Between snowy winters and holiday songs, many animals come to mind during Christmas. There are polar bears wearing Santa hats and red-nosed reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh. Turtle doves and the partridge in a pear tree are also immortalized in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” But climate change and habitat loss are taking a […]
Tag: Turtle Dove
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 […]
Upcher’s Warblers
This morning I went out birding with Piki, Micha and Stefan in E Lakhish hills. It was my first visit to this wonderful part of the country since my return from the UK. As the days are already very hot now, we started super early when it was actually quite chilly (7⁰C!). As we stepped […]
Dusky Turtle Dove
Whilst birding the southwest of the Kingdom at various times from spring through summer I came across good numbers of Dusky Turtle Dove. Numbers have been much higher this year than any previous years I have been to the southwest. The species is a breeding resident in the Asir notably the Abha and Jebel Soudah […]
First Autumn European Turtle Dove – Jubail area
The European Turtle Dove is a long-distance migrant breeder across much of central and southern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, wintering mainly in the Sahel zone of Africa. The species is in serious decline because of loss of suitable habitat in both the breeding and non-breeding range, unsustainable levels of hunting […]
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 […]
Oare
Yesterday saw a quick trip down to Oare Marsh in Kent. Arriving early we enjoyed a quartering Barn Owl and a Little Owl with a pair of Marsh Harrier along with the usual waders, Egrets and ducks. We heard a Turtle Dove calling in the distance and eventually picked it up sitting in the trees […]
Martin Down and Pennington Marsh
The last couple of weeks have been manic at work with some very early starts for breeding bird surveys, late nights reviewing documents and getting the company ready for the new and extremely tedious General Data Protection Regulations which come into force later in May. However, I have managed to get out a little to […]