Wadi Hanna and Wadi Darbet in late April

On Thursday afternoon which is the beginning of the weekend here,  I rushed off up the hills as soon as work finished.

My first stop was the very top of Wadi Hanna where the air is much cooler than on the plains. 

masked shrike

Once again my main focus was on migrants while we have still got them. Sure enough there was a very clean looking male masked shrike.

frontal of masked shrike

This one had a particularly orange front.

It wasn't long before I could hear a fan-tailed raven screeching. At the top of Wadi Hanna this is often a sigh that a bird of prey has arrived  in the area and needs to be "persuaded"to leave. I have seen this scenario played out almost every time I have visited.

hobby

When I looked up I could see a single fan-tailed raven trying to dissuade a hobby from staying around. This time the fan-tailed raven was not winning. The hobby out manoeuvred it time and time again. Later it was joined by a second bird but by the then the hobby had moved on anyway. 

some fan-tailed raven

A few minutes later and closer to the cliffs, a large number of fan-tailed raven had gathered but this had nothing to do with the hobby.

spotted flycatcher

Meanwhile back on the ground, I spotted three spotted flycatcher which is another migrant.

blackstart

In the bright Omani sunlight, you might be surprised how often the resident blackstart can look superficially like the flycatcher. Both also have a tendency to perch on low and exposed branches of trees.

After Wadi Hanna, I made a call at Wadi Darbat on the way home. It is at lower elevation and I needed the later hour to visit even then it was still very hot.

There was virtually no sign of any water birds except one common sandpiper even though the stretch of water is still going strong towards the end of the nine month dry season.

Bruce's green pigeon is here in large numbers all year round but many non-birding people hardly notice them. They hide well and fly fast.

Bruce's green pigeon

Another colourful bird here is grey-headed kingfisher. I saw three at the wadi which confirms they are back in numbers from east Africa for the summer,

grey headed kingfisher

Finally just before dusk, I observed a rufous bush robin.They are passing through in very large numbers indeed this spring.

rufous bush robin

I returned to Wadi Darbet the next day as part of a long day's birding with visiting birder Derrick Wilby. It was a very rewarding day and I added two new birds to my country list. I will blog about this next.

Pheasant-tailed Jacana and hobby at Wadi Darbat

On Thursday afternoon, I went to Wadi Darbat. Two visiting French birders had told the day before that they had seen a pheasant-tailed Jacana there.

They said it was at the far western end of the river. When I arrived the same group of German tourists that moved me on from Ayn Razat were there. It was not ideal for birding. However the tourist group moved on after 20 minutes or so.

I patiently waited but there was no Jacana. It was only when I walked another 300 metres or so east along the river that I noticed it. It had moved position, possibly to be in a place with less disturbance.

First view of pheasant tailed Jacana

This was a lifer for me and I was very pleased that the bird was in the open giving good views. The only Jacana I have seen before was an African Jacana in two African countries. It is called "lily trotter" there. This one likes walking on floating vegetation too.

pheasant tailed Janaca with an itch

I have been here 10 weeks now and this was my first one yet my guide book says some are resident. Perhaps I have just been unlucky.

another view of pheasant tailed Jacana

The bird is a juvenile as the breast band is not fully black.

The birds of prey are often very interesting at Wadi Darbat. Thursday was no exception.

My first sighting was an Eastern Imperial eagle which was being mobbed by two fan-tailed raven.

Then two Eurasian hobby arrived and perched for a prolonged period on trees about 30 metres apart.

first hobby perched

This was another first for me in Oman indeed I failed to see any in my time in Saudi Arabia.

first hobby stretching

One of the Eurasian hobby flew for a while before returning to perch.

second hobby in flight

The third species of bird of prey seen was a sub-adult Bonelli's eagle.

Bonelli's eagle

Bonelli's eagle is locally common here. the most ordinary bird of prey was a kestrel seen as I left the wadi at the end.

western reef heron

I was interested to see two western reef heron so far inland and at elevation. One was a pale morph and the other was a dark morph as shown in the photo.

purple heron

There were also grey heron, purple heron,  squacco heron and an Indian pond heron present.

