Ena’s fascination with local fauna and flora
Leopard at Patanangala Rock, Yala: Batik by Ena de Silva, based on a sketch by Ismeth Raheem
Ena de Silva, whose 100th birth anniversary falls today, October 23, 2022, is renowned for her skills in the design of batiks and handicrafts and played a vital role in reviving the arts and crafts in this country. Those within her circle knew her passion for natural history, but few understood how it inspired her design work.
This wide-ranging fascination for Sri Lanka’s magnificent fauna and flora found expression in the designs of her textiles, plainly evident in the varied art works produced by the Aluwihare Heritage Centre. Her impressions of wildlife and plants she conveyed to the members of her cooperative and found ways of sketching them on to the tracing papers that would form the template for her batiks.
Botanical studies
From her own account she cultivated an interest in plants while at Ladies’ College where she had her primary education. Her inherent talent and systematic approach to her studies earned her the most coveted distinction in the school’s curriculum – the Ingram Shield of which she was the first recipient.
She once confessed to me that one aspect of education that she sorely missed out on was the opportunity to enrol at the University in Colombo to follow Botanical studies.
Her fascination for natural history however was rekindled soon after her marriage to a senior Police officer Osmund de Silva, when he was transferred to the Jaffna District. During her time in Jaffna her neighbour was George Morrison Reid-Henry, probably one of the most talented, self-taught artist-naturalists Sri Lanka has produced. Born in 1891, he started as an Assistant Systematic Entomologist at the Colombo Museum (presently the National Museum) retiring in 1946 after a successful career. Henry was best known for his work on illustrating birds and insects, and his two books became classics –Coloured Plates of the Birds of Ceylon (4 volumes 1927-1935), published by the Ceylon Government and A Guide to the Birds of Ceylon (O.U.P.1959). Ena soon acquired these tomes and took a serious interest in the bird life around her.
Birds
Her interest in natural history most probably inspired both her son Anil and daughter Kusum. Anil earned a PhD from Oxford and was, above all, a gifted artist. His exquisite illustrations of fauna and flora were incorporated into the design of the batik wall hangings produced by the firm in the 1970s-80s. Her daughter Kusum embarked on a PhD in entomology supervised by the acclaimed socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson.
After she ventured into batiks, Ena was fortunate that her business partner Laki Senanayake too was a talented natural history artist and also an avid bird watcher. They both took to breeding butterflies from their pupal stage.
Over the next years from 1960-1980, Ena’s travels with family and friends took her to various remote sites of wildlife interest, including national parks and sanctuaries. She also took to studying the night sky and spent many hours trying to figure out the star formations of the tropical night sky at the various remote places they visited. Keen to acquire more understanding of the history of the Northern Districts of Mannar and Jaffna, Ena’s firm leased out the fortified island of Hammenheil with its quaint 17th century stockade built by the Dutch East India Company off the coast of Jaffna.
Ena moved back to her home town of Aluwihare in 1982.
The family property with a pre-existing house, designed for her father Sir Richard Aluwihare by architect Wilson Peiris, was particularly orientated to offer a panoramic view of the rugged mountainscape of the Knuckles range. With advice from legendary architect, Geoffrey Bawa, who 20 years before designed an exquisite courtyard house in Alfred House Road Colombo for her family, Ena re-designed her home in Aluwihare, transforming it to reflect her unique aesthetic and personality. It was adorned with some rare and wonderful artifacts of the 17-19th century of Kandyan arts and crafts which Osmund and she had collected over the years. Her re-designing of Aluwihare extended to the garden. She planted and nourished several trees some of which were more dry zone species obtained from her travels. She maintained detailed notes, keeping records of the maturing and seasonal flowering and fruiting periods of the trees she planted.
In her own personal library, there were several works on the flora of Sri Lanka. Having travelled extensively abroad she had also amassed publications on botanical literature of the countries she visited. In many of these, she entered her personal notes and observations in pencil and pen in her skilful, calligraphic script, alongside the printed text and images of leaves and fruits.
I own a photocopy of her much thumbed original edition of T.B. Worthington’s Ceylon Trees (1959) in which she had made copious notes in English and Sinhala of various features such as the indigenous names of the species, where she had first observed them, the flowering and fruiting periods and other aspects of some rare plants.
Avidly interested in bird behaviour, Ena maintained a detailed study of the nesting of a range of bird species in Aluwihare which is ideally positioned in the intermediate climatic zone. To me one of her most striking observations as an amateur naturalist was the documentation of the nesting activities of one family of the now rare Ceylon Grey Hornbill for seven successive years from 1991 to 1996 (See box at left).
During this period of observation, she had the support and expertise of Shirley Perera, (supervisor of the Aluwihare workshop), a retired Assistant Director of the Department of Wild Life to assist her to evaluate the data. These notes shed light on an under-researched area – the behaviour of the endemic Ceylon Grey Hornbill. Interesting details including the initial mating display, nest selection by the male bird, construction of the nest hole by sealing the female bird using its casque, the food transmitted by the male, and the release of the female by breaking the cemented wall of the nest followed by the dispersal of the nestling from the nest cavity have all never been so meticulously documented over such a long and extended period.
Historically the Ceylon Grey Hornbill has been described by eminent naturalists and ornithologists including Capt. Vincent Legge (A History of the Birds of Ceylon,1880), E.H.N. Lowther (A Bird Photographer in India.1949), W.W.A. Phillips (Ceylon Journal of Science.1979) and G.M. Henry (Birds of Celyon.1956). But their observations are limited and do not go far enough to record the more intimate aspects of the peculiar nesting habits of this bird. These valuable observations of the Grey Hornbill will expand our knowledge of the nesting and breeding behaviour of this endangered species.
As Dr. Dilrukshan Wijesinghe aptly phrased it – ”intelligent” curiosity in general – to engage in observations and note-keeping like this, not necessarily as scientifically important contributions. But the fact is, a lot of what we know about animals, plants, etc., is the accumulated observations like this.
| Ena and the Ceylon Grey Hornbill | |
 Design for a batik with the Ceylon Hornbill by Laki Senanayake Though a breeding resident in the lowlands and lower hill country, it is in the village gardens of the Matale District that the Ceylon Grey Hornbill frequently nests. Originally, they may have been more plentiful in the fine forest cover that extends along the Matale-Habarana range of hills. But when these forest tracts were cleared on a large scale for plantations for coffee, cocoa, rubber and pepper in the last two centuries, the hornbills adapted their breeding strategy to suit the newly created man-made habitat. The majority of these village gardens have a fine mix of fruiting and flowering trees and shrubs – native and exotic plants. They may be interspaced with paddy fields but some of the hilltops still retain fragments of the rainforest species with large boulders lending the hornbills the safe cover they require from intruding predators. This mixed woodland landscape makes an ideal habitat for the Ceylon Grey Hornbill. As an ideal location the nest cavity was sited on a slender trunk of a Lunumidella (Melia composita) tree about 17 feet above the ground facing southwest screened off from the sun. Often leafless during the nesting season of the birds, in June-July the tree is loaded with olive shaped fruits. Ena’s notes documented at Aluwihare included the following insights: The male bird regurgitated each individual food item from its gullet (all noted at the times feeding activity took place). The varied food matter brought by the male to feed the female and towards the end the nestlings include the following berries and fruits; Pihimbiya (Feicium decipens), Sapu (Michelia champaca), Damba (Syzygium cumini), Jambu (Eugenia malaccensis), Nuga (Ficus sp). Among the food prey fed were grasshoppers, mantises and garden lizards |
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