Birding is such a great activity, always surprises, lots of interesting stuff and interesting people you meet along the way. Last Monday we added to the ringing team at the IBRCE Roger Riddington and Will Miles who came for 10 days of ringing and birding with us. Will is visiting the ringing station for the second [...]
It’s time to catch up on my backlogged trip reports again. Back in December of 2009, my wife and I took a short break to visit the Kruger National Park. We wanted to avoid the crowds so we opted to head to the far North. With it being rainy season, we knew we were in [...]
Like every year this time is very thrilling. Each day brings its surprises and there are plenty of new birds throughout and also a growing number of birders are travelling around and bring more updates from the field. Last weekend, the IBRCE ringing station has started its season operation and we have 2 new volunteers – Markus [...]
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 [...]
When we use the phrase “Spring Migration” around here we usually think about the period between mid Feb- mid May. During this period we use to see the big numbers of migrants of all sorts and species going through this wonderful area. Last week we had very wet (in Eilat standards) weekend which was followed [...]
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 [...]
In the late 1990s Tom Tarrant was birding the Riyadh area and he kept good records which I often compare against today’s findings.He has written about “the blue lagoons”. This was part of the Riyadh river where the habitat is more open than the a…
Over the Eid holiday (25– 29th October) we went on a family holiday to Abha in the Asir Province of Saudi Arabia. Although it was a family holiday I managed to get in quite a bit of birding time, concentrating mainly on the Mount (Jabal) Soudah region of the highlands. At just over 3000 m [...]
