I have been planning my next trips abroad this last few days. Sri Lanka is way up there as my favourite destination, I feel that I have some real friends there and it is a lovely feeling to know that I am welcome there. I have to go in to hospital to have some dentistry work done. It's a real pain (literally and metaphorically) and getting in the way of my life for the time being. I would be on my way to Sri Lanka as we speak but for this distraction……(extraction).

I have been sorting through some of the pictures that I took in January this year, I remembered that I had taken some nice photos of a Stork-Billed Kingfisher, a truly stunning Kingfisher species and one of my favourites and I have tried to get good photographs on both my previous Sri Lankan visits.  This is the largest of the kingfisher species in Sri Lanka, a good place for kingfishers and I have personally photographed 4 species there. Stork billed can be heard more often than seen but from time to time you will be lucky and get close enough for a photograph.  This one was perched on a wire above a pond in a built up area which was probably the reason that it was easy to approach.  The male and female are identical I believe.