Sinharaja Forest Reserve, part one

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In one of the earlier posts I mentioned how Sri Lanka has several climatic zones, broadly divided into dry-zone, wet-zone, and montane. And I also mentioned a couple of times that Sri Lanka has 33 species of endemic birds. So far I have been to the dry-zone (at Wilpattu, Sigiriya, and Yala) and the highland areas (at Ohiya). Now it was time for the wet-zone forest, where the bulk of the endemic birds are found (roughly two-thirds of them). In my original plans which I scribbled up in Delhi I was going to visit two sites, the Kitulgala forest and the Sinharaja forest, because although they have the same birds some are more common at one site or the other. However Kitulgala does not appear to have any budget options for accommodation and so I thought it would make more sense to just spend longer at Sinharaja. There didn't seem to be any budget options there either, but It would save on a couple of travel days at least.

Sinharaja has been protected since as far back as 1875, originally as a 6000 acre "Reserved Forest". In 1909 the size was increased to 7910 acres and in 1926 to 9203 acres. In 1988 it was named as a National Heritage Site, and the following year became a World Heritage Site. Today it is 18,900 acres. It is a rainforest park, strangely with almost no mosquitoes but there are leeches. If I have to choose between mosquitoes and leeches I would choose leeches. They are gross and creepy but they are harmless apart for a little blood loss.

There is more than one "entrance" for Sinharaja Forest Reserve but only the northern one at the village of Kudawa has any trails into the forest; the southern points seem to just have roads running around the outside. The cheapest place to stay at Kudawa is Martin's Simple Lodge which charges close to NZ$40, just because he can. The next cheapest seemed to be the Blue Magpie Lodge which is over NZ$100 per night. There is also the Sinharaja Birders Lodge near the Blue Magpie Lodge, which I think is about the same price. I had been going to stay at Martin's because even though it is too expensive there weren't any other options I knew of and he has the endemic blue magpies coming to the breakfast table every morning. However while at the Popham Arboretum the manager Jayantha gave me the phone number of one of the park guides named Sunil who has a room available at his house. I rang him up the day before going to Sinharaja and arranged to stay there for 2000 LKR (about NZ$20) per night - the usual price is 3000 LKR but he gave me a discount because Jayantha had told him to. His house was not in Kudawa, Sunil told me, but in another village three kilometres away called Miyanapalawa, so at first glance not as ideal as being right by the park entrance but cost-wise much more sensible - basically, the cheaper the accommodation the longer I can stay in the area.

It is quite a long way from Mirissa to Sinharaja's northern entrance. There was also a little added complication in that I didn't know what time I would be getting to Miyanapalawa, I didn't know where Sunil's house was (or even really where the village itself was because it doesn't show up on the internet), and that Sunil wouldn't even be there until after 5pm because he would be in the park guiding during the day. I figured it would all work out.

I had found a page for Sri Lanka's southern bus routes on Wikipedia, so I knew it was reliable, and it said there was a bus from Galle to Kalawana, which is the nearest town to Sinharaja. So in the morning I got a bus from Mirissa to Galle, about an hour away, where I found that there was indeed a bus from Galle to Kalawana but only one per day and it wasn't leaving until 12.50pm. I waited around for about three hours and then I was off on my way. For anyone who likes following these things on maps, the bus route went from Galle to Ambalangoda to Aluthgama to Matugama to Baduraliya to Kalawana. The trip took around four hours (and only cost 180 LKR), and is perfect for anyone who wants to know what sardines in a can feel like. I wasn't sure if there was a bus for the next stage from Kalawana to Miyanapalawa, or even if anyone would know where I was going considering I couldn't pronounce it, but I was in luck and there was a bus heading that way at 5.40pm. I was a little unsure about what would happen when I got dropped in this village in the dark with no idea where I was, so I got the bus ticket guy to ring up Sunil on his phone so he could tell him where to drop me (I don't travel with a phone, in case you're wondering). Miyanapalawa, as it turns out, isn't the typical village strung along the road as I was expecting, instead it is on its own road off the main road, so if looking for it from the bus I wouldn't have even seen it. Sunil had come up to the junction on his motorbike to meet me, and we went off to his house. Everything worked out just fine.

