Jaffna Wildlife: What You Will Actually See

Golden Jackal Regular

Canis aureus

The dry zone's opportunist, trotting along a track at dawn and howling in chorus at dusk so the whole park knows where it is.

Where: Open scrub and lagoon margins at dawn and dusk. Best: Year round.

Indian Flying Fox Regular

Pteropus giganteus

A fruit bat with a metre and a half of wingspan, hanging in noisy thousands from a tree in the middle of town.

Where: Daytime roosts in tall trees in the town and the villages, streaming out at dusk. Best: Year round.

Toque Macaque Occasional Endangered

Macaca sinica

A small endemic monkey with a swirl of hair on the crown arranged like a cap, and the most studied primate on the island.

Where: Temple surrounds and wooded gardens. Best: Year round.

Tufted Grey Langur Occasional Near Threatened

Semnopithecus priam

Long-limbed, silver-grey and black-faced, sitting in the open on a ruin or a track edge in every dry zone park.

Where: Palmyra and tall trees around the villages. Best: Year round.

Black-headed Ibis Regular Near Threatened

Threskiornis melanocephalus

White body, bare black head and neck, and a bill built for finding what it cannot see.

Where: Lagoon shallows, paddy and the wet margins of the salt pans. Best: November to March.

Eurasian Spoonbill Regular

Platalea leucorodia

Feeds by sweeping that absurd bill side to side through the shallows, snapping shut the instant it touches something alive.

Where: Shallow lagoon and salt pan margins. Best: November to March.

Greater Flamingo Regular

Phoenicopterus roseus

Several thousand birds on the Bundala salt pans in a good winter, filtering brine shrimp upside down.

Where: The lagoons and salt pans of the peninsula and Jaffna lagoon. Best: November to March.

Indian Peafowl Regular

Pavo cristatus

Wild, and behaving like a wild bird: displaying on a termite mound at dawn with leopards in the same scrub.

Where: Palmyra scrub and open ground across the peninsula. Best: Year round.

Little Tern Regular

Sternula albifrons

Hovers on fast flickering wings like an oversized hummingbird before dropping onto a fish.

Where: Fishing the lagoon channels and the shallow flats, hovering before the dive. Best: November to March.

Spot-billed Pelican Regular Near Threatened

Pelecanus philippensis

A pelican that fishes the ancient irrigation tanks, and one of the few large waterbirds doing better now than it was.

Where: The peninsula lagoons and the tank margins inland. Best: November to March.

Crab-plover Occasional

Dromas ardeola

The only bird in its family anywhere on earth, and the only wader that nests underground.

Where: Tidal flats and sandbanks on the peninsula and the islands. Best: November to March. One of the great winter waders of the Indian Ocean, and the north is the best of the island for it.

Great Thick-knee Occasional Near Threatened

Esacus recurvirostris

A heavy, huge-eyed shorebird that stands motionless on open shingle all day and only comes alive at dusk.

Where: Dry lagoon margins and shell banks. Best: November to March.

Pacific Reef Heron Occasional

Egretta sacra

Comes in two entirely different colours, charcoal grey and pure white, and both can hatch in the same nest.

Where: Rock, coral rubble and shell banks along the shore, in both the grey and the white form. Best: Year round.

Pallid Harrier Occasional Near Threatened

Circus macrourus

Quarters the grassland at head height on raised wings, tilting and rocking, hunting entirely by sound and surprise.

Where: Quartering open grassland and paddy stubble. Best: November to March.

Pied Kingfisher Occasional

Ceryle rudis

The largest bird in the world that can hover in still air with no wind to help it, which is how it fishes open water no perch reaches.

Where: Lagoon channels and the irrigation tanks. Best: Year round.

Sirkeer Malkoha Occasional

Taccocua leschenaultii

A cuckoo that gave up on being a cuckoo: it builds its own nest, raises its own young and runs along the ground rather than flying.

Where: Dry scrub and thorn thicket. Best: Year round.

Asian Water Monitor Common

Varanus salvator

A dragon sized lizard that swims canals and city parks, second only to the Komodo dragon in length.

Where: Lagoon margins, drains and the tank edges. Best: Year round.

Common House Gecko Common

Hemidactylus frenatus

Sticks to glass using van der Waals forces across billions of microscopic hairs, not glue and not suction.

Where: House and building walls throughout. Best: Year round.

