I visiting my friend and long time birding colleague Brian James last weekend. He lives at Thuwal north of Jeddah. On Thursday morning we set out north with fellow birders Dan and Alice towards Yanbu. We birded the Yanbu area and over the weekend we saw over 115 species. This is even more than my [...]
This is the second blog to look at Mansur Al Fahad’s trip two weeks ago to the east coast. He saw a very large number and variety of waders, some of which gave almost as many identification headaches as the gulls. However this blog looks at some of the non-waders he saw. All the pictures [...]
Early spring is a good time to look hard at the birds of prey in the Riyadh area. The wintering eagles gather and seem to be reinforced by others on passage before moving on. Different types of other birds of prey pass through too. Last weekend saw some of these events. For example a fulvescens [...]
Last year I visited Al Hayer south of Riyadh almost weekly and it became what we birders call my local patch. This year I vowed to make trips more widely within Saudi Arabia and I have been doing so. However last weekend I returned to Al Hayer for the first time in over 6 weeks. [...]
Those who follow my blog will know that hooded wheatear has been my nemesis bird. Along with two owls, Dunn’s lark and a very small number of others it has been one of a dwindling group of confirmed residents in Riyadh province which I hadn’t seen. male hooded wheatear I have spent many hours looking for it either as [...]
In the northernmost field of NADEC farm on Thursday, Lou Regensmorter and I came across a female pallid harrier. The field is adjacent to route 90 which goes from Kharj to Haradh female pallid harrier What was interesting is that six hours before, we had stopped the car journey at the outskirts of Kharj on [...]
Today’s blog looks further at Mansur al Fahad’s visit to Zulfi last week. He tells me the birding is always good there and I can’t dispute that. As well as the pharaoh eagle owl and several steppe eagle featured in the last blog, there is much more to report on. For starters, Mansur managed to [...]
On Thursday, after visiting the Kararah lake area, our birding party doubled back away towards Riyadh on the Mecca road before turning off north west. This was on route 505 according to the map but route 902 according to the road sign. This is an occupational hazard in Saudi Arabia, road sign numbers and map [...]
If you travel out of Riyadh on the Mecca road, its not too long, 30 kilometres or so, before you see brown recreational road signs to Kararah lake. Lou Regensmorter, first time birder George Darley-Doran, and I headed out that way on Thursday morning. Of course we knew the “lake” and the near-by “waterfall” would [...]
For the second half of last Thursday’s birding trip, Lou Regensmorter and I ventured up to the top of the Tuwaiq escarpment north of Riyadh. In part we were looking for the elusive hooded wheatear which is one of my nemesis birds. In part this was a speculative look at a potentially new birding place. [...]