The location of Sunil's house in relation to the park was no issue at all. It is actually about 4.5km rather than 3km but he obviously goes in to work every morning, so at 6.30am I would just get a lift on his bike to the park. Easy-peasy. The village, and particularly his garden, is very lively with birds including several of the endemics (I'll come back to that later). If walking, the road between his house and the park is a mix of cultivation, scrub and proper forest so there are birds along the way. There's also the bus if needed, which passes several times a day and costs 12 LKR to Kudawa (and then the park entrance is about 500 metres further uphill). Martin's Simple Lodge is only slightly closer in actual fact because it is up a four-wheel drive track about 3.5km long which you need to walk down before going the final 500m to the park gate (or if you're like most birders and detest walking anywhere they have jeeps for 3500 LKR per trip up and down their road). The other two lodges are closest of all, Sinharaja Birders Lodge about 700 metres from the entrance and the Blue Magpie Lodge less than a kilometre, but they are also very expensive (bird-tour groups stay there). Sunil just has one room for guests so is best for a solo traveller or a couple, although he is in the process if building a new house just for people to stay in and that will have four rooms. His wife Rohini cooks excellent meals, I think the best I've had at any of the homestays I've been at in Sri Lanka. I definitely recommend staying at Sunil's place if going to Sinharaja as a budget birder. (His phone number is 071 048 4677).

There is a mandatory guide when visiting the park, I'm not quite sure why, but it's not too expensive. The entry price is 650 LKR and the guide is 1000 LKR for as many hours as you are in there. Most visitors who aren't birders probably spend about two hours, just a quick walk through having flowers and lizards pointed out, then they're off again. The guides are on a roster system, so you don't get to choose - you get whichever guide is next on the list - but I ended up with Sunil luckily. He has been at the park for 24 years and knows everything. If you have to have a guide in a park, then you should always hope to get a good one! I didn't actually start out with Sunil, but the young guy I got assigned looked so dismayed that I was going to be in the park all day that I think there was an "arrangement" made to give me to Sunil.

Before getting onto the birds, which will take up most of the remainder of this post, the wet-zone race of purple-faced langurs were commonly seen here (so I've now seen three of the four races - just western left, hopefully when I get to Colombo), and also the wet-zone races of toque macaques and giant squirrels. I even managed to get some photos of the giant squirrels for the first time but they were really just "record shots" because leaves were obscuring most of the animal. It was a good reptile day too, with firstly a green tree viper (Trimeresurus trigonocephala) next to the entrance building, followed by several green vine snakes (Ahaetulla nasutus) through the day - very common along the trails here! - and in the lizard department, the endemic kangaroo lizard (Otocryptis weigmanni), the green garden lizard (Calotes calotes) and a water monitor.

At Ohiya I had reach thirteen endemic birds by day twelve, but since then I had fallen beind again due to the next six days being at Yala and Mirissa interspersed with travel days. My first day at Sinharaja was day nineteen of the Sri Lankan trip. I had six endemics to make up. This wasn't a problem at all. Right at the entrance building to the park there's a hollow-topped stump in which rice is placed as a bird-feeder. While I was lingering there a band of orange-billed babblers rolled on up, and while I was trying to get photos of them (unsuccessfully, due to the low light) a spot-winged thrush hopped past. In the trees there were some Sri Lankan crested drongos, and round the corner a party of ashy-headed laughing thrushes. Four endemics down right off the bat. Also the bird-feeder was frequented by a couple of flame-striped squirrels which aren't quite endemic (they are also in southern India) but were another new mammal for me. The central stripe down their back really does almost glow bright orange. The next day I saw more flame-striped squirrels in better lighting conditions and saw that the belly and underside of the tail are also bright orange. There are also dusky squirrels here - the first Funambulus I saw at the bird-feeder was a dusky squirrel although I was told the "only" species here was the flame-striped squirrel; and in the open country and around the villages there are the common three-striped palm squirrels, so be aware of what you are looking at if searching for flame-striped squirrels.

