Untamed Land

Untamed Land
Untamed Land

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Maggie goes to Sri Lanka

Maggie is another longtime friend of mine from my Arizona years. She currently teaches school in Oman, (Persian Gulf). Before that, she taught school in Quito, Ecuador. I met her when she was teaching art at Alchesay High School on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. That was sometime around 1989.
She just got back from a vacation to Sri Lanka, which is an island nation off the southeast tip of India.
While she was in Sri Lanka, she was able to visit a couple of nice nature reserves, Ella, and Uda Walawa National Park. She got some excellent opportunities to photograph wild Asiatic Elephants.
Can you see that there are two baby elephants in this photo?

She managed to see some really great wild critters, like this very impressive, Crested Hawk-eagle.

Another very impressive bird, Crested Serpent Eagle. It does not have a very impressive crest, but what a great photo. I only managed to get the briefest glimpse of one of these in Thailand. As the name suggests, they specialize in eating snakes and other reptiles.
Standoff with a Golden Jackal. I don't know if this is the same species called Golden Jackal in Africa.
A Peacock in all its glory. Wow.

Another great shot.

A Spotted Deer feeding her hungry fawn. As I understand it, there are no tigers on Sri Lanka. I believe that leopards are the top predators of the Spotted Deer.
The national birds, Sri Lankan Red Junglefowl. Talk about funky chickens, these have very distinctive combs.
Water Buffalo cooling off in a favorite wallow. Now that is the life.

A really fine shot of a White-browed Fantail Flycatcher. Maggie saw some really neat stuff in a short amount of time. Sri Lanka is yet another country that I would love to visit also.

1 comment:

Friend of HK said...

After seeing the photos, I think I should add Sri Lanka to my must-see list as well since it is not too far from HK.