Birdwatching in Sri Lanka

Standing in sweaty silence for an hour on a precipitous sliver of muddy footpath above a waterfall may not be everybody’s idea of fun, but for a small cluster of birders anxious to see the Sri Lanka whistling thrush it was a small price to pay. Eventually, as the cicadas shrilled and the dark closed in, the little blue-black bird appeared — and flitted away almost as quickly. Another evening, we scrambled 100 heart-pumping yards up a rainforest jungle slope for a view of the Serendib Scops owl, a reddish bird so rare it has been known to science only since 2004 and is one of 34 species endemic to the Beautiful Island.

Birders do it before dawn and after dark as well as happily — well, more or less happily — trekking ten kilometres or so a day, swinging across narrow suspension bridges, fording streams and slushing through bogs or bouncing up and down bone-shuddering ravines in Jeeps.