The beach 100 yards from Ravi's house, looking towards the Dolphin Hotel.

 

I had plans for today but that all went out of the window when the rain that had  been falling all night long was still bucketing down when I climbed out of my pit at the rather late time of 8.35.  I sat on the balcony of the dream house a short while later, at first with coffee and then with breakfast and at 14.08, as I started to write this I  had been there for more than 5 hours and had enjoyed one of the best days bird photography that I can remember. The birds have  just kept  coming. The star attraction has been a pair, or possibly 3 Purple rumped sunbirds that I hadn’t realised until now, are constant visitors to a yellow flowering shrub which is just feet from the veranda where I am sat.   They are feeding by piercing the blossom low down near the stalk to obtain the nectar which they extract with a long and I presume, sticky tongue. There is a name for this feeding behaviour, it does not benefit the plant in any way.

A male Purple pumped Sunbird feeding in the rain this morning.

 As I sit here sorting through pictures taken this session, I am distracted to take more  and more which I then immediately transfer  to the computer to have a look at.  Perfect really.  The temperature, because of the rain is now at least 8 degrees cooler than yesterday and very, very pleasant.  No strong sun, lots of rain of course  and a light breeze here and there. Then every 10 minutes or so the sunbirds fly in to feed, I look at the pictures and then when I realise where I have gone wrong, I adjust accordingly for the next attempt when they fly in again and a visit seems to take place every 15 minutes or so.

 

A female Purple pumped Sunbird.

I said the star turns  were the sunbirds but a real celebrity flew in, in the form of a Brown headed Barbet, a phenomenal bird.   I had only been thinking before I left home that I hoped I would get the chance to improve my pictures of this species and today I took some photographs  that I will never ever be able to beat.  We have put a stick in the lawn and loaded it with fruit, at first banana and then papaya and the local pair of Red vented Bulbuls are obsessed with the freebies, thats if they can fight off the Myna birds.  I thought that the Barbet had come down for the papaya but I was wrong because it had come to feed on the fruit of a plant called …… Ravi has already told me that this plant is a medicinal fruit, a herbal remedy helpful for sufferers of diabetes apparently?   That may or not be true but the barbet certainly thought that it was worth taking a risk to get at it.  Barbets are the most parrot like birds that you can imagine, but not in the least bit related and with a totally different bill shape.  They feed on soft fruit and insects and don’t normally leave the higher branches of trees.  They have a very evocative call.

A Brown headed Barbet comes to inspect a fruiting shrub in the garden this morning.

Let me list the birds that I have had here today from the comfort of the veranda. Just amazing really.

Purple pumped Sunbird

Common Taylor Bird

Common Myna

House Crow

Brown headed Barbet

White throated Kingfisher

Koel

Oriental Magpie Robin

Indian Roller

Blue throated Bee eater.

Ring necked Parakeet

Cattle Egret

Red vented Bulbul

Yellow Billed Babler

and a lovely little Ground Squirrel.

A Red Vented Bulbul comes to feed on papaya.

Later on the weather was still wet, the birds keep coming and even an obsessive like me was  thinking  that enough is enough and I should  go for a walk to see what else I can see.  I would get wet of course but getting wet in the tropics is a pleasant enough thing, you should try it!

Just a little bit about dinner last night.  Ravi described it as Curry and Rice. In fact it was steamed rice with curried Tiger Prawns on the side, a dish of potato curry and symbal, a Sri Lankan speciality which seems to have dried prawns amongst other things, a heavily salted and delicate flavour.  It was all suburb and very enjoyable, made all the more pleasant by flavours which I was experiencing for the first time.

This has been one of the most pleasant days that I can remember and like I have said, all within feet of the bed that I climbed out of, bird photography at its very best in a real lazy  way.