Last summer I visited Tanoumah, and have just sorted out my photos from the trip. Below are a few species I managed to see and photograph including Abyssinian White-eye, Brown-necked Raven, Common Kestrel, Crested Lark, Little Rock Thrush, Tristrams Starling and Violet-backed Starling. I also saw a few Arabian endemics including Arabian Serin, Arabian Wheatear, […]
Whilst birding the Jubail area in late June I found an adult Pied Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta. Records at this time of year are scarce and always a pleasure to see. The Pied Avocet is an uncommon migrant and winter visitor to all coasts. Locally common along the southern Red Sea coast. Scarce inland but recorded […]
Either side of midday I birded Dowkah farm on Friday. The bad news was that there were no passage passerines in the shaded wooded area. The other news is more interesting. In particular the larger birds in the field were a mix of strangely off course herons and storks. An Abdim’s stork was a most […]
As Saeed Shanfari and I finished at Dowkah farm so fresh on Monday we pressed on to Qatbeet before turning round. Qatbeet was so far from the coast, it was the only place which was not affected by cyclone chapala at all. It was it’s usual very hot self. Winter coolness arrives later in the […]
The Desert Sparrow (Passer simplex) is a small passerine found in North Africa and Central Asia. So far two subspecies have been described for the Sahara desert (P.s. simplex and P. s. saharae); the third subspecies, localized in areas of Irán, Turkmenistán and Uzbekistán, also known as Zarduny’s Sparrow (P. S. Zarudnyi), may be split […]
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 […]