I visited Khawr Rori on Tuesday afternoon for the first time in two weeks. There are two distinct birding areas and I went to both. One is the north west off-shoot of the main Khawr and which contains a large reed bed. It is approached from the main road. On arrival there I immediately came […]
Tag: house sparrow
Bird News!
There is big news in the bird world this week. For the last four years, hundreds of scientists in an international group called the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium have been sequencing bird genomes. They sequenced the DNA of 45 extant birds and a few crocodilians, and combined that with three previously sequenced bird genomes and then […]
Polar Vortex Winter Birds
It was a cold week in New York. As I sat writing at my desk by the window I saw the neighborhood birds in another light. One of the ways birds keep warm is by fluffing up their insulating feathers; they looked like puffballs all week. They have other ways to keep warm. Their feet […]
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 […]
Purple Martins Building a Nest in a Woodpecker Hole in a Dead Snag
The Purple Martin (Progne subis) is a well known and popular bird in eastern North America where it breeds almost entirely in human-made martin houses. Only a few records of natural nestings east of the Rocky Mountains have been reported during the twentieth century1. Here in western North America however, where Purple Martins are less […]
Rhawdat Khuraim in winter
Rhawdat Khuraim is an oasis 80 kilometres north west of Riyadh. It proved to be an excellent place for passage birds when visited last spring. So we visited it again, this time obviously in winter to see what it might hold. In many ways it was a bit disappointing. Only two warblers were seen. These […]
Deffi Park, Jubail
I visited Deffi Park, Jubail for the first time on Thursday. It is a large city- based public park two kilometres inland from the Persian gulf. It is one of the best places apparently for migrant Eurasian thrushes and finches to be pushed down in mid winter. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t see one blackbird […]
Sunday Breakfast
I scatter seeds on my porch for the birds when the weather gets cold. This morning I had lots of visitors. Click on the photos to enlarge. House sparrows, Passerdomesticus, are always the first to arrive. They like seeds and breadcrumbs. They usually come in a group. The cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, eats seeds, nuts, and […]