The birds of Wadi Kaam valley

On Saturday, I went with Andy, Helen and Ibrahim to Wadi Kaam. It was a gloriously sunny and warm (but not hot) day to visit arguably the greenest area in Tripolitania.


The northern, lower, section of the valley is fertile farming land with many cypress trees. The dominant finch of these trees in Tripolitinia - serin - were everywhere to be seen and heard.

serin in the lower Wadi Kaam valley

In contrast, in Cyrenaica (north east Libya), the dominant finch is chaffinch. In Tripolitania (including Wadi Kaam) that bird is rare. Conversely serin is a rare winter visitor to Cyrenaica. This at variance with the guide books which surprisingly over-report serin distribution there!

a green field in the lower Wadi Kaam valley

In winter, walking along the shaded country lanes in the lower Wadi Kaam valley, within minutes you can easily pick out cattle egret, serin, goldfinch, meadow pipit, sardinian warbler and spanish sparrow.

Cattle egret is nowhere near as common in Tripolitania as in Cyrenaica but is common in Wadi Kaam.

view of the middle Wadi Kaam valley from the reservoir

The valley stretches for several kilometres north of a very large reservoir, getting wider and greener as it heads north.

view of another serin in the lower wadi kaam valley

I was a little surprised to see so many black redstart in the lower valley.  Some seemed to be moving around in pairs.

male black redstart 

Here all the black redstart were gibraltariensis. When I bird around Benghazi (850 kilometres east) they are a mix of the European sub species gibraltariensis and the Turkish sub species ochruros.

The easiest way I separate the two sub species is the white flash on the wing of the European but not the Turkish male bird. Females I find impossible to distinguish.

an apparent black redstart pair at Wadi Kaam

I didn't find chiffchaff that common at Wadi Kaam but they were there is low numbers.

chiffchaff at Wadi Kaam

In the drier areas of the middle and upper valley the bird life changed. Crested lark and black wheatear were easily seen. They were also present at Wadi Lubda (the next valley along which we visited briefly before reaching Wadi Kaam).

black wheatear

My favourite resident of theses drier areas is fulvous babbler. There were several family groups around to view.

fulvous babbler

This article is not a full audit of the birds of Wadi Kaam valley. Take a look at an article on a trip report from February last year . You'll find some more birds from this area there. Between the two articles I hope you'll get a good overall picture.

Tomorrow we can look at the birds seen at the reservoir itself.

Singing Serins in sizzling sunshine

The number of active resident bird watchers in Libya has recently risen to a staggering total of approximately three. I am the new one. My name's Rob and I'm teaching English here for the next two years.

There is plenty of news about bird watching which takes place in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt but not Libya. Until now.......... With any luck, that is about to change.

Libya is a great place for birds. Lets explore the evidence: Four billion birds fly across the Sahara twice a year. Many of these fly across Libya. It has huge numbers of European birds taking winter holidays joining some exotic residents and there are some additonal summer breeders too.

Follow my exploits week by week and understand the almost unknown joy of Libyan birding.

Garabolli

Lets start with a short trip. In early January, I visited the closest national park to Tripoli at Garabolli with Ibrahim (the big guy on the scope) and a couple of friends.

It is a coastal area with wadis, a small coastal lagoon, olive and citrus groves, garrigue and cypress copses. Not bad variety for a small area. Unfortunately it also has too much rubbish in places and some dodgy new development on the seafront.

It has been ridiculously hot this winter in Libya. On top of this there was vitually no rain in November and December. This has clearly confused the wildlife including the birds. The local variety of star of bethlehem is in flower 4 weeks early. The male serins in the cypress trees were singing their heads off. A couple of spotless starlings - which arent supposed to be in Libya by the way (the books are wrong again) seem to have paired off. The great grey shrikes were off their wires picking twigs from the ground. It will all end in tears when we get a cold spell.

There was some normality. The spanish sparrows were twittering and the fulvous babblers were, well, urgh... babbling. Even though one was high on a tree pretending to be a shrike.

But my reason to be at Garabolli was not to admire the weather or look at the "normal" birds. I came in seach of Sardinian Warblers. Although they are quite wide spread in Libya in winter, this is their one stronghold and the main breeding site here. I heard one or two but it took eagled eyed Ibrahim to see one. They flit round the low bushes right next to the sea making a sound which sometimes seems to mimics a rattlesnake. They stay in cover so very long so you have to be patient.

If you think I have photo of the warbler you are wrong. The bird was just too quick for me. You will have to be satified with one of a Hoopoe seen as we left the park. Yes, Hoopoes are resident birds here. This isn't Europe you know. They just don't go away when it gets very cold because it doesn't get very cold.

Good birding. Rob