When: October 2014 Weather hot 25-30C
The highlight of our ecotour of Sri lanka was to have been Yala NP and the leopards…sadly the drought that had prevailed meant that we had limited access only for a few hours…the day started with shooting the sunrise from the shore… \
sunrise over Yala
end of the jetty
the waves pounded
the lone fisherman with his handline
the local fishing boats
We then proceeded to shoot by the lake shore in Kirinda….outstanding. The first notable sightings were of the magnificent imperial green pigeons…there were simply everywhere…but there were lots of other interesting birds too…
Imperial Green Pigeon
beautiful munia
Oriental white eye
Scaly Breasted Munia
female paradise flycatcher
Purple rumped sunbird: male
feeding..
female purple rumped sunbird
star tortoise!
Star bird of the morning: blue faced Malkoha
Just amazingly beautiful malkoha
another view
This Shikra was minding his own business
surveying the terrain…
hornbill dwarfing the raptor
and soon chased the raptor away..
And so on to Yala NP in the afternoon…
this handsome monitor lizard welcomed us to the park
The dirt roads in Yala
Adjutant stork
the endemic Ceylon jungle fowl
jackal
peacocks were everywhere
the magnificent crested hawk eagle which we saw several times
crested hawk eagle
Crest standing regally
But we were in Yala to try and spot leopards and it was getting dark as we were leaving the park when we saw a spotted tail …and we finally found a leopard of Yala…it was very dark and difficult to photograph…
back view of leopard’s head with cute white tipped ears
he was just sitting there..
looking around
The Natural Traveller 