For many birdwatchers, recording a species outside its normal range is the holy grail. In the UK, the discoveries often make national headlines. The western reef heron, for example, usually found in Africa and southern Europe, was spotted in a seaside town in north Wales in June, and widely celebrated on birding forums. But a new scourge […]
Tag: Western Reef Heron
Dowkah in early spring
Either side of midday I birded Dowkah farm on Friday. The bad news was that there were no passage passerines in the shaded wooded area. The other news is more interesting. In particular the larger birds in the field were a mix of strangely off course herons and storks. An Abdim’s stork was a most […]
Around the Marriott
Last Thursday afternoon, visiting Norwegian birder, Ellen Askum and I made it out to the area around the Marriott hotel, Mirbat. A few kilometres east down the coast is Ras Janjari which is one of the best places to seawatch from the mainland. After visiting there we explored the area close to the hotel where […]
Three Cuckoos In One Tree
I spent much of Saturday morning at Wadi Darbet. It is still very green and attracting many birds indeed more so than from November onwards when the ground dries out under the trees. I was looking mostly for any passage birds. I found quite a few. adult male common cuckoo Remarkably in one […]
Tour of the east side
As well as visiting local farms on Friday, I toured some sites east of the city starting at Ayn Hamran. The stop at Ayn Hamran was relatively short but it is never uninteresting. Though there were no wintering birds seen yet apart from a couple of common sandpiper and a grey wagtail. It’s always a […]
Wake me up when September comes
Green day punk band have almost got their lyrics right as it should have been – wake me up when September comes! After a long and hot summer it is very refreshing to see many migrants arriving on a daily basis with many juv individual among them.Eilat area is not at its best during Autumn […]
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – continued…
Following my visit to the Rub’ Al-Khali, I returned to Dhahran which would be my base for the next few days. There were a few typical urban birds as well as some others of interest in and around the compound and some of the more open areas. Here is a selection of the common urban […]
Birds on the east coast
This is the second blog to look at Mansur Al Fahad’s trip two weeks ago to the east coast. He saw a very large number and variety of waders, some of which gave almost as many identification headaches as the gulls. However this blog looks at some of the non-waders he saw. All the pictures […]