Arugam Bay Information

Saturday, December 23, 2006

I sit here at 7pm on a Friday at work, with a dude loitering around and wating for me to leave so he can follow suit, and to top it off a plane with hopefully me on it is to depart in a few hours - and I ought to pack at some time. This could all lead to a “So I better be quick and make this short and sweet - happy new years merry christmas let’s get drunk”. But no, that’s so not my style. Instead, I’m gonna make that loiterer wait and earn his money! The longer he looks at me, the slower I type..

As some of you may know, I had huge plans for the weekend past. I was going to spend it in the south-east corner of Sri Lanka and soak up the atmosphere of migratory bird species at two awesome national parks (Yala and Bundala). Unfortunately, Murphy and God decided to kick me in the nuts.. Cartmen style. Yep. It rained - the entire weekend. To put it in perspective, as one the only Delegate in that region of Sri Lanka for the Red Cross, I was giving weather reports as the RC was preparing for flood / humanitarian relief. Can you believe it? I’m happily on my weekend wanting to voyeur on some birds, and work is calling - the mobile phone is very disrupting for twitchers you know. To top it off - the migratory birds weren’t there either. None of the thousands of flamingos could be found. The late rains has meant the birds are late too.. so I was stuck. In a flooded region, with nothing but a new camera. Fortunately, there was a little island in the middle of a lake that had a huge nesting population of Ibis, Spoonbills, Comerants, etc - so I went to the jetty…

and took a photo of some nesting birds…
The next day I decided to be stupid and go to Yala national park in the rain…

Plenty of wading birds around…

Peacocks are cool.. especially these males with their feathers. Yes, feathers on a bird!
These were some mating king fishers… awesome blue KF’s here.
Spotted deer…
I am a huge fan of parakeets.. but they can be hard to spot sometimes!
And this the peace resistance (more appropriate consider the war situation to say it like that). When I was buying my camera, I joked to my brother who was wondering why I was wasting my money - it was all for the bee eater. I just wanted a photo of the bee eaters here, they’re cool. First outing baby, makes it all worthwhile! (almost)
Monkeys had the right idea.. being in the air and not in the flooded waters…
A lizard.. wow.
This dude was cool, he walked around for ages kind of eyeing me, and kind of eating the entire lake…

A rarity.. spotting these huge owls…

Is this not the most stupid looking wild buffalo you have ever seen?

And outside of the park, I saw a squirrel.. I just like the fact the dragon fly flew into the photo.

I got bogged in big four wheel drives twice last week. Once on site, where the driver aimed for a huge hole and the front left vehicle dropped so far that we were resting on the chassis. 5 villagers came and helped us out.. I was taking photos (next blog, maybe). The second time was in yala, when the truck literally floated away at one point. Me and my italian mate had to wade out of the vehicle while he accelerated into a bigger hole - luckily, he got out.. luckily, we got out.

I was going to go to Bundala the next day.. despite the rain. The park was closed.. all the roads were being washed away. The RC was giving away rice packs though. I got stuck in my hotel. Boooooooooooooooo.

I also went to Ampara this week for some work. I don’t like to post too many work photos, work already does that here, here and here. But with my new camera, how could I resist.

This was a really nice family in Kalmunai. The guy on the right spoke excellent english, and his parents couldn’t stop smiling - of course, until you pull out a camera, at which point all Sri Lankans put on this look that has absoloutely no facial expressions. His dad was cery photogenic though.
I kept getting harassed by kiddies, all wanting to touch my new toy..err camera.. and pointing at my earing. To shut them up, I took a photo of them.

Sites like this really make me peeved off. *Did I just censor that? Fucking hell* This was a river that flows through the coastal community and to the beach, where they steal sand. Blatent disregard for the local environment.. anyway, cool crow in the bottom right.
And that’s all folks. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. D

see the original blog:
http://byronandemma.blogspot.com/2006/12/i-like-birds-with-long-legs-and-short.html