May in the Asir is great for birding as most if not all the African breeding species have returned and additional passage migrants can be seen as well as the resident highland birds. We saw a few passage birds including an Olive-tree Warbler, Common Whitethroat, Red-backed Shrike, Turkestan Shrike, Common Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Whinchat. […]
Tag: Violet-backed Starling
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 […]
Birding An Namas
An Namas is an area north of Tanoumah in the Asir Mountain chain. It is the northerly most point where Asir (Arabian) Magpie can currently be found and is a good birding location. Whilst birding a small valley there I found a lot of good birds including Ruppells Weaver, Violet-backed Starling, Crested Lark, Gambaga Flycatcher, […]
Bottom of Raydah Escarpment in summer
I was at the bottom of the Raydah Escarpment in late June and the number of birds was significantly less than in May. There were a lot less African Grey Hornbill and Violet-backed Starlings but White-throated Bee-eaters had arrived that were not present in early May. The number of Bruce’s Green Pigeons remained high and […]
Arabian Woodpecker – An Namas
Whilst birding the An Namas area of the Asir mountains, 150 kms north of Abha recently I photographed a pair of Arabian Woodpecker Dendrocopos doraeat at their nest hole. The hole was positioned in the trunk or major branch of a large tree about five metres above ground level and comprised of a small freshly […]
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, […]
Creative twist
This post is about colour. I am in between wildlife trips so I thought it would be interesting to play around with the colour in some of my wildlife images. Rather than change the colour of the subject, I wanted to see what effect it would create if I removed the background colour. Presumably, it […]
African birds at the bottom of the Raydah Escarpment – Abha
Whilst birding the lower areas of the Raydah Escarpment in late March I saw a number of African species. Birds seen included African Grey Hornbill, Violet-backed Starling, Black-crowned Tchagra, Bruce’s Green Pigeon and White-browed Coucal. Bruce’s Green Pigeon is an interesting species as it only eats the fruit of a single type of fig tree. […]