Yesterday Adam Harris and I made the two-hour run from Al Ahsa to one of the best areas in the Eastern Province for finding an interesting array of desert, grassland, and migratory birds. We arrived to Haradh just past seven and headed directly to the pivot field where last year we had seen our primary […]
Tag: Sociable Lapwing
Scale of illegal bird killing in the Middle East revealed for first time
A study out today, for the first time, estimates the scale and extent of the illegal killing and taking of wild birds in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran. Using a diverse range of data sources and incorporating expert knowledge, we estimate that at least 1.7–4.6 million birds of at least 413 species may be […]
Kazakh steppes
The final days of the Rockjumper tour I was leading were spent in the steppes and wetlands around Nursultan (until recently Astana…). Together with our sharp-eyed local guide Andrey, we birded one day west of the city, and another day south. Birding was fantastic, with non-stop action both in quality and in numbers. Insect load […]
Winter birding – Haradh
Phil Roberts and I went for our normal winter birding trip to Haradh recently and saw a lot of good birds. Best was 14 Sociable Lapwings which I have already posted about but we also saw a number of other good winter visitors and early spring migrants. The first pivot field we stopped at had […]
Lapwings of various species – Haradh
Haradh is a well known wintering location for Northern Lapwing, with flocks of several hundreds seen in recent winters. This trip we located many birds scattered around the fields, but no large flocks and probably saw more than 100 Northern Lapwings in total. The species is an uncommon winter visitor to the northern areas of […]
Sociable Lapwing wintering in Eastern Saudi Arabia – Haradh
On 13 January Phil Roberts and I travelled to Haradh an area of extensive pivot irrigation fields three hours drive from Dhahran. We were primarily looking to see if we could prove Sociable Lapwing wintered in the area as we had seen birds here in February 2016 but were uncertain if these were wintering birds […]
Rare and unusual birds seen in Saudi Arabia in first half of 2017
An adult and juvenile Bewick’s Swan Cygnus (columbianus) bewickii near Al Jawf 14-15 December 2016 with three more adults in the north of the Kingdom 19 December 2016 being only the third to seventh records of the species for the Kingdom. Four See-see Partridge Ammoperdix griseogularis, including a calling male, were at a remote desert […]
New Sociable Lapwing habitats discovered in Uzbekistan
The Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwing is one of the world’s rarest and most threatened birds. It breeds in Kazakhstan and southern Russia and winters from Sudan to Pakistan and India. How it gets from its breeding grounds to its wintering areas is of great interest to conservationists, since hunting pressures along its migration routes is […]