Sarah had brought for me, at Christmas, a photography course with David Tipling and so we all headed up to North Norfolk for the weekend. David is a recent convert from Nikon to Olympus and is now an ambassador for Olympus. The main aim for me was to glean some of his knowledge in using […]
For the last few years, VBN/BirdLife Netherlands has been working closely with Dutch farmers in the hopes of making the country’s world-famous dairy products as sustainable and nature-friendly as they are tasty. Gerrit Gerritsen tells us more about a most promising start. International studies recently showed Dutch men to be the tallest in the world, […]
Whilst birdwatching the Jubail area at the end of March I saw a lot of good birds and plenty of migrants. Unfortunately the weather was very poor and photography was difficult so most species remained un-photographed. The weather this winter has been very wet and windy and the morning drive to Jubail was through a […]
Whilst in the Jubail area recently we saw plenty of species of waders and many kinds of herons. There were hundreds of Grey Herons present as well as the largest number of Little Egrets I have seen at the site, well over 200 birds. A few Little Bitterns and Squacco Herons were also present along […]
The number of waders in the Jubail area is increasing with one or two quite unusual species being seen. An early Broad-billed Sandpiper was an unusual sighting by a small area of water alongside a track as was the well marked Black-winged Stilt seen previously that is still in the same area. More usual waders […]
The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is out – and it’s sounding alarm bells for some of Europe’s most charismatic and cherished shorebirds (also known as wading birds). The list highlights sharp declines in most farmland wader species across much of Europe in recent decades. In some cases, these falls […]
I visited Daijyugarami, Saga prefecture, last Friday to see what birds had started migrating through. The highlights were a solitary juvenile Asian Dowitcher, a Long-billed Dowitcher in breeding plumage, a Red Knot also in breeding plumage, a Broad-billed Sandpiper, a Long-toed Stint, four Black-faced Spoonbill, one Saunders’s Gull, a few Black-tailed Godwit and plenty of […]
Following my visit to the Rub’ Al-Khali, I returned to Dhahran which would be my base for the next few days. There were a few typical urban birds as well as some others of interest in and around the compound and some of the more open areas. Here is a selection of the common urban […]