Tropical Birding Olympus Certified Guide Tour - Sri Lanka

Ceylon – Wildlife Spectacular

Sri Lanka is a teardrop-shaped island lying off the southeast coast of India. Certainly no afterthought, Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country with a unique cultural identity, and a slower less chaotic pace of life than its larger neighbor. In common with India, the birds are fantastic, abundant, and often very photogenic, and your Olympus kit will be working overtime to capture the variety of unique subjects we will be encountering. For starters, there are more than 30 species only found in Sri Lanka, including the spectacular and easily photographed Sri Lanka Junglefowl, the striking Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, and handsome Yellow-fronted Barbet. Alongside these specialties are wider-ranging birds that are a joy to photograph, like Blue-tailed and Green Bee-eaters, Painted Stork, Indian Peafowl, Pheasant-tailed Jacana, parakeets, kingfishers, hornbills, several day-roosting owls, and even Indian Pitta! And, that’s not to mention the mammals, such as Toque Macaque, Purple-faced Langur, Asian Elephant, Indian Flying Fox, and the gargantuan Blue Whale. Reptiles often feature too, including the strange Rhino-horn Lizard and Black-lipped Lizard, which also make excellent photo subjects. The tour covers a variety of habitats from endemic-filled rainforests to open country savanna, and finally higher cloudforests. Your Olympus wider-angle lenses will enjoy the changing scenery as much as your telephoto will enjoy the birds and other animals. With good food, regular, excellent Ceylon tea, a vibrant culture with a very different feel to mainland India, plus photogenic mammals and birds, Sri Lanka will not remain off the mainstream travel circuit for nature photographers for much longer.