Absolute Birding in November, 2011

I am back after guiding my first birding tour for the winter tour season of 2011/2012. It was a 14-day Absolute Birding tour with Brice and Gail Wells from Perth, Australia from 1–14 November, 2011. Brice, 78, became the oldest birder to survive my Absolute Birding tour.

Our final tally of birds stood at 231 species. We saw all thirty-three endemics extremely well. As usual, we did well in the night birding department, scoring ten out of the fifteen resident night bird species. These included seven owls. Brice had never seen that many owls on a single birding trip before, so he was really pleased.

The rain gods were kind to us: barring the first two days, we had beautiful weather throughout the tour. Several mixed-species bird flocks were seen in full swing at Sinharaja. These yielded all the flock-associated specials such as the Ashy-headed Laughingthrush. Which laughs alright, but never smiles.

This Sri Lanka Swallow didn't mind the wet weather at Kithulgala; it was collecting mud for nest building.

This Sri Lanka Wood Pigeon was fearless when it came to drink in a 'waterhole' on this tree at Welimada.
Right time, right place.

The Grey-headed Fish Eagle was sentinel at Bundala National Park in bright light.

It is only fair to say that we had an impressive array of non-feathered attractions.

One of them is this gleaming elephant in pretty light at the Bundala National Park. Unlike the ones at Yala, the elephants at Bundala are a bit grumpy. So you have approach them with respect and caution. It looks like the ones at Bundala seem to have some 'issues' with the local fishermen who are allowed to enter the park in bikes to engage in fishing.

This elephant made a roadblock to assert its dominance, keeping us, and a few fishermen ahead, waiting.

We had to wait for about fifteen minutes, until it decided to clear the traffic at its own terms!

A similar standoff happened outside the Bundala National Park on another day. This time, it almost cost a few birds for the trip. Regardless, we scored 100 plus species of birds on that day. A bloke from the wildlife department, who happened to use the same road, came to our rescue; he used a couple of fire crackers to 'neutralize' the situation.

At Yala, we saw five Leopards in just two game drives (one in the first and four in the last) all which posed well. On our first visit, some real-time ground intelligence led to this lone young female on a tree close to the Akasha-chaitya junction. We had it for a good fifteen minutes.

Our no.2 and 3 Leopards came together. And in the process, nearly took our breath away!

That was when these two big boys crossed the road in the Jumburagala road. The one that took the lead was blind in the left eye.

Too bad we were at the wrong side of the light.

Otherwise, I could have absolutely nailed them!

No, we photographers are never happy!

As our jeep driver correctly predicted, one of the Leopards, as it turned out the bigger one, settled on a distant rock to nap. Driving on from there minutes later, we had the One-eye, walking along the track marking its territory.

He was a grumpy old fellow. A walking-wounded of sorts. Every now and then it paused to pose. Even the point-and-shooters had a field day.

We were compelled to take a comfort break close to 5.30 p.m. While we were busy, we heard a deer alarm. Quite close! We were making our way out of the park, having had a superb day. Too close and precious to let go, we drove in the direction of that alarm. And minutes later, we found this female.

If not for that desperate leg-stretch, we would have not heard the alarm, which led to this beauty.
Which drove home a golden rule in the jungles: when you want to go, go you must.

Anyway, the female having noticed us, crossed the road and disappeared. Once again, our driver predicted that it may climb a rock nearby, and he made a beeline to that spot.  Not even a minute passed by, and the female materialized on the rock in front of us, giving us a bemused stare, "how did you know ...?!"

Our jeep driver said he heard the female calling to its young. So we expected she will soon have some company. About five minutes later, this cute little female cub appeared on the rock!

But, before reaching her mom, she paused to check us out.

At her own pace, she joined her mom.

Some quality family time followed

The little one got a nice clean up, presumably before the evening activity.  In the shade of a fig tree, this rock had a peaceful setting of a Buddhist temple. Two Malabar Pied Hornbills whooshed pass vying for their attention. It was nice to see how mindful the Leopards were—even watching birds! We left them there to make our timely exit and to end what a fabulous day with big cats.

