Birds

In the heat in the heat in the heat I sway. The only bird outside is a big ol’ Blue Jay. Squawk squawk squawk. It sounds its report. I’m way too hot to offer any retort.

Chukar Partridge Eurasian Skylark Long-legged Buzzard Photos taken by Kai Pflug in Kabul in November 2023

Salt works are often a great spot for birds. The same goes for the salt works in the town of Puttalam on Sri Lanka’s northwestern coast. This is not a place that’s visited frequently and I haven’t heard much about this spot. Accordingly, I didn’t arrive with many expectations, which was probably good as it allowed me to be pleasantly surprised both by some unexpected species and lovely sightings of the more common ones. My main target here as Temminck’s Stint, a very rare migrant to Sri Lanka. There were two teacher in my school who were birders as well, and we often exchanged sightings. One of them had told me that they saw this species here the previous year. Obviously this didn’t really mean anything but amazingly, the Temminck’s Stint was the first bird I saw as I drove onto the salt works, in exactly the same pool described by my teacher! I’ve never had such a sighting before, obviously it could’ve been pure chance but given how rare the species is in the country, I could imagine that it was the same returning individual. Temminck’s Stint The most common waders here were Marsh Sandpipers and Tibetan Sand-Plovers. These species were nearly everywhere, which provided a good opportunity to compare different plumages in each of these species. Marsh Sandpiper, Tibetan Sand-Plover and Little Stint Several Little Stints were also around, one of which seemed to need some solitude and decided to feed out in the open shallow water, with no other bird in sight. Because the water was so still, this was a beautiful sight with the bird seemingly placed in the middle of a huge pane of glass. Little Stint The nearby beach also held a few Sanderlings, another uncommon bird in Sri Lanka. I often have to laugh at their comical feeding behaviour of sprinting back and forth along the water’s edge, perfectly timing the advance and retreat of each wave. The frantic blur of their legs suggests a rather stressful existence, yet their soft expressions give an impression of complete calm – an odd contradiction. Sanderling Puttalam is an interesting place to go birding simply because very few foreign birders visit this town. The only way I could access the salt works was by tuk-tuk, and the driver first thought I was mad. This makes for some quite entertaining conversations, a good distraction when you’re trying to find a Red-necked Stint among the masses of Little Stints. In the end, the driver proved far more cooperative than the Red-necked Stints, and I was more than happy to trade a rarity for an enjoyable conversation about the town and its people.

This post is republished in our “From the Archives” series, featuring highlights of our vast back catalogue of more than 10,000 birding-related posts published over the last 15 years or so.  I’m off to Sydney on Friday for a long weekend (I never get tired of saying that). I’ll be splitting my time between my family, diving and a spot of birding. I’ve written before about how Sydney is a great place to bird, and I’m hoping to add a few good species of bird to my year list, even a few lifers. I’m determined among other things to getting my lifer Rock Warbler, for example, the ultimate Sydney special, being as how it is found only in and around the Sydney. But is it the ultimate defining bird of Sydney? Probably not. Quite a few birds might qualify, but in spite of the conspicuous species like the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, the Rainbow Lorikeet or the Blue Penguin, I would say that the bird that best represents Sydney is the Australian White Ibis or Sacred Ibis. Australian White Ibis (Threkiornis molucca) The name Sacred Ibis originates with the white ibis of Africa, and it was also applied to other, similar looking species; so similar do some of these species look that I didn’t realize at first that the Black-headed Ibis I saw in Thailand last year was a new species for me at first. Indeed part of the reason they are called Sacred Ibis is that they were once all thought to be the same species. But whereas the Black-headed Ibis is a rarity where I was, seeing an Australian White Ibis in Sydney is one of the simplest things you can do. Walk down a street in the city centre and keep an eye on the bins. Especially in the parks, or the Botanical Gardens, but even right outside Central Station. They are one of the most urban birds of Sydney.   This Australian White Ibis is part of a study. This wasn’t always so. Australian White Ibis were originally birds of the inland marshes of Australia, a habitat they share with the Glossy Ibis (yes, the same species Americans are familiar with) and the attractive Straw-necked Ibis. But in the 1970s they began to move into the cities, from Melbourne in Victoria to Townsville in Queensland and found them to their liking. Coinciding with this species increasing in the coastal areas of Australia is a decline in their more traditional inland sites. While they are something of a pest in the cities, the cities have become crucial for the ongoing survival of this species. Current management plans for this species thankfully take this into account. It may be disappointing for a birders first tick of this species to be in the refuse outside the Sydney Opera House, but take solace in seeing a species that might otherwise be in real trouble adapting to a new way of living.  

my UK year’s tally is a mere 179 species, so I still need another 21 to reach my 200 target