It’s not often that we are able to have excellent sightings and photos of the four wild cats of Sri Lanka, however on this tour we had all the tick boxes marked. The tour started with fabulous sightings of Leopard, Jungle Cat and Fishing Cat during our first three nights stay in Wilpattu. Two Sloth Bears also showed well during our safaris.
Going onto Mannar we managed to find the elusive and rare Rusty-spotted Cat within the hotel premises on the very first night. Excitement was over the roof.
Although the weather was very hot and humid, most of our target animals didn’t disappoint us even during the afternoon safaris. Night drives were always active with at least sightings of two different mammals each night. Gray Slender Loris, Indian Giant Flying Squirrel and Golden Palm Civet were also seen well during our night walks.
Love seemed to be in the air, as we got very lucky with sightings of Woolly-necked Stork and Brown Wood Owl mating. We also saw a Sri Lanka Blue Magpie hunting and killing a Tarantula. How cool is that!
We had recorded 37 mammals, 155 Birds and 14 reptiles and amphibians during the course of this 14-day tour.