2011 Apr 13 — Duncan’s Childhood Blog

2011

2011 Apr

(the first two articles in this series mention vomiting)

Throughout this series of articles, there are several phrases with the initials “IBIS”, alluding to my avian life-list, the Index of Birds I’ve Sensed, which I often added to whilst in Sri Lanka. The frequency of such phrases declines when I see fewer examples of new species. How many can you find? Some examples to start you off are:

“...in beds (I slept)” (2011 Apr 10)
“Iridescent birds including sapphire-green...” (2011 Apr 11)
“I became increasingly soaked.” (2011 Apr 12)
“Indeed, bee-eaters (II species)” (“II” being Roman numerals for “two”: I was getting desperate) (2011 Apr 13)
“...is banned if swallows...” (2011 Apr 14)
“Interesting. But I’m supposed...” (2011 Apr 17)

Apr 13 Wed

At 5:30 (local time) we left our accommodation and a Jeep took us into an immense baking ing sanctuary called Yala National Park. Sky! Indigo blurring into silver! Ivory blending into sapphire sky at zenith!

I’ll backtrack into scientific nomenclature. Indeed, bee-eaters (II species) flocked and flew and fluttered around the Jeep. Cheep cheep. Leap leap. That was a monkey, no, several chunky monkeys, hopping on rocks. We saw several large mammals, including buffalo in sites near the road/track, and elephants, and wart-hogs with piglets. And little mongooses, reminding me of gooses.

Immenser birds included spoonbills, egrets, eaglets, eagles, lapwings, kingfishers, house sparrows, (immenser birds, I say!) and those Sri Lankan crows. It’s brilliant identifying so many cool species.

For lunch I had some tasty cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and lime-juice.

The cloud of clouds descended and the galaxy of we ascended a mountain called Little Adam’s Peak, in never-ending cloud. I, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, got quite wet. The view (chortle!) from LAP is normally superb, but in a cloud, we could only see a few metres around the summit. The experience was like being in a large white tent made of cotton-wool. It’ll be intermittently sunny tomorrow.

I dined in the evening when the whirled was chicken, and I dined on the sweet and the sour and the fun. I came down the mountain and I dined on the rice. At the hotel, my food was nice.