Greater Hoopoe Lark is known to take advantage of various items to help it regulate its temperature and slow down water loss during the heat of the day. Using the large burrows of Arabian Spiny-tailed Lizards to get out of the sun has been well documented as one way they achieve this.
Whilst we were at a large farm near Jubail we saw may Greater Hoopoe Larks around the edges of the fields with possibly up to thirty birds seen. Some of the fields had just been harvested and made into bales and a few of these were square types made into three sided low blocks.
One Greater Hoopoe Lark was seen using the shaded and cool area in the bottom of these hay stacks as an area to retreat from the sun and keep cool.
When disturbed it would jump up on top of the bale of hay and look around but when it was quiet again it would move back to its cool resting area.
Jem Babbington
Jem Babbington is a keen birder and amateur photographer located in Dhahran, Eastern Saudi Arabia where he goes birding every day. Jem was born in England and is a serious local patch and local area birder who has been birding for almost forty years and has birded in more than fifty countries. Jem is learning to ring birds in Bahrain as a perfect way to learn more about the birds of the area. Saudi Arabia is a very much under-watched and under-recorded country.
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