Embilipitiya: Birding and Bonding

Prologue

Every hobby and passion has its own unique pace. For birding, it is one of stealth and quiet observation, slow and patient and attentive. This, along with the knowledge it requires, and the air of eccentricity it always carries, means it is not the most popular of pastimes.

Sharing such a passion with a kindred spirit is a privilege. The first to share were my parents, who sparked it in the first place. My two little sisters followed soon, and have become keen birdwatchers in their own right. 

I haven’t had many close friends who saw my birdwatching as anything more than one of my many eccentricities. They’ve helped me too - keeping me from tripping over rocks and roots when my eyes are fixed to the jungle above - all the while gently teasing. It’s not their fault at all, but often I’ve wished for someone with whom I could share the experience. Even on university trips, birding inspired more of a reserved “Wow, Sadini” than a “Let me see, too” - but this time I did find friends who were enthusiastic photographers, well-travelled too, and always ready to turn the camera towards wildlife.

And then, a little over a year into university - my close friend (and lecture-hall-companion) asked me out. I said a tentative yes. 

Embilipitiya

Soon after this most pleasant surprise, all first-year students - that’s us - were shuttled off to Embilipitiya, in the southern dry zone of Sri Lanka, for an extended field visit on community medicine - I daresay the single most enjoyable experience under that particular subject.

I overthought and decided to not bring my camera, thinking I’d be too busy collecting data and wrestling with statistics to be snapping photographs of the local wildlife. I was an idiot.

We settled into our crowded, spartan dormitories at the National Centre for Leadership Development. Girls and boys had various interesting and entertaining shenanigans in their dorms that continued throughout our stay - but I digress.

The National Centre for Leadership Development, Embilipitiya. Source: Google Maps

The Leadership Centre was a sprawling complex of dorms, offices and halls spread across a considerable area, with gravel roads and lawns in between, along with plenty of woodland patches - and a small front garden. There was a tiny “quadrangle” around a small central tree with low-hanging boughs, which shaded stone garden benches.

We soon realised that we (unofficially) were free to walk and explore a fairly vast area, with an added bonus: from wake-up tea until 8 am, we had an optional hour for physical exercise. This was the absolute best. On the first morning there, my boyfriend and I woke early and headed out with our friends, looking for the designated exercise grounds.

All around was the dawn chorus, with common garden birds flitting about in the trees and scrub. Among other topics, he and I discussed birdwatching, when I first found out he did have a spark of interest from long before (he said he liked raptors the best). It was one of those quiet, engaging conversations - with someone I was beginning to really, really like - punctuated by little, delightful discoveries and bird-sightings and the very new feeling of having a partner that not only understood my interest (and eccentricity) but also wanted to make it his own.

We exercised for a short while with our friends in the grounds (and spotted a Grey-breasted Prinia, Blue-tailed Bee-eaters and Spotted Doves while jogging laps around its perimeter) and eventually decided to move on.

We walked down a main road for a fair distance, and eventually turned back because we had to wash up, have breakfast and rush to the buses for our first field visits (we were, unfortunately, allocated to two different villages). 

The community visits were a poignant reminder of what I wished I was doing (something, at the very least, about ecology) versus what I was supposed to be doing (gathering basic information on families and getting to know them in the viewpoint of a medical student). Most of my notes were actually on the climate, environment and agriculture. So what? I justified to myself, the economic and environmental status of a household is very, very important in a public health perspective!

Field visits in Kumbugodaara, Embilipitiya. Photo credits: Lahiru Viduruwan Ukwatte

We trudged along miles of gravel roads, popping into houses for a few minutes’ friendly chat, and sometimes walking straight through woodland and picking our way through dense thickets, sweating in the late morning heat. It was with sighs of relief that we eventually settled down in the bus, more than ready to return for lunch.

While we were expected to work hard, we also made sufficient time to relax. During a two-hour break in the afternoon, my boyfriend and I slumped on a bench in the “quadrangle” and watched tiny Tickell’s Flowerpeckers and Purple Sunbirds in the tree above.

Purple Sunbirds 

Thus began a very agreeable routine. In the mornings, before we were bussed off for field visits, he and I would wake early, have a cup of tea and head outdoors to explore, sometimes going all the way to the main road. We’d walk slow and quiet, away from the noise of our colleagues, and I’d tell him about birds, and he’d spot more for me to identify; all the while swapping stories from our pasts, opening up little by little.

We ran across all sorts of birds; mostly common ones, like Black-headed Orioles, Yellow-billed Babblers, Red-vented Bulbuls and so on. He once spotted a strange brown bird in a thicket, which turned out to be a Brown Shrike. We craned our necks to spot Green Imperial Pigeons and Brahminy Kites flying above, and to watch White-bellied Drongos perched on the bare branches of a towering dead tree. Once we glimpsed a small flock of Malabar Pied Hornbills.

Our friends would tease us as they jogged past, some stopping to curiously inquire as to what we were so interested in (especially when, at a point, I was crouching to stalk the Brown Shrike).

In the afternoons, whenever we had an hour or two of free time, we would explore the wooded gravel paths in the opposite direction, peering into patches of dry mixed evergreen forest to try our luck at seeing something new. We didn’t, but there was a female Sri Lanka Junglefowl flopping onto and off low branches.

We were heading back to the centre when a large bird appeared out of the woods, flying with heavy flaps, and perched on a branch overhanging the path.

We froze in place, our conversation forgotten, gripping each other’s hands. It was a splendid Crested Hawk Eagle, barely a few metres away, staring down imperiously. We attempted, as subtly as we could, to photograph it, but the eagle spread its broad brown wings and was gone before we even had a chance.

We had a very similar experience with an Oriental Honey-buzzard, too, on a similar evening walk.

As evenings turned into nights and our colleagues prepared to turn in, we’d sometimes sit in the courtyard between our dorms, look at the sky and try to identify not birds, but constellations, but neither of us were very good at it, and we ended up changing the subject.

The rest of our nine days at Embilipitiya were much the same, interspersed with the obligatory study times, field visits, presentations, exams, and a very welcome outing to the nearby Chandrika Wæwa.

Chandrika Wæwa 

Afterword

This story, you might’ve noted, is not a birding record. There are no daily counts or even a simple list of the species seen, or scientific names mentioned in this article. It is what it is: a true story of two people just beginning to merge paths. I’m glad we get to go on dates not just to cafés and beaches, but also to the nearby wetlands that Colombo, luckily, has been blessed with. We have our own nerdy little inside jokes, of his own brand of blunt humour. It makes me warm and light to know that there’s one more who won’t just watch me birding from a distance, but share in every step of the way.

- Sadini Upeka