Sri Lanka It's Happening

January 22, 2005

Toady I had the fortune of seeing the largest flock of Sri Lanka White Eyes that I have ever seen. The Great Western area, though it's home to a wide variety of birds, did not seem to have a large white eye population. In fact there were hardly any.

On my previous visit here about three months ago, I did see a few white eyes, this time around there seem to be hundreds and hundreds of them, perhaps predators who used to feed on them have died off and their population is growing without control? who knows.

Unfortunately I don't have any good photos of this species, they move so fast it's nearly impossible to capture them. I once shot an entire film reel of white eyes but not a single one came out right.

A few years ago, I used to be a frequent visitor to Watagoda, a place not far from Great Western, Watagoda had more than it's fair share of white eyes. Then an imbecile took over as the manager of the Watagoda Estage and cut down a large number of trees in the region. As a result the bird population plummetted.

Contrast that with Great Western; where very little pesticides and almost no insectisides are used and tree are never cut down. The bird population has seen a steady increase over the last few years, on each visit I seem to find more birds than the last time around.

Posted by raditha at January 22, 2005 5:14 AM