Phil Roberts and I went to Haradh recently and found plenty of good birds despite the temperature being 1 degrees Celsius the coldest day for many years in the region as well as a bitingly cold northerly wind. Some birds were winter visitors such as Mallard, Northern Lapwing, Desert Wheatear, Eastern Imperial Eagle and Tawny […]
Tag: Desert Wheatear
Birding the pivot fields – Haradh
The winter months are a good time to visit Haradh pivot irrigation fields as they hold a lot of good birds at this time of year. Large numbers of wintering Harriers, particularly Western Marsh Harrier and Pallid Harrier occur here and I saw well over thirty birds of both species during my visit. Another group […]
Spanish Sparrow breeding and much more – Haradh
Whilst birding the area of Haradh recently where we concentrated on looking in the pivot irrigation fields we also saw a few other good birds around the filed edges and surrounding areas. The first good birds we saw were just outside the main entrance to the huge HADEC farm complex where a nesting colony of […]
Much more at Rakhyut
There was much more to Rakhyut than owling (see yesterday’s blog). On the mountain top before we (Saeed Shanfari, Hedi Khecharem and I) descended into Rakhyut the action started. There were four eagles. Three were steppe eagle which soon disappeared. Eastern imperial eagle 1 One eagle stayed behind and give good views. It was […]
Rubʿ al-Khali; The Empty Quarter
At the start of this year I visited the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and was fortunate to spend a few days at Shaybah in the northeastern edge of this, the world’s largest desert. This region is classified as ‘hyper-arid’ with typical rainfall of less than 30mm per year and is one of the driest regions […]
Round up of Al Hayer in February
Last year I visited Al Hayer south of Riyadh almost weekly and it became what we birders call my local patch. This year I vowed to make trips more widely within Saudi Arabia and I have been doing so. However last weekend I returned to Al Hayer for the first time in over 6 weeks. […]
A few bits and pieces in the UAE Part II
Ajban farms is a favorite site of mine , located between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It is a desert scrub area with large water lakes. Unfortunately the water is constantly being pumped into tankers for nearby constructions sites. Not sure how much longer there will be water there, once gone I am sure there will […]
More from Zulfi
Today’s blog looks further at Mansur al Fahad’s visit to Zulfi last week. He tells me the birding is always good there and I can’t dispute that. As well as the pharaoh eagle owl and several steppe eagle featured in the last blog, there is much more to report on. For starters, Mansur managed to […]