Oriental Garden Lizard Common

Calotes versicolor

The everyday garden lizard whose breeding males flush blood red about the head, earning the name bloodsucker.

Where: Palmyra scrub, gardens and roadside vegetation. Best: Year round.

Sri Lankan Common Skink Common

Eutropis lankae

The bronze skink basking on every wall, ruin and hotel lawn in the country turned out in 2020 to be an endemic species, not the Indian one everybody had been calling it.

Where: Limestone, walls and open sandy ground. Best: Year round.

Bengal Monitor Regular

Varanus bengalensis

A dry-country monitor that climbs well, digs constantly and eats essentially anything smaller than itself.

Where: Arid limestone scrub and open sandy ground. Best: Year round.

Oriental Rat Snake Regular

Ptyas mucosa

A long, fast, wide eyed snake that races across open ground and is one of the region's great rodent controllers.

Where: Open ground, paddy and roadsides. Best: Year round, daytime.

Green Sea Turtle Occasional

Chelonia mydas

The great grazing turtle of the tropics, the only sea turtle that turns vegetarian as an adult.

Where: Shallow water and seagrass off the islands and the northern shore. Best: Year round.

Indian Black Turtle Occasional Near Threatened

Melanochelys trijuga

The dark, three keeled turtle basking on every half sunk log in the dry zone, and the northern race is found nowhere else on earth.

Where: Tank shallows and irrigation channels. Best: Year round.

Indian Cobra Occasional

Naja naja

The spectacled cobra of South Asian myth, and one of the very few snakes a visitor to the dry zone parks has a real chance of seeing.

Where: Paddy margins, scrub and village gardens. Best: Year round.

Indian Star Tortoise Occasional Vulnerable

Geochelone elegans

The most trafficked tortoise on earth, and the Sri Lankan animals are the biggest and the most boldly starred of the lot.

Where: Dry scrub and sandy open ground. Best: After rain, October to December.

Mugger Crocodile Occasional Vulnerable

Crocodylus palustris

The broadest snout of any living crocodile, and in one Sri Lankan park block there are more of them per square kilometre than anywhere else on earth.

Where: The larger inland tanks rather than the lagoons. Best: Year round.

Olive Ridley Turtle Occasional Vulnerable

Lepidochelys olivacea

The smallest and most numerous sea turtle, famous elsewhere for mass nestings of thousands at once.

Where: Coastal water off the peninsula and the islands. Best: Year round.

Saw-scaled Viper Occasional

Echis carinatus

A small viper that saws its own flanks together to make a sizzling warning, and in Sri Lanka it lives only in the arid north.

Where: Arid scrub, sandy ground and field margins across the peninsula. Best: Year round, after dark. This is the species' Sri Lankan stronghold. It occurs effectively nowhere else on the island, and the island's animals are a distinct subspecies.

Indian Chameleon Rare

Chamaeleo zeylanicus

Sri Lanka's only chameleon, and it is genuinely scarce here, so finding one in a thorn bush in the northwest is a proper piece of luck.

Where: Palmyra scrub and thorn hedges. Best: Year round.

Asian Common Toad Common

Duttaphrynus melanostictus

The ubiquitous warty toad of doorsteps and gardens, hoovering up insects under every night light.

Where: Gardens, drains and building surrounds after dark. Best: Year round.

Skittering Frog Common

Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis

Disturbed, it does not dive. It skips across the surface like a flat stone, and it can launch from open water with nothing to push against.

Where: Tank shallows, wells and irrigation channels. Best: Year round.

Common Emigrant Common

Catopsilia pomona

The butterfly behind the name Samanala Kanda, Butterfly Mountain, and the mass movement that heads for it every year.

Where: Open scrub and the palmyra edges. Best: Year round.

Wandering Glider Common

Pantala flavescens

Makes the longest migration of any insect on earth, crossing open ocean between India and Africa.

Where: Over paddy, palmyra scrub and the lagoon margins. Best: October to December.

Golden Orb-weaver Common

Nephila pilipes

A giant black-and-yellow spider spinning webs of golden silk strong enough to snare small birds.

Where: Webs slung between palmyra and scrub. Best: Year round.

Signature Spider Common

Argiope anasuja

Writes a bold zigzag across the middle of its own web, and nobody is entirely sure why.

Where: Scrub and garden vegetation. Best: Year round.