Yala National Park, Sri Lanka..birding

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When: April 2024 Weather: HOT 31C

Nikon P950

In Colombo for a weekend and managed to get out to Yala National Park, about 250km or 3.5hours from Colombo on the highway. Foreigners pay USD25 for admission. We stayed at the Doubletree Hilton, an hour from Yala and our guide picked us up at 1pm arriving at and entering Yala for our one and only safari scheduled. We’d missed out on the leopard in South Africa a month ago so I was hopeful….

Yala National Park for leopard safari
There were lots of water bodies with the accompanying water birds….here the alrge pelicans and spoonbills….pelicans were also seen on the roadside perched on electric cables!
black winged stilt nesting
black headed ibises were commonly seen
star bird of the day for me was the Siberian or Tibetan sand plover
common redshank
blurry shot of a distant GreatThick-knee
Yala is a coastal national park and here we see a stream leading to the sea in the far distance….when the tsunami of 20 years ago hit Sri Lanka, Yala was also affected here
green bee eaters were plentiful
and then a lovely encounter with Whistling ducks….swimming by placidly at first and then a huge flock giving us an incredible aerial display of colour and movement…
dorsal view of whistling ducks in flight
ventral view of whistling ducks
colourful from the side
magnificent lesser adjutant stork posing under a tree
peacocks and peahens were everywhere
paddyfield pipit
an odd elephant also joined the hunt for leopard
warthog
there was a lovely pond with lots of white water lilies…..evoking the waterlily paintings of chinese artist Wu GuanZhong
The Malabar Pied Hornbill..similar but yet different to the Pied Oriental Hornbill in Singapore…this has a larger black patch on the casque and the rear part is black in this male….
open billed stork

As the afternoon wore on, there were a couple of instances when our guide heard about a leopard sighting and drove hell for leather to the location….but alas the leopard was already gone each time we got there….beware the roads are rough at low speed but when going full tilt, it’s pretty dangerous as you’re bouncing up and down the rutted road….don’t sit in the last row of seats..it’s the bounciest!

oriental darter
common babbler
black robin
painted stork
juvenile white bellied sea eagle
crocs were there too
and a pair of sambar deer bathed
so although we dipped on the leopards, Yala itself is quite charming, with lots of rivulets and lakes…..and birds…

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