Abdim’s stork<\/p>\n
\u00a0At least the Abdim’s stork may have been facing the right direction. That cannot be said of the five western reef heron. I counted five on my last visit too and they appear to have stayed put. These birds should be on the coast and not nearly 200 kilometres inland.<\/p>\n
Abdim’s stork with reef herons<\/p>\n \u00a0Then it got even stranger. The farm had an Indian pond heron. Most are heading back to India around now but this one is the wrong side of Salalah as well as being inland.<\/p>\n Indian pond heron<\/p>\n \u00a0I can normally tell an Indian pond heron from a squacco heron by its plumage. It tends to be just two toned: white and dark brown with very few buff tones unlike a squacco heron.<\/p>\n Indian pond heron 2<\/p>\n \u00a0The dark loral stripe found on the bill of a pond heron is good confirmation and its very apparent in the photo above.\u00a0 These stray birds bode well for the main passage about to begin. If I see anything like as much straying during this then I should get a rarity or two.<\/p>\n Rosy starling 1<\/p>\n \u00a0Another single bird but not unexpected was a rosy starling. It was in the same pivot field as all the other birds described so far. Other pivot fields had far fewer birds.<\/p>\n Rosy starling 2<\/p>\n \u00a0 tawny pipit<\/p>\n \u00a0Apart from brown-necked raven, pipits and larks were almost the only other families of birds in these other fields.Tawny pipit were scattered throughout.<\/p>\n hoopoe lark<\/p>\n \u00a0Hoopoe lark were seen at the side of some fields. While black-crowned sparrow lark were both there on in the fields.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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