Tree pipit

My one disappointment again was the lack of migrant passerines. I found only citrine wagtail near the river, white wagtail in shaded areas and tree pipit in the woods.

Northern pintail

The duck population has been different each time I have visited Wadi Darbat. This time I could only seen northern pintail. Perhaps longer term birds prefer the khawrs on the coast.

Tawi Atair is near wadi Darbat but higher up the mountainside. I went there next on Thursday and finally observed my target bird there. I will blog about that next.

Less hobby in spring?

In September I wrote that some Swedish hobby fly through Libya on autumn passage (see article "Another falcon proven to fly through Libya" dated September 12th). Now new German research suggests that German hobby do so too.

The information is contained in a new paper in British Birds 104, January 2011, 2–15. The paper is called "Two complete migration cycles of an adult Hobby tracked by satellite" and its by Bernd-Ulrich Meyburg, Paul W. Howey, Christiane Meyburg and Klaus Dietrich Fiuczynski.  Bernd-Ulrich Meyburg and colleagues have been carrying out excellent work for some time on tracking birds of prey 

German hobby on autumn and spring passage from paper by Bernd-Ulrich Meyburg et al

However the German tracking research shows that two hobby which flew through Libya on their way south didn't on the spring passage back. They flew back west of Libya.

The paper by Bernd-Ulrich Meyburg et al speculates why this happens. One idea is that they follow their food sources including barn swallow. However I cant find any real evidence that barn swallow fly further west in spring. Indeed there appear to be as many barn swallow in spring as in autumn.

hobby with tracking device by Bernd-Ulrich Meyburg et al

I wonder if they are just following the line of least resistance. There is obviously more vegetation and birds towards the Atlantic coast than inland - something a even a bird can see when flying north but which isn't apparent flying south.

The German research confirms again that hobby fly at night over most of their passage route.

I found two more pieces of information interesting: Hobby fly over Libya during the third or fourth week in September during autumn migration and that females depart slightly earlier than males.

Now we need research on eastern European hobby! Do they  fly further west on spring passage like the German birds or further east up the Nile to avoid a desert crossing?

Another falcon proven to fly through Libya

Tomorrow I am back in Benghazi. Today is one last chance to have time on my hands to do some final desk research on Libyan birds.

So what have I been looking at?

Well, my observations in spring have led me to the conclusion that more species and more birds fly through Libya than most bird watchers have previously believed. My hypothesis is that there are two main reasons for this. The first is that there has been gross under-reporting in Libya. The second is that the most visible birds - the big birds of prey and storks (which normally fly in the day) mostly use Gibraltar and Istanbul as gateways to Africa. Has this prejudiced birders to think that the same proportion of smaller birds do the same?


There are more and more observations that the smaller birds fly across the Mediterranean through the central north Africa including Libya (probably precisely because the big majority of large birds of prey take the lazy route). I am not denying smaller birds don't use Istanbul and Gibraltar I am just saying that many populations don't do gross diversions to get there.  


A couple of days ago I wrote about some hard science showing that western populations of Eleanora's falcon fly through Libya on migration. 

hobby, Wikipedia

After much searching I have discovered a paper that shows large numbers of another falcon - the Eurasian hobby does the same!


Science is stripping away the prejudices. The main populations of this bird are in central Europe  and these birds do not divert their route to go through Gibraltar and Istanbul.

The paper with the evidence is Proc. R. Soc. B (2009) 276, 727–733 doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1202 which was published online on 4 November 2008 "Falco subbuteo crossing the African equatorial rain forest" by the Swedish scientists: Roine Strandberg, Raymond H. G. Klaassen, Mikael Hake, Patrik Olofsson and Thomas Alerstam

from "Falco subbuteo crossing the African equatorial rain forest"

Three of the four tagged birds from central Europe went through Libya and even the other one didn't divert through Gibraltar.

Eurasian hobby mostly hunt at dawn and dusk, and fly at night so this research is invaluable. So we can safely say a second falcon flies in good numbers through Libya during migration.

As an aftermath, I also found a paper tracking 10 black stork from similar parts of central Europe.  5 went south west to Gibraltar and 5 went south east to Istanbul.  No surprise there. We already knew what storks, eagles and buzzards do. But please don't read anything in it for other birds. Look at the new science!