I had worked a long week despite the Bank Holiday and so on Friday 1st April I finished at 14:00 and headed to Beaulieu Road Station for a walk. I parked at Shatterford and walked south, along Bishop’s Dyke and back via Denny Wood. Stonechat numbers seemed to be up, with 12 birds seen, returning […]
Tag: marsh harrier
Waders, Winterers and residents – Sabkhat Al Fasl
My last trip to Sabkhat Al Fasl produced a number of waders of various species including the highest number of Marsh Sandpipers I have seen for a while. Most waders were Dunlins with good numbers of Common Ringed Plover scattered amongst them. A few smart plumaged Kentish Plovers were feeding around the shoreline and a […]
Highest site count of Greater Spotted Eagles – Sabkhat Al Fasl
Last weekends birding at Sabkhat Al Fasl produced a good number of winter visitors including the largest number of wintering Greater Spotted Eagles recorded at the site when 17 were seen in one morning. Birds normally arrive in September and stay until April or early May. Western Marsh Harrier is another wintering raptor seen regularly […]
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 […]
Melanistic Montagu’s Harrier and other Raptors
Here are some of the raptor photos we managed to see with my Swiss group from Arcatour last week. The wind direction swung around to give us moderate to strong Levante (easterlies) for five days and only died down on our last two days. Still, knowing what the migrating raptors do and where they will […]
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 […]
Migrating Raptors on The Strait of Gibraltar
It’s been a busy six weeks with almost non-stop birding here on The Strait and across Europe. I thought I’d quickly post some of the raptor shots I have managed to edit so far on the blog to show at least some of the autumn delights… Black-winged Kites (old name is Black shouldered Kite) have […]
Eagles and Harriers
March seemed to be a good time for Marsh Harriers and Greater Spotted Eagles down in the Dubai Pivot fields. Whilst I am used to seeing many Harriers this time of year, Greater Spotted Eagles are a different story. Whilst fairly common down the road at the Ras Al Khor sanctuary, in my experience this […]