Rekawa Marine Life: What You Will Actually See

Golden Jackal Occasional

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: Scrub behind the nesting beach, and on the sand after dark. Best: Year round.

Indian Flying Fox Occasional

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: Roost trees behind the beach, streaming out at dusk over the nesting sand. 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 and the wet margins. Best: Year round.

Pied Kingfisher Regular

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: Hovering over the lagoon and the channels. Best: Year round.

Bronze-winged Jacana Occasional

Metopidius indicus

Toes so long it walks across floating leaves, and a breeding system in which the female holds the territory and the males do all the work.

Where: Walking on the floating vegetation in the lagoon. Best: Year round.

Grey-headed Fish Eagle Occasional Near Threatened

Icthyophaga ichthyaetus

Sits low over the water on a dead branch for hours, then drops feet first and comes up with a fish half its own weight.

Where: Dead branches over the lagoon. Best: Year round.

Spot-billed Pelican Occasional 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 lagoon, fishing and loafing on the shallows. Best: Year round.

Yellow Bittern Occasional

Ixobrychus sinensis

Freezes with its bill pointed straight up and vanishes into the reeds, which is why almost nobody sees it despite it being everywhere.

Where: Reed and sedge margins of the lagoon. 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: The beach above the tideline and the lagoon margins behind it. Best: Year round. Monitors dig out turtle nests. Watching one work a beach at dawn explains the whole conservation problem in about a minute.

Checkered Keelback Common

Fowlea piscator

The snake you will actually see in Sri Lanka, hunting fish in a paddy channel in broad daylight.

Where: Lagoon shallows and the drainage channels. 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: Building walls at the beach and in the village. 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: Scrub and gardens behind the beach. 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: Sand, track verges and walls. Best: Year round.

Green Sea Turtle Regular

Chelonia mydas

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

Where: The nesting beach, on the guided night watch from the visitor centre. Best: February to July, from 20:00. A genuine wild nesting beach with in situ nest protection, not a hatchery. Expect to wait, and expect no torches.

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 Rekawa lagoon and the channels behind the beach. 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: The nesting beach on the night watch. Best: December to January.

Leatherback Turtle Rare Vulnerable

Dermochelys coriacea

The largest turtle on Earth, a jellyfish hunter that dives deeper than most whales and crosses whole oceans.

Where: The nesting beach on the night watch. Best: January to June. The second commonest nester here, ahead of the olive ridley, and anyone who sees one has had an exceptional night.

Saltwater Crocodile Rare

Crocodylus porosus

The largest living reptile and the ocean going giant of crocodiles, now virtually gone from Thai waters.

Where: The lagoon and the river mouth. Best: Year round.

Hawksbill Turtle Very rare Critically Endangered

Eretmochelys imbricata

The reef's sponge specialist, its beautiful shell also the reason it was hunted to the edge.

Where: The nesting beach, on the night watch. Best: February to July. Historically nested heavily on the south coast and was hunted out for tortoiseshell.

Loggerhead Turtle Ultra rare Vulnerable

Caretta caretta

Jaws powerful enough to crush a queen conch, and it navigates ocean basins by reading the earth's magnetic field.

Where: The nesting beach on the night watch. Best: November to April. If an operator claims routine loggerhead nesting, treat everything else they tell you sceptically.

Asian Common Toad Common

Duttaphrynus melanostictus

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

Where: Village and beach 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: Lagoon margins and the drainage channels. Best: Year round.

Green Chromide Regular

Etroplus suratensis

One of only three cichlids in all of Asia, and the other two are its close relatives.

Where: Brackish lagoon shallows. 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 the lagoon and the seasonal pools behind the beach. Best: Year round.

Oleander Hawkmoth Occasional

Daphnis nerii

Camouflaged like military fatigues and fast enough to cross the Mediterranean, it hovers at flowers like a hummingbird.

Where: At lit walls in the village after dark. 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 lagoon-edge vegetation. Best: Year round.

Horn-eyed Ghost Crab Common

Ocypode ceratophthalmus

The fastest crab on earth, clocked at over two metres a second, and it growls at intruders from inside its burrow.

Where: The nesting beach itself after dark, and the reason many nests fail. Best: Year round. Ghost crabs take eggs and hatchlings, and the burrows scattered over the nesting beach are theirs. They are part of why the hatchery exists rather than a nuisance to be removed.