Owing to personal interest, GNN is partial to stories of rare bird sightings, and news from Oregon recently broke the story of a ‘mega-rare’ bird never seen before in either the state or the country. It wasn’t made by a birder, but rather an ordinary talented photographer named Michael Sanchez, who was on the beach […]
Tag: blue rock thrush
Best of the 400
So I have finally crossed the line and made the personal milestone of 400 birds seen in Britain and this has got me thinking back on a few of them and which ones I enjoyed most. Now you’d think it would be easy just by picking the rarest but it’s not that simple. One may […]
Blue Rock Thrush – Jubail
Whilst birding the desert near Jubail I came across a small vegetated valley with a little wet pool. It was very attractive to migrants with plenty of Common Chiffchaffs, several Eurasian Hoopoes, White Wagtail and a single female Blue Rock Thrush. Blue Rock Thrush is an uncommon passage migrant through Saudi Arabia that is seen […]
Birding Highlights of 2017
The birding wasn’t bad with ten lifers eventually plucked out following a very slow start. January saw Pine Bunting added and then the next tick didn’t come along until 11th June when the Elegant Tern was found down at Church Norton. In July I manged to get on the Marsh Sandpiper at Cliffe Pools in […]
Blue Rock Thrush and Eastern Black Redstart – Qatar
Vinu Mathew went to Qatar recently and visited a farm called Mekaines farm. Vinu said it was an amazing site with a lot of species there. Unfortunately he only spent only two hours there but there were Blue Rock Thrush, Eastern Black Redstart, Stonechats, lots of butterflies, lots of Shrikes, Gulls and Lapwings, Vinu mentioned […]
Dowkah delivers again
My Eid trip lasted from Tuesday afternoon until Saturday evening. It involved 3500 kilometres of travel and took me to several birding locations. This and the next four blogs will chronicle the results.I headed north out of Salalah on Tuesday and reached one of my favourite birding locations, Dowkah desert farm, with time to bird […]
Let the games begin once again
After long idle due to being too occupied in moving into our new house at last, yesterday I went back to the field, joined by Shachar with his powerful Nikon (thus I didn’t really bother photographing…)We had a great day with many birds and goodevidenceof migration throughout. Starting at K20 we found the ponds loading […]
Blue Rock Thrush Displaying
I had the opportunity to take a series of photographs of one of our local male Blue Rock Thrushes displaying. I made this collage of his movements through the blue sky. Not only did it delight me but also John-Patrick and Cathrine clients from London that I was with yesterday.