Finally a white wagtail

It has been a busy week at work so opportunities for birding during the week have been limited. However I went out to Al Baleed with its lagoon on late Monday afternoon and to Saadah Park on Tuesday afternoon. Both sites are within Salalah city.

The Saadah park visit added to my Oman list with the humble white wagtail. Yellow wagtail and possibly citrine wagtail are more common in winter and white wagtail clearly starts arriving later than either. Many white wagtail winter much further north.

My first white wagtail in Oman

I have been seeing three other species of wagtail here in Salalah for a month now.

white wagtail

In the end I counted three of them.

yellow wagtail

There were also several yellow wagtail present and perhaps more surprisingly one grey wagtail.

Tree pipit

Two pipits are feeding on the ground and I struggled to work out if they were tree pipit or red-throated pipit. Its not so easy in autumn and winter when the red throats disappear. Finally they flew off into trees which was a broad hint they were tree pipit.

clean rump of a tree pipit

Looking at the pictures on return home, it is clear they were tree pipit especially with one photo showing an unstreaked rump on one of the birds.

Scaly-breasted munia

As well as wagtails and pipits, on the lawns most of the time were small flocks of scaly-breasted munia. I have now seen them in all three major city parks.

Spotted flycatcher

Spotted flycatcher is still the most widespread migrant of all. It is seen in so many places with any trees.

hoopoe

In contrast hoopoe, which is also a migrant,  numbers are quite low but can be found in the more shaded and more moist areas. 

white-spectacled bulbul

The park had two typical birds of woodlands and gardens. There were white-spectacled bulbul and grey-headed kingfisher. The latter is still showing no signs of leaving for Africa for the winter.

grey-headed kingfisher

I enjoyed birding in the park and look forward to winter birding there.

The day before I visited Al Baleed which was not as interesting as on my previous visit with fewer and less varied birds. There were less water heron family members in the main water body and less waders at the sand bar near the sea although Pacific golden plover and greenshank were plentiful there.

Female shining sunbird

I inspected the garden there. I am still looking for my first Nile valley sunbird and Palestine sunbird within the country. However I am only picking up shining sunbird which was present there again.

Two Bruce's green pigeon

One small nice surprise at Al Baleed were two Bruce's green pigeon confirming my view that they can be found even at sea level in the Salalah area. I had previously seen them at Dahariz Park which is also by the sea.

Bruce's green pigeon

They were more confiding than most of their species.

Little grebe

The late afternoon light conditions suited their photography as it did with a little grebe there too.

I did manage to get out to bird late Wednesday afternoon too. I'll write about that next.

The lakes at Osenovo

A couple of days ago I was tipped off by some friends that there were two lakes near Osenovo which is about 10 kilometres from my home. Some other friends told me the area in question is sometimes unkindly called "the swamp". Either way it sounded like good birding territory with a different habitat so I made my way there today.

The area is actually a valley fed by a small river/large stream which bulges out in two places to create lakes that become partially over-grown with reeds in the summer. Either side of the stream is tree cover and the ground is boggy in places. I found it a beautiful setting but maybe that's because  I was looking at it from an environmentalist's perspective.


I saw two syrian woodpecker, great tit, turtle dove, plenty of starling, house sparrow and nightingale in the tree cover. In the sunnier spots there were house sparrow, corn bunting, black headed bunting, red-backed shrike and bee-eater. 


However it was when I came to the second larger lake which is in the open that the bird watching became more challenging for me. 

great reed warbler near Osenovo

The challenge was over the identification of a bird. At the second lake were at least two acrocephalus warbler singing their hearts out. I ruled out reed warbler because the birds at the lake have a white supercilium going beyond the eye and the tail is rounded. These features are shown well in the top picture.

second picture of a great reed warbler

The second picture above shows the bird also has a pale eye. I really wanted the bird to be a paddyfield warbler which has all these features. It is known on the Bulgarian Black sea coast but only at a few sites a little further north. Sadly I now think the bird is a great reed warbler. It's beak is so thick and large. Also the primary projections are long unlike those of a paddyfield warbler (shown on photos not presented in this blog).  

terrain - boggy with mostly young reeds

As well as great reed warbler, there were at least two large birds present. Yet again there was a little bittern. That twice recently I have seen it in a small lake with lots of cover. I also saw a single white stork.

white stork near Osenovo

My friends tell me this is a very popular place during migration for hundreds of white stork to stop over. There are also heron and egret present when the reeds are not so thick but my friends are not birders so they can't recall whether they only see these during the passage. 

stream that feeds the lakes

Along one part of stream that feeds the lakes there were plenty of house martin collecting mud for their nests. Alongside these were at least two very busy white wagtail. They were catching insects but not eating them! I presume they were being collected to feed their young near-by.

white wagtail collecting insects

There was plenty of other wild life apart from the birds. By the side of the stream I came across two European pond terrapin.

European pond terrapin

There also a blue coloured damselfly which settled right in front of me so I felt honour bound to photograph it.  

blue coloured damselfly

Finally I want to write about two other birding incidents that happened today. Both were right next to my house. First I saw a northern wheatear on top of my next door neighbour's chimney. I have never seen a northern wheatear on a house before never mind on its tallest part.

northern wheatear next door

Last but not least, there was a group of house martin outside my front gate this morning collecting mud for their nests just like their cousins did next to the woodland stream at Osenovo.

house martin outside my front gate

Pipits and wagtails in the waterlogged meadow

typical view of the waterlogged fields near Deryanah

I don't particularly like wading in water-logged, muddy meadows but sometimes duty calls. To add to the problem my expensive Timberland boots give me blisters. 

It's a good job I got some results when I waded into the wetlands east of Deryanah once again. 

You'll hear about the wading birds in another blog but here I want to write about another family of birds sharing the wetlands - pipits and wagtails.

white wagtail, near Deryanah 

Last month I wrote about tree pipits and meadow pipits in a blog called "pipits amongst the water melons" In Deryanah there was a different cast.

On the flat muddy banks at the edge of the wetland I saw my first white wagtail of the winter.  In winter, it is everywhere in the country on flat spaces where it can take a run at its food - flies. I've seen it in Ghadames in the desert, in urban Tripoli and many other places. Now I've seen it in Cyrenacia. Others have reported it in Sebha and other oasis towns. I suspect I will see an awful lot more of the bird around here over the coming months.

yellow wagtail near Deryanah

Although I was in a wetland, I didn't see any grey wagtail. I'm not convinced it winters in Libya in any great numbers. Mainly I base this on two reasons. First, I've only seen two in over a year and second there is very little moving water here which they prefer to still water.

In contrast, I did see plenty of yellow wagtail at Deryanah. The landscape here resembles their breeding grounds and is probably as amenable a stop-over as any yellow wagtail is likely to get. I say stop-over since it is pretty much unknown (except for the Egyptian yellow wagtail -arguably a different species) for yellow wagtail to winter north of the Sahara.

water pipit near Deryanah

The other bird which was quite numerous caused me a small identification problem. I saw a few of these. All were more olive on the back than the book version of a water pipit but that's what the bird is. For a fleeting moment I thought it was a meadow pipit but in flight it has the characteristic black tail with white edges and its belly is white with no buff.

Water pipit is a known wintering bird so I should get lots of practice at it's identification over the coming months.