Kararah lake area

If you travel out of Riyadh on the Mecca road, its not too long, 30 kilometres or so, before you see brown recreational road signs to Kararah lake.

Lou Regensmorter, first time birder George Darley-Doran, and I headed out that way on Thursday morning. 

Eastern mourning wheatear

Of course we knew the "lake" and the near-by "waterfall" would probably only have water directly after the infrequent rain of these parts. And so it proved, the lake was dry and we never found a waterfall. Nevertheless we calculated that the area must have a relatively high water table within the desert area and this also proved true.

There was a farm with a few accessible fields.

field in the desert

The most common bird was crested lark which only really flocks in mid winter and that's what it was doing on our visit. Large flocks of them were all over both the fields we viewed. A pair of hoopoe were perched on one of the pivots.

Collared dove and laughing dove were also numerous. Pale rock martin were hawking for insects over both fields. The wheatear family were represented by wintering desert wheatear and  mourning wheatear. The latter was more common.

desert wheatear

House sparrow were found near the outhouses as would be expected. Two other birds in the neighbourhood were desert lark and three little green bee-eater.

A single kestrel was seen hovering over the second pivot field and that was the only bird of prey seen for the first hour but that all changed as the air got warmer and the morning wore on.

adult steppe eagle

At first we saw a single adult steppe eagle over the field and then a juvenile as we made our way back towards the main road.

juvenile steppe eagle

On the way, we met a large flock of pallid swift moving in the other direction. I thought it was a strange sight to see what looked like a passage group. The local pallid swift are resident but these looked like they were on the move. It reminded me of Tripoli, Libya when I observed they left only between mid November and early February.  In fact their winter away was so short that the Collins guide to European and birds erroneously maps them as resident. 

one of 15 steppe eagle

Minutes later we came across an entirely different type of flock. 15 steppe eagle were circling around the area near the dry lake. It was nearly 10 am and the air was getting warmer. One idea we have is that they had arisen from a local roost and took to the air with the rising temperatures.  Either way it was quite a sight.

Having prised ourselves away from such a large group (for central Arabia) of eagles, we headed back towards Riyadh before turning north, staying below the Tuwaiq escarpment but following it from the plain below. We were searching, among other birds, once again for those elusive hooded wheatear and  Egyptian vulture. These birds are apparently seen albeit very rarely near the western edge of the Tuwaiq escarpment and we have spend a lot of time in the past few weeks looking for them with no success. 

In my opinion, what we actually saw was better still. I'll explain in the next blog.

Thumamah escarpment

For the second half of last Thursday's birding trip, Lou Regensmorter and I ventured up to the top of the Tuwaiq escarpment north of Riyadh. In part we were looking for the elusive hooded wheatear which is one of my nemesis birds. In part this was a speculative look at a potentially new birding place.

the view from the top of Tuwaiq escarpment

There were large numbers of black and white wheatears about. However they were all either Eastern mourning wheatear or more commonly white crowned wheatear.

Eastern mourning wheatear

We begin to speculate whether hooded wheatear can co-exist with white crowned wheatear. The latter bird is very territorial in the breeding season and can be aggressive even towards birds as big as laughing dove.

Eastern mourning wheatear flies off

Eastern mourning wheatear is only a winter visitor (from Iraq and neighbouring areas) and was being tolerated by the white crowned wheatear.

Other birds of note at the top of the escarpment were crested lark and desert lark. Spanish sparrow and white eared bulbul were also present in the bushes and trees in the plateau's shallow wadis.

long legged buzzard

There was also a long shot that we would see Egyptian vulture which has historically been sighted here. Now there is some question whether they are here any longer. Instead the birds of prey riding the thermals over the slopes turned out to be long legged buzzard. 

Another eastern imperial eagle

On our travels from Rhawdat Khuriam to the escarpment we spotted a second Eastern Imperial eagle.  And at the end of the day just before sunset we went down off the escarpment to the bottom where we were treated to a mad scramble up the hill by a couple of sand partridge.

Given that our permission to visit a particular diary farm never came through, Lou and I will probably be doing some more speculative birding again tomorrow.

Visits to other parts of Saudi Arabia are in train too.

The road to Dirab

Yesterday, Clive Temple and I visited the farming community of Dirab which is a recommended birding venue on fatbirder.com


We took the back road from Al Hayer to Dirab but instead of birding the farms, we birded a couple of refuse sites!


I will explain why this happened.


It all started out according to plan. As we drove along the back road, we stopped to observe a flock of brown necked raven which had gathered at a  picnicking site with left over refuse. This proved to be a harbinger for the day.

black kite near Dirab

Our next stop, a few kilometres along the road was when Clive spotted several black kite at a large farm. 