While the above passed as our best wildlife day, our best birding day was day-thirteen at Sigiriya. It was significant because of a late afternoon birding session, which produced an avian bonanza consisting of eight new ticks for the trip.

The goodies were Shaheen, Cotton Pygmy-goose, Orange-headed Thrush, Black-backed Dwarf Kingfisher, Indian Blue Robin, White-rumped Shama, 'Fork-tailed' Drongo Cuckoo, Indian Pitta, Jerdon's Nightjar, Spot-bellied Eagle Owl (which was expertly spotted by Brice), and a one-for-the-road Brown Fish Owl.

In terms of numbers, our day-seven was the best with a whopping tally of 118 species.
Birds were superb alright, but I must say those leopards really took the cake on this tour.

Thinking about that day in Yala, I still can't wipe the smile off my face.

Sri Lanka Painted Frog

Meet the Sri Lanka Painted Frog aka. Sri Lanka Bull Frog Kaloula taprobanica (Parker, 1934), an amphibian endemic to Sri Lanka and South India. This frog is peculiar in that during drier times, it leads a subterranean life—at times being found 10–12 feet under! It comes out during wet weather for breeding, and I found the above individual on my lawn on 14 July, 2010. This day turned out to be rainy towards the evening, resulted by a monsoonal high.

On 17 July, another rainy day, I found another Sri Lanka Painted Frog—this time, would you believe, inside my house! Compared to the previous one, it was less-colourful, fatter, and full of attitude; it was probably a female (based on at least two of those attributes).

The species name: taprobanica refers to taprobane—how Sri Lanka was known to Greeks and Romans since pre-Christian times. Taprobane had derived from the local name that was in use in the past: Thambapanni (aka. Thambrapanni), which means "copper-coloured palms". The legend has it that the palms of the hands of the ancient settlers, who arrived in Lanka from northern India in the 6th century B.C., became copper coloured when they sat on the shore following landfall. (No doubt their backsides too would have turned the same colour, but historians make no such referrence.) Thereon, the newfound land of those ancient settlers came to be known as Thambapanni. As mentioned above, it later became known as Taprobane for people in the West, who came here in search of gems, spices, and elephants—the latter were famously used for wars of Alexander the Great. (Onesicritus, a historical writer who accompanied the latter, claimed that elephants from Taprobane were larger and more pugnacious than those of India.)

Guiding some visitors from USA, I first visited the general area of the aforementioned legendary site of landfall in 2004. One such site: Kudremalai, situated bordering the Indian ocean inside the massive Wilpattu National Park, to my surprise, had rusty coloured soil all over, evidently following volcanic geological events in the past. Here's how the soil looked—with a Fan-throated Lizard Sitana ponticeriana as eye candy.

UNO

No, this is not about the United Nations Organization, or Ban Ki-moon.
This is a continuation of the previous post, and concerns Uno, the one-tusked male elephant.

It turned out that Uno was in musth.

Musth is a sexually active phase in sexually mature male elephants. I use the phrase, 'sexually mature' instead of just 'mature' because when it comes to elephant ecology, we also talk about social maturity. Although the male Asian Elephants attain sexual maturity at the age of 9-12 years, it is known to take 8-10 more years for them to reach social maturity—an important quality that the females look for in their suitors. So the young bulls subjected to such cruel female choice are known to suffer from SINBAD syndrome: Single Income, No Babe, Absolutely Desperate!

Uno was not a hopeless SINBAD case, for the girls seemed to like him.

One in particular, which I named Gal, was quite flirtatious with him.
She maintained proximity, caressed him, allowed to be caressed, and generally didn't appear difficult.

Here's Uno taking a shower while Gal watches over.

Male elephants in musth can be identified easily by their swollen and moist temporal gland in the headsides. During musth, these glands secrete the excess blood testosterone—the reproductive hormone that drives us, males. This hormone is also secreted with urine, which dribble constantly during the very active phase of musth in elephants. Such sexually active males also possess a strong breath to further advertise their status. These olfactory signals; dominant behaviours such as flapping of ears, to send the scents farther; and auditory signals (some of which are inaudible to us humans); all help in getting the message to the receptive females, and to warn the competition.

