Sri Lanka Facts
Upali Ekanayake is the senior most Ornithological Tour Leader in Sri Lanka and is the Director Operations of Starron Bird & Wildlife Tours Ltd. He has been interested in birds since he was 10 years old. A calling Brown-capped Babbler and a white morph Asian Paradise Flycatcher he saw on his way for a dip in the stream at the end of his then remote village kindled this interest, which became a passion, in him. Bird calls and calling birds out by mimicking their calls by whisting became another passion of his.
He has been leading bird tours for more than 30 years and is well known in the birding world. He has led birding tours and other natural history tours for some of the very popular and famous birding tour companies such as Birdquest, Birdseekers, King Bird Tours, Limosa, Natura Aragon, Nature Himalayas, Naturetrek, Terra Unica, Travelling Naturalist, etc. etc. He is also a highly accomplished all-round naturalist. He was previously attached to the Zoology department of the University of Peradeniya. He has undergone training in the U.K. in Terrestrial Ecology and Conservation with attachments to Aberdeen and Cambridge Universities, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (R.S.P.B.) and the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (I.T.E.).
He is one of the local representatives of the Oriental Bird Club (O.B.C.). He is also a Life Member of the Ceylon Bird Club where he has served in the Executive Committee and the Rarities Committee for a number of years. He is also a popular lecturer on Birds and he took lectures at the Tourism Training Centre of the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism & Hotel Management from 2004 to 2006. He worked for the IUCN, The World Conservation Union in Sri Lanka for two years from 1994 as a National Consultant (Fauna) surveying the faunal diversity of all Sri Lankan forests which are more than 200 hectares in extent.
Currently Upali leads a number of major bird-watching tour groups visiting Sri Lanka annually from Britain, Europe, Singapore and America. He also works as a Freelance Eco-tourism Consultant in the local tourist hotel industry.
