A happy marsh

Mention a marsh and a birder's pulse quickens. In marshes lurk bitterns and rails, in marshes are warblers and waders, over marshes are terns and hirundines. Marshes, yes, they are a very good thing. The one we visited this afternoon, Kiralakale, was a very good thing indeed and pulsed with exciting birds, including many new to our tour and to my yearlist. However before we got to the marsh we saw another new creature; new both to our list and quite literally new, having just hatched from his egg under the sands of the beach. As we waited to leave, we watched a tiny green turtle hatchling flap himself down the beach towards the sea and, eventually, tumble away on a rushing wave. Good luck little one; it's an ocean out there.

At Kiralakale blue-tailed bee-eaters looped over the marsh where purple gallinules, black-headed ibis, intermediate egrets and watercock plied their several trades. White-browed bulbuls bounced through the trees, a female Loten's sunbird picked delicately at flowers with her ridiculously long bill, and both Blyth's and clamourous reed warblers wove through stands of marshy grass. Four dazzling kingfishers were here too: white-throated, stork-billed, common (what a dreadful name for such a creature) and pied. Three yellow bitterns in turn burst from waterside vegetation at our approach, a male Asian paradise flycatcher quivered his silver ribbon of a tail through a banana palm and a plain prinia buzzed out his little song. Everywhere we looked there were birds, or sometimes squirrels, but always somebody, up to something. As we climbed back into the bus a pair of the splendid crimson Sri Lankan subspecies of black-rumped flameback called in to a nearby tree and, with the morning's whales still blowing and diving in our heads, we drove home happy.

New this afternoon

	Birds
354	white-browed bulbul	Pyconotus luteolus
355	watercock	Gallicrex cinerea
356	Sri Lanka hanging parrot	Loriculus beryllinus
357	plain prinia	Prinia inornata
358	clamourous reed warbler	Acrocephalus stentoreus
359	pied cuckoo	Clamator jacobinus
360	yellow bittern	Ixobrychus sinensis
361	Asian paradise flycatcher	Terpsiphone paradisi
362	Asian brown flycatcher	Muscicapa dauurica
363	zitting cisticola	Cisticola juncidis
	black-rumped flameback	Dinopium benghalense psarodes
	Reptiles
8	green turtle	Chelonia mydas

2012 Totals

Mammals: 36

Birds: 363

Reptiles: 8

Amphibians: 3

Fish: 2