Can a blue whale be upstaged?

6th March

More blue whales today, as amazing, beautiful and humbling as yesterday's. As we sailed back from our morning with these giants, news came that ahead, around a group of small fishing boats, was a pod of spinner dolphins. It doesn’t seem possible that anything in the sea could upstage a blue whale but this morning I think the dolphins pulled it off. Let me set the scene: half a dozen puny fishing boats in a cloud of terns – whiskered, gull-billed, little and bridled – and two pomarine skuas floating nearby, waiting no doubt for a foolish tern to pass with a fish in its bill. All around the boats, under the maelstrom of terns were spinners, dozens and dozens and dozens of them, right at the water’s surface. They kept in tight groups of twenty or thirty, rolling over the water with their long beaks, their inky-dark backs and their sharp dorsal fins. Occasionally a dolphin, often a youngster, would leap from the sea and spin or cartwheel dramatically. All the while our crew whistled to them as this, they believe, attracts the dolphins’ attention. For minutes on end we watched astounded and delighted until, when it was clear the spectacle wasn’t stopping soon, we thanked the dolphins and sailed for home.

This afternoon we visited Galle, a port town with an imposing fort occupied and modified by successive colonial powers. Over the eighteenth century Dutch church flew an Indian swiftlet, in company with a house swift. On the ramparts were house sparrows, the first I have seen in Sri Lanka.

It’s late and I’m shattered. Time to climb slowly down from the dolphin high (is that what they call endolphins?) and sleep.

Quoting Roger Payne:

Whales have an important lesson to teach us. Whales have a large and complex brain but show no signs of threatening their own destruction. They haven’t reproduced themselves into oblivion, they haven’t destroyed the resources upon which they depend, they haven’t generated giant holes in the ozone, or increased the earth's temperature so that we might end up with the greenhouse effect. The lesson whales teach us is that you can have a brain of great complexity that doesn't result in the death of the planet.

Diane Ackerman

The Moon by Whale Light

 

New Sri Lankan beauties from today

	Mammals
37	Gray’s spinner dolphin	Stenella longirotris longirostris
	Birds
364	pomarine skua	Stercorarius pomarinus
365	little tern	Sterna albifrons
366	Indian swiftlet	Collocalia unicolor

2012 Totals

Mammals: 37

Birds: 366

Reptiles: 8

Amphibians: 3

Fish: 2

A date with dolphins

23^rd February

The tide was prohibitively high this morning so we postponed our sailing until after a thoroughly civilised breakfast, including the Sunderbans' deservedly celebrated honey. This didn’t stop the birdiest among us strolling to the village at first light, before breakfast. White-throated kingfishers flashed their tropical-ocean wings from the treetops, purple and purple-rumped sunbirds crowded to a bean tree in flower, and both dusky and Blyth’s reed warblers gave their distinctive tek calls from the mangroves along the levee.

The rest of our day was spent in the park, travelling south to the Neti Dhopani camp on the edge of the core area and north again through the creeks of the sanctuary. Kingfishers in five flavours were much in evidence: black-capped (everywhere), common (common), collared (quite common), white-throated (just the one, but we weren’t in its habitat and after the torrent of these gorgeous birds in Assam we can hardly complain), and brown-winged (just one but what a superb creature!). Curlews and common sandpipers were often to be seen on the mud at the edge of the forest and as a single whiskered tern bounced delicately over the waves our first whimbrel flew past on sharp dark wings.

Heading back, after a delicious lunch, cooked and eaten on the boat, we found two saltwater crocodiles basking in the sun on the mudflats exposed as the tide fell. Finally, as the sun oozed to the horizon we met a pair of Irrawaddy dolphins, one of the Sunderbans’ signature animals and the silent star of Amitav Ghosh’s fascinating novel The Hungry Tide. Having so recently seen dozens of Ganges dolphins we were well placed to compare the two species, especially as today’s animals were very obliging. Perhaps most immediately noticeable was the Irrawaddys’ loud blow as they surfaced, though we could also see their globe-shaped heads, their stronger dorsal fins and their lovely pearly-grey colour shining in the light of an estuarine evening.

Long may they swim, fly and rove here, all these rare, beautiful creatures of the mangroves.

Today’s newcomers

	Mammals
32	Irrawaddy dolphin	Orcaella brevirostris
	Birds
319	purple-rumped sunbird	Leptocoma zeylonica
320	Blyth’s reed warbler	Acrocephalus dumetorum
321	brown-winged kingfisher	Halcyon amauropterus
322	whiskered tern	Chlidonias hybrida
323	whimbrel	Numenius phaeopus
324	red-rumped swallow	Hirundo daurica
	Reptiles
5	saltwater crocodile	Crocodylus porosus

2012 Totals

Mammals: 32

Birds: 324

Reptiles: 5

Amphibians: 0

Fish: 0