Fujairah and Dibba beaches, UAE

A week ago Friday around the middle of the day Andrew Bailey and I visited Fujairah and Dibba beaches. Althouh the rest of my weekend in UAE has already been reported, I delayed this blog while I sought more expert advice than myown on the identity of some of the many terns we saw.

Indeed the highlight of this session was when some fishermen brought their catch ashore and 50 or so terns were attracted.

Most of the terns spent much of their time in the air looking for spilt catch. However there were always a few on the beach at any given moment.

A majority but by no means all were common tern.

whiskered tern

One that obviously wasn't was a whiskered tern in summer plumage.

Some were much more difficult to identify. Thanks to Oscar Campbell in UAE the one below has been identifed as a common tern and probaly a second calender year bird which is already quite bleached.

common tern

Some of the other terns in small numbers were as easy to identify as the whiskered tern. They were sandwich tern, lesser crested tern and great crested tern.

sandwich tern

In the group below next to the sooty gull there is one bird which is probably white-cheeked tern. It is the one on the left. The others are common tern.

white-cheeked tern (l) and 3 common tern (r)

Oscar Campbell has commented that it probably is a white-cheeked tern however it should be in breeding plumage "(unlike all White-cheeks in the Gulf, where birds are at nesting islands from late March) and the structure does not look especially different from the background Commons - in direct comparison, the bill of White-cheeked often looks very slender and narrow which is not the impression I am getting from this bird. It does look a little small but that might be an artifact of the image".

I would add that the legs do appear a little shorter than the other birds.

mixed terns

In the above picture the dark bird appears again.

Despite my concentration so far on the birds on the ground, most birds spent most time in the air.

common tern

Above is a common tern in flight.

Saunders's tern with common tern

There were also single birds of two other species: Saunders's tern and roseate tern. The latter is the rarest tern in the region at this time of year. I think Andrew Bailey for identifying it as a Bangsi type which has an orange-red bill. It wasn't present for as long as the other terns and I failed to get a photograph.

slender-billed gull

There were a few other birds on the beach. A few slender-billed gull were among them.

sanderling

Three sanderling were running along the sandy beach.

socotra cormorant

The terns were not the only birds to be attracted to the fish catch. Slowly but surely a group of socotra cormorant which were swimming drifted closer and closer to the shore. In the end they were less than 5 metres from the fisherman's boat.

more socotra cormorant

Straight after we left the beach we headed towards a water ditch a kilometre north. It appears to have been formed from the dirty water running off from a small development. Apparently some good birds have been seen there. However these types of site are very hit and miss and often depend on the amount of water released over the preceding days. This time the water levels were low.

glossy ibis

This time birds were limited to a glossy ibis and two moorhen.

dhow with great crested tern and lesser crested tren

An hour before we reached Fujairah beach we birded Dibba harbour and beach. This is where our encounters with terns began. A dhow in the harbour held fifteen lesser crested tern and a few less great crested tern. It's good to be able to see the two birds together. The great crested tern is notably larger, has a darker mantle and wings. It's bill is paler and yellower.

great crested tern

It was here we saw our only great cormorant of the weekend.

cormorant with terns

In all we saw nine species of tern over the weekend and it was really useful exposure to difficult group of birds to master.

In the next blog I return to looking at Salalah, Oman.

Terns on the beaches

Having now seen 246 species in Oman with all but 4 in the Dhofar area, I have not been expecting many new additions before the spring migration.

Indeed this has been the first full week with no additions and there will probably be plenty more.

I have decided to take a more relaxed approach to local birding for a month or so though some reported twitches might tempt me.

In the last week, I have spent a significant proportion of my birding time on beaches.

Caspian tern with one lesser crested tern

This blog looks at some of the terns I have seen on the beaches among the literally thousands of gulls.

On the beach at Khawr Soly were several Caspian tern (also seen at Taqah and East Khawr during the week).

lesser crested tern with one sandwich tern

Very close by was a group of lesser crested tern. Within that group was one sandwich tern. These two birds are very closely related and sandwich tern often associate with lesser crested tern if their own type are not around.

whiskered tern

There was a single small tern next to them but not associating with any of the other terns.

sideways look at whiskered tern

I couldn't identify this small tern immediately. The bill was too short and strong for a Saunders's tern or a little tern.

preening whiskered tern

I am not used to seeing whiskered tern or any other marsh tern on a beach but that is what it is.

