{"id":36979,"date":"2013-03-28T13:54:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T12:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=36979"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:43:45","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:43:45","slug":"spring-migrants-in-kuwait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/spring-migrants-in-kuwait\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Migrants in Kuwait"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month I visited a protected area north of Kuwait City and Mutla Ridge and was pleasantly surprised by the numbers of Spring migrants in and around the Acacia Trees as well as the indigenous plants with yellow flowers spread out across the desert.<\/p>\n

There were 5 species of Wheatear, but the most prevalent was Eastern Black-eared Wheatear(Oenanthe h. melanoleuca) with both dark and pale throated varieties seen.<\/p>\n

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Dark-throated Eastern Black-eared Wheatear<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Pale-throated Eastern Black-eared Wheatear<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Also present were the typical Pied Wheatears (Oenanthe pleschanka), but also the pale throated known asvittata.<\/p>\n

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Typical Pied Wheatear<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n
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Pale-throated Pied Wheatear<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
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Pale-throated Pied Wheatear<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

A male Blue Rock Thrush (Monticola solitarius) was found in typical desert habitat<\/p>\n

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Male Blue Rock Thrush<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

As was a male Rufous-tailed Rock Thrush (Monticola saxatilis)<\/p>\n

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Male Rufous-tailed Rock Thrush<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Many Shrikes were seen, but the most prevalent was Mauryan Grey Shrike (Lanius lahtora pallidirostris).I just missed seeing one kill a snake, but did get to spend some time as it impaled it on an Acacia Thorn and started to feed – fascinating.<\/p>\n

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Mauryan Grey Shrike with snake kill<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Mauryan Grey Shrike preparing to impale snake kill<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

A few smaller passerines were seen in the form of Lesser Whitethroat (Sylvia curruca)<\/p>\n

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Lesser Whitethroat<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

And an Eastern Orphean Warbler (Sylvia crassirostris)<\/p>\n

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Eastern Orphean Warbler<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

All in all a very productive and enjoyable spring mornings birding and looking forward to seeing the arrival of many other migrants over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month I visited a protected area north of Kuwait City and Mutla Ridge and was pleasantly surprised by the numbers of Spring migrants in and around the Acacia Trees as well as the indigenous plants with yellow flowers spread out across the desert. There were 5 species of Wheatear, but the most prevalent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":2192892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/EBEWheatear_7144.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[2451,3905,3907,3904,2173,3906,7768,826,824],"class_list":["post-36979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-blue-rock-thrush","tag-eastern-black-eared-wheatear","tag-eastern-orphean-warbler","tag-kuwait","tag-lesser-whitethroat","tag-mauryan-grey-shrike","tag-migration","tag-pied-wheatear","tag-turkestan-shrike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}