very healthy stuff served by the excellent staff. It was served under an umbrella beside the pool giving a view over thee Tank. We had a conversation with Hamish - the owner of the Villa - and made arrangements for tea at 7pm (we're going birding with Hettie at 3:30).  Here are a few images of the villa and its fittings (mainly taken by Frances).

 Hamish pointed out that we were lucky to have arrived at 2am as the traditional song festival 50m away had only finished at 1:30am. This was part of the New Years Festivities (which seem to last 5 days at least with New Years Day itself in the middle). Possibly lucky to find we could get rooms etc at this time.

Frances and I arose about 9:30 and were greeted with this view.

We all went for a prowl together (repeating more or less one which Rob and Carol had already done).  A good collection of reptiles were seen:

Land Monitor

 Water Monitor

Garden Lizard

Rob good an excellent image of a Dragonfly, which annoyed me for several minutes by refusing to pose!

Many birds seen, of which several were additions to my life list. My favourites of this stage were initially the White-bellied waterhens

with little fluffball black chicks (which didn't hang around to be photographed), but were overtaken by the Flamebacks- very lurid woodpeckers.  The Tank was a bit low on water, but high on birds as shown in this Rob image.

I then decided to go for a run to the wall of the Tank and perhaps a bit further. When I got about 1km from the Villa there was a lot of interesting stuff happening so I went back and got my camera.

The tractor driver wasn't real happy about having his photo taken even at 50m away. Then I saw the Pheasant-tailed jacanas

and I was a very happy chappy.  A cooling and cleansing dunk in the pool completed the business.

In the afternoon we went for a slightly longer walk with Hettie, where we saw very many birds and generally had an excellent time. Highlights were the whistling ducks and cinnamon bittern. As we had not used the car at all this was all able to be counted as Green Birding.  While relaxing from all this exercise a monkey

ran across the lawn, getting a very steely gaze from Hamish's dog.  (I cannot imagine the battles that would ensue between our small dog an monkeys!)

The evening meal was enlivened with a bottle of Merlot and was generally excellent. The main dish was fish (rated by Hamish as better than chicken - note from later in the trip: this opinion is strongly endorsed) and was accompanied by many tasty vegetables. Definitely a great meal.

Bird of the Day:  Black-rumped Flameback

Other vertebrate of the Day:  Garden lizard

Pattern of the day:  Wrought-iron Gates

Bad taste of the day: none.

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