Wintering birds return

by K. G. H. Munidasa

Birds on migration, not only return to the same locality, year after year, but often also to the identical site in their winter quarters. The great regularity of the arrival of migrant birds in Sri Lanka or the punctuality of their appearances, even to the day, in some places are evident from the records maintained over the years by interested observers, Residing in different parts of the country.

This is all the more astounding when the vast distances some of these birds cover to reach our shores are taken into account. For example, individuals of the Indian Pitta, Brown Shrike and the Brown Flycatcher, believed to be the same birds, have returned to a particular home garden in the Low Country Wet Zone, year after year, for five years running. In the Kelani Valley that familiar winter visitor Common Swallow appears each year in late August or September and departs the following April.

It is on record that the forerunners of the Kashmir Red-breasted Flycatcher and the Indian Bluechat arrived in their customary winter habitats in the Central Hill Zone regularly in the 2nd or 3rd week of October each year. Meanwhile, the common Sandpiper appears in the upcountry streams every year about the first week of August.

It has been found that scattered parties of the Forest Wagtails started arriving in their regular roosting places in the Gal Oya Valley from mid-September onwards, each year.

A forest wagtail, which was ringed and released by the Ceylon Bird Club at a ringing camp at Muwangala (Ampara district) in 1963 returned to the same roosting place next year and was caught in a mist net, once again. Similarly, another picked up dead in 1966 was found to carry an identification ring that had been attached to its leg in the previous year at a ringing camp, half a mile from the spot. A female Bluechat, which was ringed in 1964 at Deltota (Galaha) returned the following year to the same restricted home garden, while an Eastern Gray Wagtail returned two years later to the same place, where it was ringed and released. (Please see tabulated box).

A Philippine Shrike, said to be a scarce North-East Monsoon visitor from far-Eastern Asia, was noted in a tea estate close to Nuwara Eliya (6,500 ft.) for several years in succession. Moreover, in the Winter of 1976/77 Ceylon Bird Club placed on record a male of the Himalayan Orange-Headed Ground Thrush, yet another scarce visitor, as having occupied a small plot of land at Dehiwala, South of Colombo, for three consecutive years.