Thousands of saffron finches are being snatched out of South American forests and sold in Brazil for use in brutal, illegal fighting rings. Lax wildlife laws have made it difficult for authorities to crack down on the lucrative trade, leaving traffickers and ring runners undeterred. Dozens of tiny yellow birds chirped as they flitted from […]
Tag: Serin
Serin at Littlestone and a first for London
Jim and I travelled down to Littlestone in Kent this morning and before 7am we had found our first target as we pulled up outside the golf course to park and we could hear the European Serin singing it’s heart out. The singing made it quite easy to pick out the bird as it moved […]
Dunlin
I’ve seen a few pictures recently on Facebook of Bluethroats in gardens so concluded that the passage is peaking and set off to Fornebu this morning with high hopes of gaining good views (and my first sighting this autumn) of one of my favourite birds. My hopes were not to be fulfilled with there continuing […]
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 […]
A Bad dose of Hawkie
Today I had my first outing with Zak for what seems like ages. As is our wont we had a Tour de Østfold. First stop was Kurefjorden. Here we had a rising tide that seemed to bear no resemblance to that which was predicted by the tide tables but conditions were very good with all […]
Birding the Abha Area
Whilst birding the Abha area recently we went to Azeeza to look for Blandford’s Short-toed Larks as birds had been seen here by us in previous years. The area has had some building and construction work done in the last couple of years and despite quite extensive searching we failed to find any birds. Very […]
Summer time birding – Tanoumah
Last summer I visited Tanoumah, and have just sorted out my photos from the trip. Below are a few species I managed to see and photograph including Abyssinian White-eye, Brown-necked Raven, Common Kestrel, Crested Lark, Little Rock Thrush, Tristrams Starling and Violet-backed Starling. I also saw a few Arabian endemics including Arabian Serin, Arabian Wheatear, […]
Mongolia – 12th May (Day 5) – Dalanzadgad and Gurvan Saikhan National Park
After some early morning birding around the guest house at Dalanzadgad which produced much the same as yesterday including Isabelline Shrike,Pallas’s Bunting, Red-throated Thrush and Long-toed Stint we packed our bags and headed into the Gurvan Saikhan National Park around 45 minutes away. Citrine Wagtail- Gurvan Saikhan National Park Isabelline Shrike – […]