I live hidden among Arboreal green I do not wish To be heard I do not wish To be seen And if you enter My habitats Come with cameras only Please remember that Gorilla Nation
Category: Blogs
Jizan to Al Namas: A Saudi Birding Epic
Total Avian Species: 151 Total Endemics and Near-Endemics: 17 Highlights: Helmeted Guineafowl Numida meleagris mitratus Harlequin Quail Coturnix delegorguei arabica Philby’s Partridge Alectoris philbyi Arabian Partridge Alectoris melanocephala Lesser Flamingo Phoeniconaias minor Dusky Turtle-Dove Streptopelia lugens African Collared-Dove Streptopelia roseogrisea Red-eyed Dove Streptopelia semitorquata Bruce’s Green-Pigeon Treron waalia Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse Pterocles lichtensteinii White-browed Coucal Centropus […]
Could a million freshwater turtles help clean up some of Australia’s polluted rivers? A team of scientists believes, they could!
For well over a century, freshwater fish from Europe – the carp (originally from China), have been released, either deliberately or accidentally from fish farms, into Australian waterways. The fish, now widely regarded as pests, are thriving. Their habitat includes rivers flowing through the Murray-Darling Basin of New South Wales. Those vast waterways support, through […]
I Am A Parrot
We are pretty. We are intelligent. We are born to be free. For the wild we are meant. You think we are entertaining. You like when we “talk” We are parrots. Our language is “squawk”. You think we are accessories to be caged. We are as smart as humans and need to feel engaged. When […]
Help Needed in Saudi: The Saudi Birding Community’s Effort to Track Down a Tagged Egyptian Vulture
The weekend before last, Yoav Perlman forwarded the following email from Ron Efrat, a researcher in the wider region studying Egyptian Vultures, to Jem Babbington and me and asked if we might use our contacts here in Saudi to track down the missing vulture. I opened the link in Google Maps and realized that the […]
Possible Breeding Basra Reed Warbler in Al Ha’ir, Riyadh Province, KSA
On a visit to Riyadh in May 2019, I headed to Al Ha’ir in the hopes of gathering further evidence Basra Reed Warbler Acrocephalus griseldis was indeed breeding there. This would be significant, if confirmed, as this species is currently listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, its decline understood to […]
Stalking the Sublime: Target Acquired in Asir Province!
Why do we bird? The standing theory is that our passion is a sublimation of primal predatory instincts. To be sure, birders employ their senses and a similar set of skills as hunters in pursuit of their quarry, particularly those of us who’ve become “target birders”, focusing our efforts on tracking down and documenting a […]
Confessions of a Wildlife Photographer
It was the fall of 2001 when I walked into a Thursday night meeting of a local nature photography club. It was competition night and the members of the Camera Naturalist Photo Club handed in their slides to be sorted and loaded into the slide projector. I took a seat in the back of the room, […]