Fishy....

Dwarf panchax/Aplocheilus parvus/උඩ්ඩා male 

    

The Lake.....

Do you remember the lake I show you as I saw it from the top of the small rock that I climbed? I visited that lake last Monday with my little girl. Though I call it a lake, the term "tank" is also used  by some. These tanks are from  a thousands of years old civilization, made with a technology that baffles modern engineers. The tanks were built in an environmental friendly manner and to be very very durable. Their purpose was to collect rain water for paddy cultivation in the dry zone of the country. Learn more...



There was not much vegetation along the banks of this particular one, there for the bird life was relatively mild. I did see some Turns and Swallows though. You can see the rock that I climbed in the below picture.



There were steps on the banks for people to get i to the water, and I got to the water's edge using one. There I saw some beautiful    fishes, and I captured them in video. The video turned out pretty lousy,but I thought I'd show you a anyway. My attempts to identify these fish online has been so far fruitless.

Spotted Snakehead Fish(Channa punctata )

Spotted Snakehead Channa punctata is a very commonly seen fish among the fresh water habitats of the wet zone lowlands of Sri Lanka. I'm not sure about its availability in other parts of the island.  The biggest I've seen of these is about 3-3 inches in length, though there is online information suggestive of adult Spotted Snakehead fish growing much bigger than that. I've observed these fish to be very vicious predators. When I was a kid, I once accidentally put a live Spotted Snakehead together with some kind of a fresh water insect in a jam jar full of water. Soon after the fish spotted the bug swimming around, the bug found its way into the fish's system with in a shockingly short time!  Learn more......    

A Small Stretch Of Forest In The Middle Of City Of Kurunegala-3, Juvenile Spotted snakehead Fish In A pond

There is a pond on the way to the top of the Ethugala Rock, in the wood in the side of the path. When I crawled under the bush and had a look at the water, there were hundreds of tiny Spotted snakehead fish   (Channa punctata). We call it Madakanaya or Madakariya in Sinhalese. You can have more information on this freshwater fish here.  


Freshwater fishes of Sri Lanka

Well, that's all I've got to share about the small forest that surrounds Ethugala Rock, for the time being. That's somewhere I visit often, so I'll probably be able to tell you what other kinds of  critters inhabit the forest, with time to come. Await some butterflies on next posts!