Actually the beach at Khawr Soly is straight in front of the sand bar separating the freshwater lagoons and so the bird wasn't out of place.

sleeping whiskered tern

Caspian tern were also seen at East Khawr (Khawr Dahariz) as were gull-billed tern.

gull-billed tern

What surprised me was that one of the gull-billed tern was in breeding plumage already.

gull-billed tern in breeding plumage

Although this blog is primarily about terns, I got distracted for a short time by a bathing grey plover at East Khawr. 

bathing grey plover

I accidentally caught the moment when it raised its wings and showed its underwing black patch.

underwing of a grey plover

This is very useful to differentiate between juvenile golden plovers and grey plover in autumn when some of the former birds have very little golden sheen.

Saunders's tern

On Friday morning I visited Taqah beach and saw more terns. However my main motive to be there was to twitch the skimmers that have been seen twice along the front. Sadly, although I scanned over 2000 water birds, no skimmer was among them. I did see 12 Pallas's gull and other scarcer birds among about 1100 Hueglin's gull and 600 sooty gull.

During this scan I added Saunders's tern to the list of terns seen over the past few days.

The bill is thinner and longer than in a whiskered tern. The winter head pattern usually includes a small amount of black in front of eye too. The legs are often lighter as well.

three Saunders's tern

My regional guide says Saunders's tern can doubtfully be separated from little tern in winter. I am not sure that is true. In summer the white on the crown of a little tern reaches the back of the eye. If it doesn't manage that in winter when there is less black and even more white its not going to do it in summer. So I believe many winter Saunders's tern can be identified by the white not reaching the back of the eye. The problem is identifying little tern. Some winter Saunders's tern have white reaching the back of eye and all little tern.

If I have gauged this correctly all my birds are Saunders's tern with the possible exception of the one towards the bottom right in the first picture.

white winged lapwing

Once again I got distracted from my main tasks while birding. I found a single white-winged lapwing at Taqah. I suspect it may be the same bird I saw for a month or so at near-by Khawr Soly but whose chosen area has since dried up during the winter.

Raysut

Yesterday afternoon, I finished work a little early at the start of the weekend. I decided there was time for some local birding. I chose to go to the Raysut area on the west side of the city.

I visited the city rubbish dump first. Though there were more birds than during my last visit, there were no new ones. 

So I moved on to the wadi immediately west of the Raysut industrial area which is also known as Salalah lagoons.

Eastern imperial eagle stretching

There were 70 or so white stork present along with 10 greater flamingo. There were also several grey heron, garganey duck and northern shoveller as well as a few assorted waders.

However sitting on a large rock close to the white stork and especially close to a grey heron was an Eastern Imperial eagle. This was my first in Oman.

Eastern imperial eagle moments later

It gave me good views for a few minutes.

Eastern imperial eagle on the look out

It is ironic because I went to the rubbish dump first to look for any eagles and other birds of prey except for steppe eagle.

steppe eagle in flight

Instead the number of steppe eagle had multiplied from 30 during my last visit to about 120 this time. However there were no minority birds of prey and only two white stork.

another steppe eagle on the ground

With the success of the Eastern Imperial eagle, I moved down the wadi to where it meets the sea. The wadi is dry there but the worn rocky coast has been brimming with birds each time I visit.

slender-billed gull

The predominant bird was still sooty gull but with a few Heuglin's gull and my first Caspian gull (which Clements counts as the same species as steppe gull already seen). Six grey heron were wading in the sea. Other waders included two whimbrel.

great crested tern and sandwich tern

However it was the terns that caught my interest. The most common by far was still great crested tern but among them were two sandwich tern.

preening great crested tern and sandwich tern

I had failed to see any in my three years in Saudi Arabia and it was first for me here. This was one of my most pleasing first sightings as I have waited so long in the gulf for it.

a second sandwich tern

The second tern had hardly any yellow tip to the bill which is the characteristic which gives me quickest confirmation of identification. Now all I need to see is its very close relative, the lesser crested tern.