As we headed further west, near Dirab, I spotted a white crowned wheatear at a quite small refuse site.  This was my first sighting of this bird in Saudi Arabia. 

young white crowned wheatear

When we stopped to look we found at least one adult and one young white crowned wheatear. However the site had much more than this.

desert lark

The refuse site was by the side of the road with an escarpment behind it. It is clearly ideal territory for desert lark. The one above was very confiding. 

blackstart

There was also a pair of blackstart at the site.

one of the hoopoe

The most abundant bird at the refuse site however was hoopoe. There were at least 8 present. This is a wintering group because resident birds hold a territory.  They were more flighty than the other birds. When they felt threatened they flew part way up the escarpment, returning when calmed. 

white wagtail

At least one white wagtail and two blue rock thrush were also present. 

blue rock thrush

The blue rock thrush above is not one of those seen at the first refuse site. Actually we saw yet another on a wall by the side of the road on the return journey towards Al Hayer. This proved easier to photograph.

To finish the roll call of birds at the site, there were several little green bee-eater and one desert wheatear. 

Travelling west from the refuse site, we found that the farms in Dirab were generally not accessible to the public unlike those south of Al Hayer which I normally visit. So we headed back east on the same back road that we had come out on.

We found that about 6 kilometres east of the first refuse site that there was another which we had missed on the way out. This was speculatively birded since the first site had been so successful.

Like the previous refuse site, it too had a couple of white crowned wheatear and blackstart. This time there was also a mobile flock of house sparrow and another flock of white cheeked bulbul darting around near-by trees and bushes. 

mourning wheatear

More excitedly, this second  refuse site was home to a mourning wheatear. Apparently this is only a winter visitor to central Arabia probably through dispersal from north west Saudi Arabia.

desert lesser whitethroat

The second site also differed from the first site by desert lesser whitethroat encouraged to be there by the more abundant natural vegetation (even though my picture shows one in a man made situation!)

Before finishing my comments on the refuse sites, I must return to the black kite seen at the beginning of the day. Near the second site, extremely high in the air was one of the black kite soaring with a young imperial eagle which completely dwarfed it.

Heading further east near the town of Al hayer, we crossed the Riyadh river at a stretch of the river that I haven't birded before. This was brief stop but long enough to see a wintering wryneck in a bare tree. 

grey heron at the bridge crossing the Riyadh river

The wryneck was an unexpected bird to see ending a day where we birded unexpected places.

Wadi Dana - the wheatears

My Eid break away from Libya was in Jordan. At Wadi Dana, Jordan I was shown a guide book on the fauna of Jordan. It has quite a big section on birds. It says the most common wheatear at Wadi Dana is hooded wheatear which is apparently resident. This had appeal to me because a hooded wheatear would have been a "lifer" for me (first sighting in the wild of a new bird).

I was further told that "wheatears" could be seen if you walk down into the wadi from Dana village (1200 metres).


Well, I made a very long walk down into the wadi and saw many birds (to be blogged on later days) but no hooded wheatear. 


The first relative of the wheatear family I saw was blackstart.  This made me happy because it was a "lifer".  Its not recorded in Libya but I have high hopes it is in the Tibesti mountains and Uweinat in the far south of Libya which have pretty well not been birded by anyone. It is recorded in Chadian Tibesti very close to these areas. So if I can get down there at least I know what to look for!

blackstart, Wadi Dana

I did see two other wheatears on the way down to the wadi at about 600 metres. The first one was a female finch's wheatear which I knew well from my time in Azerbaijan.

mourning wheatear, Wadi Dana

The second bird was a mourning wheatear.  This bird is closely related to the maghreb wheatear which I know in Libya. However this was another "lifer" for me.

male kurdish wheatear, above Wadi Dana

However it was the next day on a different walk that I saw my most exciting new wheatear (another "lifer"). I was retuning from a visit to the next valley on a high road above Dana village. I looked up and saw a wheatear at about 1300 metres.

It was a male kurdish wheatear. It has a characteristic black then white then red pattern from the tip of its tail upwards. The only possible confusion species is a red-rumped wheatear which I know very well from Libya and is quite different really -not least with head pattern, tail pattern and height of habitat!

second shot of a male kurdish wheatear, above Wadi Dana

From the map in Collins guide Wadi Dana looks to be at the far western side of the corridor of its migration route to the red sea coast.However, you have to wonder if this bird is not already wintering. It looks like there may still be some open questions in western palearctic countries other than Libya!