Your tour starts shortly after dawn, at 6.30 am, near the boatyard in front of the Muthurajawela sanctuary. This morning time period gives you a greater chance of seeing the rarer birds. Your boat will pick you up, along with your bird guide. Muthurajawela was an area that used to be prime farmland, which produced some of the best rice in Sri Lanka. But with the building of the Dutch Canal, it is believed that there was some seawater seepage into the lands and they became un-cultivatable. The lands were then abandoned, and Mother Nature took over, turning them into one of Sri Lanka's most biodiverse wetlands, which were proclaimed a priority wetland and sanctuary in 1996. Now spread over 15,395 acres (6,230 hectares), the marshes hold more than 190 species of plants and more than 200 species of wildlife, including more than 100 species of birds.