5 : Tickell's Blue Flycatcher

Tickel's Blue Flycatcher - Cyornis tickelliae

Originally posted in May 2011 as post 5 the removal of a typo has jumped it up the list. Original photos supplemented by Banagalore picture here -

Apart from the Yala National Park on our last trip we stayed at a number of guesthouses and small hotels around Sri lanka. The first place we stayed at was Ellertons, a bunglaow in the hills outside of Kandy owned by a British couple. We arrived at night with no sense of where we were after a 4 hour drive up from Columbo. In the morning I woke up to the sounds of birds everywhere. I am sure this is familiar to all world birders but the first morning the lifers just came tumbling in one after the other.

We were at Ellerton's for 5 days and there was a very nice walk down the side of the hill to the river in the small valley below. Sri Lanka is friendly, the people are lovely and the birds are to die for. I have decided that given it is a AED 2,000 (GBP 300) 4 hour flight from Dubai it is somewhere I could get to for a long weekend every so often. I have adopted Sri Lanka.

This was the view when we woke up that first morning.

So after a big breakfast I'd set out down a narrow track with no idea of what I was likely to see. I really started taking pictures of birds as I wanted to make sure that I did not miss anything. I was without a field guide for the first couple of days.The idea of taking a picture of every bird I saw for a website had not occured to me at this stage. in the end I did not take a picture of every bird I saw in Sri Lanka - this gives me a perfect excuse to go back. I can see why Arthur C Clarke lived there. Get me onto the food another time.

My jungly track

In new place you are on edge and have no idea what will turn up. I guess that's the story of this post. Birding is an adventure and you can look at all the books and go to the right places but you just cannot guarantee in many cases what you are going to see. So this was I think 10 April 2011. I'd never heard of Mr Tickell or his flycatcher. As with many birds you hear them before you see them. Then you watch for movement and then you start to work the bird. I knew this was a flycatcher immediately. It was perched in the open and doing what flycatchers do - short little flights to catch small gnats and so on. I know now that this is a fairly common Sri Lankan bird of the mid to low wet forests. On that morning to me it was the outer edge of birding - a flycatcher that was blue. It might as well have been from Mars.

After I calmed down I got a better shot - patience is rewarded. I spent half an hour with this bird

Tickell's Blue Flycatcher - Cyonis tickelliae
Hills near Kandy, Sri Lanka, 10 April 2011