I suppose Uno was in either early or late stage of musth. There was no dribbling of urine as it does when madly in love. Uno wasn't aggressive towards the safari jeeps present, at least during our brief observational period. Nor did he appear to be bossy towards other elephants present at the gathering.

Here's a close up of Uno's temporal gland, which looks swollen, and darker. The latter because of those secretions.

The temporal glands need cleaning to regulate flow. This is because the secretions can clog the opening of the glands. In the wild, elephants rub these glands against various objects such as trees. Apart from helping to clear any blockages, such behaviours also help to leave sensory cues within their territories to reach wider audiences.

After that brief shower, it was time for some wallowing.

Mud sticks well on a wet skin, and acts as an agent of sunscreen, insect repellent, and skin conditioner for elephants.

A drink break followed next.

The wallowing stuck some mud to Uno's only tusk, boosting his dominant outlook or his coolness.
And more self mud-slinging went on—a common behaviour among most elephants these days, ahem.

After this, he opted for some snacks in the form of short grass.
First, he uprooted them by kicking the ground with his front legs. Then he rubbed them against one of the forelimbs to get rid of the dirt. He then tolled them into a neat pile before eating. Again, nothing unusual.

However, what followed next was pretty special.
It was a close observation of a tool-using behaviour in a wild Asian Elephant—when Uno used a stick to get a scratch like this.
1.

2.

3.

Pretty smart, eh?
After a while, Gal had a private moment, with her back to Uno and us.
To that, Uno responded like this:

Plenty of eewws followed.
Uno was just checking her out. After all, the female urine contains hormonal cues of its receptivity.
And he seemed to like the cues.

Yeah, baby!

Well, nothing noteworthy followed.
May be she gave a flimsy excuse through her high frequency channels. 
May be they needed us get the hell out.
Hey! May be they needed some Barry White.
No, no—our elephants don't understand English!
May be a mellower Sinhala love song might have worked.

Have a rocking weekend all!

The Gathering

The gathering has started.

In the Sri Lankan wildlife circles, it refers to an annual gathering of wild, Asian Elephants in the Minneiriya , and Kaudulla National Parks in the dry zone. The number of elephants in this aggregation varies from about a hundred or so at the start in May, to around four hundred at its peak—typically in August and September.



The main reason why elephants gather like this is because of the availability of vast areas of nutrient rich grasses in the exposed beds of the massive Minneiriya and Kaudulla tanks ('tanks' is how man-made reservoirs, built during the hey days of island's hydraulic civilization, referred in Sri Lankan English). Both these tanks were constructed by the King Mahasen— the ruler of ancient Lanka from 275-301 A.D. This king was posthumously deified by the Sinhalese in honour of his stupendous works.

Known only to a handful of wildlife enthusiasts earlier, the credit for naming this wildlife spectacle as 'the gathering', popularising it to take it to wider audiences, and making it a viable nature-tourism product worth millions of Rupees to the Sri Lankan economy, goes to Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne—the Bill Oddie of Sri Lanka—though Gehan's no match to Bill in billingsgate.

I photographed all pictured shared here on 2 July, 2010, while guiding four Aussies from Brisbane on a culture and wildlife tour. After obtaining the permits, we started our safari to Minneiriya National Park in open-topped jeeps at 4.00 p.m., when it was not too hot. We returned to our cosy retreat Chaaya Village, Habarana at 6.30 p.m., rich in some amazing wildlife memories, and I am going to share some of them in several posts.

First, my favourite: two youngsters dashing to the water accompanied by a probable allomother.

And the scene soon turned to this—like elephants in salt and pepper. Sweet.

We observed a one-tusked tusker, which I named Uno. More about him later.

A big Thank You to Dr. Chandanie Wanigatunge for referring her Aussie friends to me!

This post was edited following a helpful correction made by the Elephant Researcher, Manori Gunawardena—a Cynthia Moss in the making in Sri Lanka.