Sri Lanka 2022 – Tangalle

The next stop on the trip was a gorgeous hotel in Tangalle situated right in the long beach with nothing much around. The hotel was pretty much self contained so dined for each meal in the hotel restaurant.

Beautiful long stretches of golden sands

The Beach itself was huge and people were warned to avoid swimming in the sea as there were extreme currents dude to the deep waters and steep incline into the sea.Luckily the hotel had a lovely pool so we stuck to that but I did see some swimmers in further down the beach.

Painted Storks seen surrounding the estuaries of the river.

Down the road from the hotel I found a bird sanctuary where a local guide would take you on a boat around the lakes and estuaries. Unfortunately he was not in and we did not have more than a day in Tangalle so we missed the experience but we did see a few wading birds such as Painted Storks as well as a few different species of dragonflies form the shoreline.

There are many different species of dragonfly and damselfly in Sri Lanka. I would love to spend more time there and find more. I think this is a pair of Ditch Jewel Dragonflies (*Brachythemis contaminata*). If you look closely at the bottom branch you can see a nymph which has crawled out of the water and hatched into a beautiful dragonfly.

On the way back from estuary I saw this horrific site! Normally birds and bats can land on wires but in Sri Lanka it seems the wires are very close together so that if an unfortunate creature touches them together they proceed to connect the circuit and subsequently get fried! I saw many many more occurrences like this on the rest of the trip. Is a shame that a country with such diversity in the natural world does not have the money and resources to fix this problem,

After Lunch we headed back to the beach and came across a load of these hermit crabs scurrying around. They were really fast and did not stay still very long so this sho was extremely hard to capture!

The sunsets on the beach were amazing! Everyone loves a sunset 🙂

As the day ended packs of stray dogs would come out. They are very confident and I am not sure they were entirely friendly as they would follow you around A LOT and get rather rowdy at times. I think this is why the hotel had been fenced off form the beach.

It was a short stay in Tangalle but I really loved the area and would have loved to stay longer bird watching but unfortunately we had to get an early cab in the morning to the next stop! It was great to break up the journey though!

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