One of the birds I most wanted to see while here was the Sri Lankan frogmouth (despite the name also found in southern India). They are nocturnal but mostly sleep in tree ferns, usually in bonded pairs, and the guides tend to know their regular roost-sites. Sunil was checking various spots as we walked along the jungle trails but without any luck. After a while one of the other guides we passed said he had already seen one, so we went back along the road to the place. It took some finding, but eventually there was a female frogmouth on her perch. I was astounded by how small it was, no bigger than an English blackbird. I am more used to the Australian Podargus species which are pretty big, and I had been wondering how they could roost in the spindly Sri Lankan tree ferns. Later in the day while looking unsuccessfully for a roost-site of Serendip scops owl Sunil found a pair of frogmouths in a dense tangle, the female rufous-brown and the male grey. Amazing birds, frogmouths.

The eighteenth endemic (not counting repeat sightings of grey hornbill and Sri Lankan junglefowl, which I had seen previously at, respectively, Sigiriya and everywhere) was the Sri Lankan scaly thrush, one of the more difficult of the endemics to find. Like some of the others this is the result of splitting but it really does look very different from the usual scaly thrushes elsewhere.

Endemic number nineteen was my very top "wanted" bird in Sri Lanka, even more-so than the frogmouth, the red-faced malkoha. You should google a photo of this one (because I never got one!). Malkohas are a type of giant cuckoo but they rear their own young and like to run through the trees like squirrels rather than fly like normal forest birds. I saw the malkohas in a bird-wave moving through the canopy far above. Canopy birds are the most frustrating because most of the time you are looking up at their bellies against the light, which can make identifications difficult. At least red-faced malkohas are easy - they are big and boldly-coloured, sort of like a magpie from below, but if they turn their head the right way you see the scarlet face. The other birds in the feeding flock were not so easy. Sunil could see white-faced starlings - another endemic, and a really rare one to boot - but every time I thought I saw one there would be leaves in front of it. I never did manage to get a look at one. Then there were several big red birds which may have been crimson-backed woodpeckers (yes, another endemic) but I only got glimpses of them flying, never a proper view. And there were non-endemic Malabar trogons as well (also red, but not on the wings), of which I got an untickable view of one bird. Further along on the same trail we encountered the same mixed flock, but much lower down, enabling excellent views of the malkohas and trogons - but the starlings and woodpeckers had unfortunately gone.

Rain-clouds had been gathering in the afternoon and it was while we were looking at the malkohas that it started drizzling, quickly turning into a torrential downpour. They don't call it rainforest for nothing. Luckily we made it back to the entrance building right on time so didn't get soaked. This was about 3pm and Sunil finishes at 4pm, so we just sat under shelter until then. I kept a watch on the bird-feeder and this paid off when a group of blue magpies flew in to feed. This is one of the endemics that everybody wants to see, and it's big and colourful enough to entertain even non-birders. If you imagine a typical English magpie but turn the black parts chocolate-brown and the white parts and the tail bright blue, then that's pretty much what it looks like. Endemic number twenty. I was one ahead for tomorrow.

We waited until the rain died off before heading back to Sunil's place. I was on the back of the bike so was shielded from most of the rain. Sitting outside his house I asked him the best place in the village to look for hanging parrots. That's one calling right now, he says, pointing into a coconut tree literally right next to the house. I jumped up and soon had a Sri Lankan hanging parrot in my sights, endemic number twenty-one. The next morning the very first bird I saw was a hanging parrot in the fruiting tree behind the house.

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Photos

Sri Lankan Frogmouths (Batrachostomus moniliger)
female on left, male on right