When: February 2025 Weather: Perfect with nary a drop of rain 25 to30C

Leica P900, Sony RX10.4

I managed to squeeze a week out of my packed schedule for 2025 to join 3 birding pals on a week long expedition to bird watch in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka; a place I’d been many times before and had birded sporadically without a guide. This time, my friends who are birding experts in their own right had organised the trip with BWT (Birding and Wildlife Team) and the youthful Nila guided us expertly for the whole trip. We used a large van with plenty of space for 4 plus driver and Nila AND our bags and equipment for the week…whilst the van can seat 6, 4 is perfect with space for everything.

Our planned route was to overnight at the nearby Covanro Hotel, just 20 min from the airport as we landed late. Then it would be on to Sinharaja, Kithulgala, Nuwara Eliya (pronounced Nuraliya by the locals!), Kandy and then back to the airport. Largely centered on the wetlands and montane region….

Whilst typically a sporadic and not very organised birder, this time my friends imposed a target for the trip…to see ALL 35 endemic species in Sri Lanka and as many lifers as we could! Nila didn’t seem too daunted by the task we set him….this will be a multiple part post and as I write this, I still don’t know whether we’ll get all the endemics….

Apart from the 35 endemics, one of our target birds had to be the Serendip Scops Owl, a new species that had only been discovered by Sri Lankan birder Deepal in 2001. Deepal then founded BWT, the birding company that guided us this time. We had no idea how easy or difficult it would be…..

And so after an hour’s interesting birding and brekky, we set off on the 4-5hr drive south to Sinharaja, a renowned wetland birding location…we of course stopped off at several places along the way….

And on we drove….Nila knew the endemic SL wood shrike would be a challenge as it’s a dry zone bird, so he diverted to a road not far away and found it!

As we neared Sinharaja for lunch, Nila said he had a surprise for us…..the van pulled into a little track and he led us up a narrow hilly trail and a local birding expert Ranjit pointed to a copse….

We each went up in turn to squat or kneel to peer at what Ranjit and Nila were trying to show us….the picture above gives you an idea of how difficult it must have been to locate the…….Serendip Scops Owl! (It’s near the bottom left of the picture above in case you can’t find it…)

After the elation of seeing the SSO, it would be difficult for the rest of the afternoon to match it. We checked into the rather nice Forest Edge Resort which is up a rocky bumpy road and had lunch. The dining room backs onto some greenery…

After a late lunch we headed down to the bridge at Kudawa…

So it was that our first day ended with 8 endemics and the Serendib Scops Owl…..we were happy.