Meethirigala field visit 16th January 2011

On 15th Saturday night Himesh aiya asked me to go for a field trip to Meethirigala . I didn’t think about it twice, I agreed to join .
Himesh aiya is one of my teachers who taught me and guide me to Wild life field, He is an Engineer of S.L Irrigation Department and a well known expert of Sri Lanka butterflies. On the 16th Sunday I woke up early morning and went Waliweriya by bus , at there I met Himesh aiya .From there onwards Himesh aiya and me started our journey . Meethirigala is a Little jungle which located near Hanwalla . We arrived Meethirigala at about 8.00a.m .

When considering about the weather , It was really bad and last few days whole the country affected from heavy nonstop rain . That season was the coldest season of western province which recorded after 65 years .Whether the situation was like that, we went with positive minds.

The sky was fully covered from thin clouds till we arrive to Meethirigala , very fortunately thin clouds slowly went away when we started our journey towards the forest . The Sun rays kissed the Meethirigala forest after a long time, No sign of rain seen around the environment, so we were very happy about the conditions,


On the way to forest we found many Butterflies like > Common Cerulian , common Evening Brown , Psyche ,White Four-ring etc and Few Skippers like >Chestnut Bob, Common Grass Dart and Tropic Dart.
There was a Temple and a “Devalaya “near the road. It is a highlighting place because of the statue of a sacred god. Villagers belive this god of Meethirigala is the one who protects their lifes, cultivations and the area. The statue is really a attractive, It is not like other statues of gods I’ve seen, It was a very simply created one .

After the temple there was a big paddy field which was very lush and Green. But the negative thing is all farmers had been used various chemicals to their crops. Every other plant of the field banks were killed by using chemicals. We carefully observed through the stream which flowing very near to the field ,and only seen two three fishes. So its clear that chemicals were harmed Not only banks, even the fishes of surrounding streams.

Along the Paddy there was electricity and telephone wires and on those wires we observed many Barn swallows .There were about 20-30 Barn swallows and also few Red-rumped swallows.

Entrance to Meethirigala

Then we entered into the Forest, It is really a great forest. I was really happy to see such a forest still left in this little island , a little team of Tacue Monkeys were welcomed us to the forest by jumping at the canopy . We heard many calls from various birds but not seen any of them near, Himesh aiya identified almost every bird who called from the forest and the sky. His ability of identifying birds was just amazing, no words to describe it, fooh::

So We [He] identified lots of birds by listening to their calls. White-rumped Shama ,Green Tree Warbler , Layards Parakeet , Common Hill Mynah , Alexandrine Parakeet , Yellow-fronted Barbet were among them anyhow lastly I identified Dwarf king fisher’s call , it was confirmed by Himesh aiya so finally bit happy about my abilities .After all we’ve recorded 40 species of birds including 7 endemics .

Of course it wasn’t a butterfly’s day. We only recorded 25 Lepidopterians [Butterflies and hesperids } all of them were not been easy catchers for us , among them Bluemormon ,Plum Judy ,Clipper ,Lascar , Banded Blue Pierrot , Dark cerulean , Ceylon cerulean ,Indian cupid , Pointed Ciliated Blue were the highlighted species . The Continuous rains of last week must be the reason to this low counts.

Inside the forest there was a open place, looked like a abandoned paddy where we found lots of active Dragonflies, we rested near there about 15 minuets.We observed 8 Odonates [dragonflies] species including a Globally endangered rare and endemic damselfly – the Jungle Threadtail [Elattoneura caesia] .
Others are Black tipped flash wing [vestalis apicalis nigrescens] ,Shining Gossamerwing [Euphaea splendens] , asian Pintail [Ascisoma panorpoides panorpoides],Paddyfield parasol etc.

5 species of reptiles [ calotus calotus , Xenochrophis asperrimus , Mabuya madaraszi , etc.]
and 6 species of fishes [Rasbora dandiya , Devario malabaricus Puntius titteya etc. ] were recorded.

 We came out from the jungle at about 3.00p.m. The weather was very fine even we left the forest .It was a marvelous field visit for me. Especially it was a great opportunity to me to deal with such an experienced expert. Hope to go more field trips with him, I’m taking this space to thank Himesh aiya for his time and teachings.