Bird on a wire
On my train trip back to Colombo from Kandy two weeks ago, the train stopped for 45 minutes on the top of a mountain because another train coming up the the single track was stalled and needed to be ‘boosted’ by another locomotive.
While we waited for the track to be cleared, a few people appeared out nowhere and started selling the trapped train passengers various sundries including bananas – it all seemed a bit make-believe with these people popping out of the bushes along the track.
But not only did we have visitors from the nearest village, the local wildlife came visiting too. My camera doesn’t have a good telephoto so these pictures are a little blurry but I really wanted to share the iridescent colours of this bird.
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A little research here told me it was a white-breasted kingfisher. Can you believe the turquoise?!!
I’ve also seen this kingfisher flying around the canal that drains into the ocean near our hotel. Reading about the whitebreasted kingfisher here, suggests that the bird does not only eat fish – “This species mainly hunts large insects, rodents, snakes, fish and frogs.” …finding the bird so far up a mountain seems to support this theory!
