Mid June in Nouakchott

Mid June in Nouakchott is the quietest time of year for birds.

• The rainy season in southern Mauritania is July to mid October
• Nouakchott normally gets 2 or 3 heavy rains almost any time during that period
• It amounts often amounts to only 100 mm at that time
• Mid June is before any potential rain
• Most palearctic migrants have gone
• No possible rainy season birds have arrived. In the case of this site that especially means blue-cheeked bee-eater
• At the waste water site
• Resident spur-winged lapwing appear to be making scrapes for nests
• Still a few migrants namely woodchat shrike, willow warbler, blackcap and western olivaceous warbler
• Sudan golden sparrow more numerous than in winter and spring
• Similarly with Namaqua dove

Please note a series of blogs will follow reporting on my tour of Uganda, Rwanda, Somaliland and Djibouti in July.

spur winged lapwing

woodchat shrike

Sudan golden sparrow

blackcap

willow warbler 1

willow warbler 2

willow warbler 3

Namaqua dove. One of many

plain tiger butterfly. Common at the site

Cool day at Dawkah

Dowkah farm was visited both on Friday and again briefly on Saturday on my way home to Salalah.

It is a desert farm approximately 200 kilometres north west of the city.

Birding can be tough with the heat at certain times of the year. Luckily last weekend was unseasonably cool.

As usual Dowkah had a good selection of birds and this time there were plenty of migrants.

Three lesser kestrel were flying over one field. One was a very smart adult male.

lesser kestrel

Another migrant was an Abdim's stork. This has been at the farm for at least two weeks now.

Abdim's stork

Six western reef heron had been there at the same time too. Now rather strangely the two dark morph birds have gone but the remaining pale morph birds were still there. They were associating closely with the cattle egret.

cattle egret with a western reef heron

The Indian pond heron I had seen two weeks ago but missed last week was seen again. 

Indian pond heron

The wheatear passage I had pick up on at other desert locations was in evidence here too.

pied wheatear

However unlike elsewhere it wasn't the pied wheatear that caught my attention but the northern wheatear.

first male northern wheatear

There were three and all were clustered in the same part of a field. This not a common bird in Oman. Indeed the two males were the first ones I have seen in the 19 months that I have been here.

second male northern wheatear

Some tawny pipit are still lingering from the winter.

tawny pipit

However in another sign of passage, there was a willow warbler out in the open on a pivot bar.

willow warbler 1

This was the first willow warbler I have seen this spring.

willow warbler 2

The larks were inspected closely as ever. The rare and nomadic Dunn's lark is occasionally reported here and it is a nemesis bird for me.

crested lark

There are always black-crowned sparrow lark and crested lark on the farm.

black-crowned sparrow lark

Hoopoe lark are often also seen but most especially in spring when I suspect they move in from more remote locations.

There is a view that many of the Dunn's lark reported at the farms are dubious and I have much sympathy with this view. A female black-crowned sparrow lark is the confusion species.

An observation of my own at Dowkah is a case in point. It was one of the last birds seen and was at the edge of the farm as I walked back to the car. It was not with any other black-crowned sparrow lark.

lark 1

You can see the bill is much bigger than average.

lark 2

It has dark streaks on the head which is feature shared by both birds.

lark 3

The median coverts have dark centres in the sparrow lark but not in a Dunn's lark. It is not clear whether the wind has caught these coverts or whether they are genuinely dark.

From the bottom picture I could see it had light streaking on the back too. This is normally very weak in a sparrow lark and a little stronger in a Dunn's lark.

lark 4

Yet there is no sign of the strong and quite broad light coloured eye ring expected on a Dunn's lark and the overall colouration is more earthy rather than the  buff-rufous expected. The bill is not obviously pinkish either.

It is concluded it is a female black-crowned sparrow lark in worn plumage and an abnormally larger bill. Though it doesn't look a very good fit. I can't claim it as a Dunn's lark but I can see why this might happen with similar birds.

Scrub land south of Ain Razat

I moved away from Ayn Razat in the early afternoon on Friday to look for some different habitat.

I went down the hill into some scrub land with less bushes and greenery. The move paid off. The birds changed and I added 3 more to my growing Oman list.

The most common bird was still probably laughing dove. Nevertheless its support cast was quite different.

As might have been expected there were more larks.

male black crowned sparrow lark

Although crested lark was the main lark, I did come across my first black crowned sparrow lark since moving to Oman to work.

crested lark

Arguably cinnamon breasted bunting was the second most common bird. Without major competition from house sparrow in this part of Oman it seems to thrive in a wide variety of habitats.

cinnamon breasted bunting

White spectacled bulbul  and Ruepell's weaver were only seen in the more bushy areas.

white spectacled bulbul

The main migrants observed were once again rufous bush robin and Turkestan shrike.  However in one large tree next to a water channel and with many weavers nests as well as several other species jumping (notably Tristram's starting and blackstart) I spied two willow warbler.

willow warbler

This was one of the additions to my country list.

little green bee-eater

As I headed back at the end I saw another rufous bush robin and the first little green bee-eater (two) and  Turkestan shrike of the day.

Then I heard this screeching noise over head. It was a common kestrel trying to mob an eagle. I had reacted quite late and only managed two pictures but it was enough.

Bonelli's eagle

It was positively identified as a Bonelli's eagle on BirdForum. Indeed it is an a bird which is shedding its last few immature feathers before having a complete set of adult feathers. It's also a lifer for me.

female common kestrel

One of my last sights before finishing for the day was the common kestrel, which had alerted me to looking up in the air, resting on a bush.

