Dammam's south coast

After finishing with Khobar on Friday, I moved up the coast a few kilometres to Dammam and more specifically to the area just south of the port.

There are many mudflats there at low tide. I noticed that large numbers of waders were attracted to the places where (seemingly) fresh water was flowing into the sea from inland. I presume these are part of the local waste water system.

At one of these the smaller waders were joined by both a whimbrel and a Eurasian curlew.

whimbrel

Unusually the bill on the Eurasian curlew was hardly noticeably longer than the one on the whimbrel. This implies the curlew is first winter which tend to have shorter bills especially the males.

Eurasian curlew

The most common wader near-by was dunlin and the second most common was little stint.

dunlin and one little stint

This was the only place during the day trip where I saw any ruddy turnstone.

ruddy turnstone 

Sand plovers weren't as common as I had expected. I only observed two lesser sand plover all day but with the tide out there was a vast amount of mudflats for them to disperse around. 

lesser sand plover 

Two grey plover were also seen. None of these birds were showing any signs yet of acquiring any degree of breeding plumage.

grey plover

This was another part of the coast were I came across common redshank.

common redshank

Once again this stretch of the coast had very large numbers of black-headed gull. Most of them were a little bit closer to the sea than the waders.

slender billed gull

In among the black headed gull were a small number of slender billed gull.

gull billed tern

All the time I was still looking out for sandwich tern and once again I only saw Caspian tern and gull billed tern but this time with one exception.

little tern

The exception was probably a solitary little tern which flew past at speed. I use the word "probably" as I cant totally rule out Saunders's tern at this time of year when their features are so similar.

house crow

My viewing was interrupted when house crow turned up, First, two arrived and one or two gulls tried to mob them but the house crow are very dexterous fliers and they failed. Then more house crow arrived and all the gulls and waders scattered. The other birds really don't like them.

more house crow

I did look a little elsewhere in the area.

great cormorant

Up the coast by 300 metres or so were a couple of great cormorant in the water and a single intermediate morph western reef heron.

intermediate morph western reef heron

Down the coast a similar distance was another large flock of flamingo and some more gulls. This time they also included a few Caspian gull.

adult flamingo

After this last encounter, it was time to start the long journey home.

It had been successful day by adding to my list and by the breadth of species seen.

These are all listed below with their location:

	Riyadh Dammam road	Khobar lakes	Khobar corniche	Dammam coast
Greater flamingo		x	x	x
Striated heron		x
Grey heron		x
Little egret		x
Western reef heron		x	x	x
Great cormorant			x	x
Socotra cormorant			x
Eurasian oystercatcher			x
Black winged stilt		x	x	x
Eurasian golden plover			x
Common ringed plover		x	x
Kentish plover		x	x	x
Lesser sand plover				x
Common snipe		x
Black tailed godwit			x
Bar tailed godwit			x
Eurasian curlew				x
Whimbrel			x	x
Common redshank			x	x
Common greenshank			x
Terek sandpiper				x
Little stint		x		x
Dunlin		x	x	x
Broad billed sandpiper		x
Ruddy turnstone				x
Black headed gull		x	x	x
Slender billed gull		x	x	x
Caspian gull			x	x
Steppe gull			x	x
Hueglin’s gull		x
Gull billed tern			x	x
Caspian tern			x	x
Little tern				x
Feral pigeon	x
Collared dove	x	x	x
Laughing dove	x		x
Namaqua dove	x
Daurian shrike		x	x
House crow			x	x
White eared bulbul		x
Graceful prinia		x
Common myna			x	x
Desert wheatear	x
House sparrow	x	x	x
White wagtail	x