Friday 17 March 2017

Sri Lanka

This week I am travelling in my imagination to Sri Lanka. The postcard features some of the fauna of Yala National Park, a wildlife sanctuary in the south east of the country.  One of its strap lines is "Glorious Past and Spectacular Present" for the area was a centre of ancient civilizations, so this combines two things I love, nature and history. It sounds as though Yala National Park has everything, monsoon forests, freshwater and marine wetlands and many other ecosystems. It closes for a few months  during the drought season but last year the rains came early so it reopened early.  It also closes during the mating season of the native Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya).

Yala National Park is also known for the number of birds  that can be seen in this area of 378 square miles (979 sq kilometres) which totals 215 species.  It is appropriate that the stamps the card came with were two birds endemic to Sri Lanka -
1993: Birds of Sri Lanka
the Ceylon Hill Mynah and the Ceylon Brown Capped Babbler.  Both species are known for their calls.  The Capped Babbler nests on the ground in forest undergrowth and is difficult to see but they are noisy birds so one will definitely hear them.
 Yala is marked on the map by the Sri Lankan elephant on the south east corner. 


Postcards for the Weekend theme - a card from a country you would want to visit - dream of travel at Connections to the World

4 comments:

Maria said...

I also want to go to Sri Lanka. Love that mapcard and how I don't want to open another browser to locate Yala. I wish you can make your dream to visit this country come true soon, Joy!

John's Island said...

Hi Joy, I’m discovering some interesting new things thanks to several of the blogs in Maria’s PCFW meme. The Postal Picture is definitely one of those blogs that’s really a pleasure to find. You’ve posted excellent cards for this week’s theme and captured my fascination with Sri Lanka. It’s kind of like discovering a whole new Hawaii (my American comparison) in a remote part of the world I really know little about. Sri Lanka is a little closer to the equator but, not much, and I’ll bet the climates are similar. Looks like you’ve given me a new place to put on the list of locations to visit. Question for you if you have time: Why is there a different spelling between the cards and stamps? Shri vs Sri?

Mail Adventures said...

When I read the first sentence I missed "in my imagination", and I thought you are very lucky :)
Anyway, I think you can visit Sri Lanka one day!

Joy said...

It's from Sanskrit John so it can be transliterated in different ways, I think they would pronounce the first letters as a Sh sound, no idea why the romanisation is sri.