R. Doug Wicker — Author

Last Monday I told you how determine the sex of the Sri Lankan elephant without gazing at the “undercarriage,” if you catch my drift, as the heads and body shape are quite distinctive between the two. This knowledge comes in handy because only around 7% of males grow tusks, and the elephants frequently stand in tall vegetation. To recap: The smaller females have straighter backs and blocky, very angular foreheads. The males have rounder forheads and the hindquarters slope down at the hips. Going by that rule, the trailing elephant below is female, and the male leads:

Other than this pair, which are show again in the following photo gallery/slide show, all the elephants shown today are female:

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The chap you see above is a changeably hawk-eagle. This particular one is a subspecies that is endemic specifically to Sri Lanka. So, if you’re a birder with this guy on your to do list, you need to get out here to Udawalawe National Park, about an hour north by car or tour bus from Hambantota. But, as you may recall, Ursula and I came for the elephants. Specifically, we were on a safari in search of the Sri Lankan elephant, the largest of the three Asian elephant subspecies. But before we return to elephants, here’s another pair of peafowl roaming around (peacock showing off in the foreground; peahen trying to appear unimpressed to the left and behind):

Now back to the main objective of this safari. Take particular note of how close we got to these giants:

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