Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot (Loriculus beryllinus)

The Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot is a small, mainly green hanging parrot, only 13 cm long with a short tail. Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot is less gregarious than some of its relatives, and is usually alone or in small groups outside the breeding season. Its flight is swift and direct, and the call is a sharp whistled twiwittwit..twitwitwit. It undergoes local movements, driven mainly by the availability of the fruit, seeds, buds and blossoms that make up its diet. In Sri Lanka, this bird is known as Gira Maliththa or Pol Girwa in Sinhala Language.

I couldn’t get a good shot because of backlighting from the sun so here’s the Wikipedia one followed by a few of my attempts to catch this beautiful bird in flight and perched near Kithulgala.

They are endemic to Sri Lanka and most easily seen around the town of Kithulgala. See the red dot below. Use a Central Asian award to get to Colombo, then take a taxi or bus.