The walk home in Riyadh

Not only has most of the university farm on the way to work now been dismantled but also getting into the remaining gardens requires a big detour to avoid trenches and other construction.

Nevertheless on three occasions in the past two weeks I have made the detour on the way home.

There have been a few passage birds making the visits worthwhile.

spotted flycatcher on a  metal sign

On Wednesday I came across a spotted flycatcher which was my first this spring.

same spotted flycatcher on branch

It allowed close access which I put down to tiredness rather than tameness.

willow warbler

The same afternoon I saw two willow warbler. Again these were my first this spring.

second willow warbler

The chiffchaff I had been seeing all winter in this place had gone. Quite typically for the Riyadh area there is hardly any overlap in the period when both are around in spring.

wryneck

On Sunday I observed yet another wryneck.  There are so common in the Riyadh area in both passage seasons and also a few in winter.

wryneck from another angle

A couple of days earlier I found a female northern wheatear on my walk but actually it was next to the university car park rather than at the farm.

female northern wheatear

Female northern wheatear are quite difficult to separate from Isabelline wheatear and many people think individuals are the latter. However on the position of the supercilum alone this is a northern wheatear. Isabelline wheatear never have this strong a supercilium behind the eye.

Beirut's corniche

Last Thursday I took a gentle birding walk down the corniche in Beirut while a friend I was visiting was working.

The birding wasn't fantastic but I felt privileged to bird in a place which many people consider off-limits currently.

first winter stonechat

I only counted 12 species but this started my Lebanese list.  Apart from the expected house sparrow and rock dove (pigeon), the most common bird in the more natural places was stonechat. 

There was a mix of European and Siberian stonechat. I had to take extra care not to misidentify some female and especially Siberian stonechat which have a strong supercilium and weak collar like a whinchat. The throat on the stonechat is always grey black whereas in a whinchat it is brown or red brown. Hence the bird above is a stonechat and probably a Siberian stonechat. I did however see a couple of genuine whinchat there too.

"Pigeon rocks"

"Pigeon rocks" is the aptly named rocks which divide the corniche in half.  I started out by walking north from there. 

Stonechat

Unfortunately near here, on a natural piece of the sea front,  I saw two hunters kill a passerine right in front of me. This was a stark reminder as why Lebanon is such a difficult place for birds and why I struggled to see many along the corniche. They were so scared of people. 

Indeed I didn't see a single gull or wader anywhere along the sea front.

Nevertheless, in this area, I did see a northern wheatear and surprisingly a pair of common kingfisher. Yellow vented bulbul made quick appearances and graceful prinia were everywhere among the natural scrub. They were heard a lot more than they were seen.

laughing dove

On the corniche walkway itself there were house sparrow, laughing dove and common myna.

common myna

Beirut along with Istanbul are the only places on the Mediterranean where you can see common myna. This was a fact I dint know until I saw them and looked the information up.

the beach at Beirut

There are very few sandy beaches in northern and central Lebanon. I have no idea about the south as it wasn't visited. The biggest beach we met was in Beirut itself and next to it is some natural scrub. This is all south of "pigeon rocks" and was visited after a late lunch in the second part of my walk on the corniche. 

willow warbler

Very similar birds were there as were on the northern walk though there were also three willow warbler seen.

first year willow warbler

One of the three (which kept together by the way) was one of those confusing yellow first year birds but with darkish legs. Apart from the leg colour it was in every way a willow warbler and that's what I have ended up identifying it as. 

white wagtail

The final addition to my species list was white wagtail. A single was seen near where a treated effluent stream meets the sea. I thought it strange that this type of stream should be so close to the beach! Nevertheless I'm sure it helps diversify the bird life.

My final list was:

Rock dove
Laughing dove
Common kingfisher
Yellow vented bulbul
Graceful prinia
Willow warbler
Common myna
Stonechat
Whinchat
Northern wheatear
White wagtail
House sparrow

Warbler windfall

One of the consequences of Wednesday evening's rain was a very large landfall of willow warbler. On Thursday, at al Hayer, there were just about everywhere, in the bushes and the fields.

willow warbler at al Hayer

The highest density of willow warbler were in the tamarisk and other bushes near the water. I spent some time there on Thursday morning watching them. 

bushes near the water with so many willow warbler

It was the easy photography since there were so many exposing themselves in their search for food. 

second view of the same willow warbler

Quite a few of the willow warbler were grey birds with very little yellow. These are apparently characteristic of birds from northern Europe.

grey-looking willow warbler

These birds looked particularly strange to me when I saw a group of four on a pivot arm in a fodder field. I didn't know what they were. 

chiffchaff

This chiffchaff was with the willow warbler on the pivot arm. It also had a different characteristic from most other chiffchaff. It was one of those with some streaking on its breast. A photo of one of these type is appearing in a future blog!

reed beds at al Hayer

It wasn't just the trees and bushes which were heaving with warblers. The reed beds near-by were too.

two reed warbler

It is entirely possible that the "local" reed warbler were  supplemented by passage birds making life a bit crowded in the reeds. certainly it looked that way because I got my first photos ever of reed warbler as they spilled out on the edge of the reeds.

reed warbler

After taking advice the above bird is probably a reed warbler too. It was photographed as part of a pair very near the first couple. Indeed it might be one of the same birds. Having not had much chance to actually see reed warbler in my birding career, I must admit I hadn't realised how different they can look from different angles.