Hey hey! I'm back from a wonderful 2.5-week holiday in Sri Lanka. It was tremendous, and the first proper no-writing, no-work break I've taken for well over a year. Your normal blogging and tweeting service will now resume, and photos (oh, so many photos) will emerge at some point. But for now, here's some geekery for you. This is the full list of what we saw on the holiday. I've never been to a country where the wildlife watching opportunities were so thick and easy. The first thing that I saw when I pulled back the curtains on my first morning was a criticially endangered monkey on my balcony. I walked out of a room one afternoon to get some tea and ended up photographing troops of Toque macaques and gray langurs, a mongoose, some water monitors and a giant squirrel. We did a boat trip where a pod of 150 or so spinner dolphins was only the third most exciting thing we saw in an hour (two green turtles mating, and five blue whales). So, the list. The rules are that they have to be seen in the wild, not in a zoo or nursery, and we had to identify them to the species level (which explains why there are no invertebrates and why the flying fish we saw didn't make the cut - 65 friggin' species, are you kidding me?). The asterisks indicate the ones we have photos of. Mammals
Blue whale *
Spinner dolphin *
Spotted deer *
Water buffalo *
Wild boar *
Indian flying fox *
Asian elephant *
Purple-faced leaf monkey (Western and Southern races) *
Toque macaque *
Grey langur *
Black-naped hare
Giant squirrel *
Palm squirrel *
Ruddy mongoose *
Reptiles and amphibians
Green turtle *
Star tortoise *
Water monitor *
Land (Bengal) monitor *
House gecko
Fourclaw gecko
Kandyan gecko *
Sri Lankan ratsnake
Mugger crocodile *
Sri Lanka bullfrog *
Birds
Little shag
Great cormorant
Indian darter *
Spot-billed pelican
Indian pond heron *
Cattle egret *
Little egret
Intermediate egret *
Grey heron
Purple heron *
Painted stork *
Asian openbill stork *
Woolly-necked stork
Black-headed ibis *
Eurasian spoonbill
Garganey
White-bellied sea eagle *
Brahminy kite *
Grey-headed fish eagle *
Crested serpent eagle
Crested hawk eagle *
Grey francolin
Ceylon junglefowl
Indian peafowl *
White-breasted waterhen *
Purple swamphen *
Pheasant-tailed jacana *
Black-winged stilt *
Greater thick-knee
Yellow-wattled lapwing
Red-wattled lapwing *
Common sandpiper
Brown-headed gull
Common tern *
Spotted dove
Emerald dove *
Orange-breasted green pigeon *
Imperial green pigeon
Ceylon hanging parrot *
Rose-ringed parakeet *
Asian koel
Greater coucal *
Indian nightjar *
Little swift
Stork-billed kingfisher *
White-throated kingfisher *
Common kingfisher *
Little green bee-eater *
Blue-tailed bee-eater *
Chestnut-headed bee-eater *
Indian roller *
Ceylon grey hornbill
Malabar pied hornbill *
Brown-headed barbet *
Ceylon small barbet
Black-rumped flameback *
Crimson-backed flameback
Barn swallow
Ceylon swallow
Orange minivet *
Pied flycatcher shrike
Red-vented bulbul
Gold-fronted leafbird
Oriental magpie-robin
Pied bush chit
Indian robin
Asian brown flycatcher *
Paradise flycatcher (Asian + Indian races) *
Ceylon scimitar-babbler
Yellow-billed babbler *
Great tit
Purple-rumped sunbird
Loten’s sunbird *
Black-hooded oriole *
Brown shrike
Philippine shrike
White-bellied drongo
Indian jungle crow
Brahminy starling *
Common myna *
White-rumped munia
