Why do we bird? The standing theory is that our passion is a sublimation of primal predatory instincts. To be sure, birders employ their senses and a similar set of skills as hunters in pursuit of their quarry, particularly those of us who’ve become “target birders”, focusing our efforts on tracking down and documenting a […]
Tag: Palestine Sunbird
Quraish Valley – Tanoumah
Whilst birding a valley on the outskirts of Tanoumah near the village of Quraish I came across a few good birds. There were plenty of common species such as Laughing Dove and White Spectacled Bulbul, some summer visitors such as Violet-backed Starlings and a few good south-west highland resident species such as Shikra and Palestinian […]
African Olive Pigeon – Raydah Escarpment
Whilst birdwatching in the Raydah Escarpment recently Phil Roberts and I saw two African Olive Pigeons. This was a species we had been looking for but had failed to see on many previous trips to the southwest of the Kingdom. It was only discovered as a new species for Saudi Arabia in the mid 1980’s […]
Birding along the roadside – Bani Saad
Recently I was in Bani Saad and stopped along the roadside at a nice looking area of market garden fields with crops. This area had once held Arabian Golden-winged Grosbeak where birds were seen sitting on a roof in Bani Saad but unfortunately I have never seen them in the built up areas. I did […]
Signs of hope
The current monitoring work which was designed, is aiming to give some more specific insight about migration along the Arava but also to check target breeding species. Over the last 10 years numbers of Arabian Warblers have dropped dramatically in the Arava and in fact in the last breeding season, I could not locate even […]