Cleaning up in the highlands - 19th November

A bad start to the day. I am room sharing with Mike Pollard. In the night, I thought I heard the door click, but dismissed it as someone moving around in the corridoor. As a precaution in the morning, I checked there was nothing valuable missing, and suggested to Mike to do the same. I was fine, but Mike's debit card was missing. He got his partner to cancel that for him. Note to selves, lock the room door at night, however safe you think the hotel is. Hopefully, he will have managed to cancel the card in time before anyone gets the chance to do any damage.

We got up for an early breakfast and set off toward the Horton Plains National Park. We drove through scenery somewhat reminiscent of parts of Devon or Wales, with fields of cattle. Except that there were also flocks of Cattle Egrets next to the cows. As we climbed higher, we entered damp forests of tree ferns and dwarf rhodendron.

Mike photographing a tree fern

 

A sea of dwarf rhododendron and flowering balsam

After passing the entrance, we realised that a large number of other minibuses were also there at this time, full of western and far eastern tourists. They weren't birders, so why did they need to be there so early. We drove about 1km to a small pool on the right side of the road. As soon as we got out of the van, we could here Sri Lanka Whistling Thrushes calling and singing. This is a tough species to see, but with a bit of help from Craig Robson's recording, we managed to persuade a female to show herself a couple of times, and a male flew past. Result! That was easy. Thanks Craig.

The rear end of a female Sri Lanka Whistling Thrush

We walked a bit further down the road listening and watching for more of the highland specialities. I heard a familiar 'tuk tuk' sound. I had been listening to recordings of Sri Lankan birds on my car stereo during the weeks before departing, and if I wasn't mistaken, this bird sounded like a Sri Lanka Bush-warbler. I played a recording of the species posted on the web site Xeno Canto by Dave Farrow, and not one, but two of these tricky skulking species hopped clearly into view, showing their rich buff throat. Another result! Thanks Dave. We drove around the amazing upland grasslands then went down, stopping again at the Whistling Thrush pool, where an otter swam and hunted brazenly in front of us. It started to rain. And it rained, and rained, and rained. The monsoon was supposed to have petered out in October, but was going on much longer than usual.

The grasslands on Horton Plains (formerly potato fields apparently)

A short-clawed otter (same species as ours) checking where we are

A black eagle drifted over

After a good curry lunch at the Grand Indian, we spent a bit of time at the hotel before some of us headed out in the continuing rain to Victoria Park in the middle of Nuwara Eliya. Through the rain we saw a cracking male Kashmir Flycatcher and an Indian Pitta.

Pied bushchat in the pouring rain