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 […]
Tag: marsh harrier
Migration across to Europe
It’s quite a long photo post this week and please scroll down and enjoy the views we’ve been having. I’ve been quite busy and wanted to write up more but I was out in the field most days and had lots of emails and other office work to do. Black-eared Wheatears continued to show up […]
Birds of prey near Riyadh
Early spring is a good time to look hard at the birds of prey in the Riyadh area. The wintering eagles gather and seem to be reinforced by others on passage before moving on. Different types of other birds of prey pass through too. Last weekend saw some of these events. For example a fulvescens […]
A Morning’s Birding in January
First of all a Happy New Year to all my readers!We were away for quite a while this holiday period and I was in need of some birding at my local patch, La Janda. Every month of the year there is continual migration through our area and change is apparent almost on a weekly basis.The […]
The new “blue lagoons”
In the late 1990s Tom Tarrant was birding the Riyadh area and he kept good records which I often compare against today’s findings. He has written about “the blue lagoons”. This was part of the Riyadh river where the habitat is more open than the area around the pivot fields where I normally bird. He […]
Afternoon at Oe
Yesterday I spent the afternoon at Oe wetlands, putting the new 1D X through some paces and testing out the different metering and AF options. I tried the spot AF linked to AF point setting, but this didn’t work out too well so I reverted back to the default metering setting and just dialed in […]
Canon EOS 1D X – First Impressions
Well, today I picked up my new Canon EOS 1D X – my first full-frame DSLR! To be honest, this was a big leap in faith. I had been satisfied with my 7D, but I often found myself in low-light situations wishing to capture high-speed action. I thought the 300/2.8L IS II USM would give […]