Sparrows and Dramalama

 Fantastic to have a later start at 6am, but Al Saad Lake is only 25 minutes from the hotel in downtown Abu Arish, the swanky 'noisy neighbour' to Jizan. Once at the lake we decided we wanted to spend an hour scanning from the viewpoint before going in search of the tricky,elusive & nomadic Arabian Golden Sparrow. Well, it was fantastic to see 4 Wire-tailed Swallows still here, after being found last month when it was a new bird for Saudi Arabia. 

Wire-tailed Swallows (phonescoped)

There were many birds here and it was all very exciting with a flock of Whiskered and White-winged Terns, Glossy Ibis, Purple Heron, Yellow-billed Egret, 50+ Black-crowned Night-Herons, Nile Valley Sunbirds and lots of other commoner species. Our only wildfowl were here too with Northern Pintail and Shoveler.

The we drove to a few sites around Abu Arish searching the the sparrow....... nothing. And it wasn't looking too promising tbh. After calling back in to the hotel for breakfast that Mrs B had prepared we set off to check more sparrow sites (still without any joy) before heading to the farm fields of Sabya. Here we had Singing Bushlark and discovered a puddle with several races of Western Yellow Wagtail present: a stunning lutea, thunbergi, beema and flava. 

Western Yellow Wagtail (beema)

Western Yellow Wagtail (lutea)

Western Yellow Wagtail (lutea & thunbergi)

There was also Black-winged Kite, Steppe Eagle and Long-legged Buzzard, as well as several Black Bush-Robins. But no sparrow. So time for a change and we drove 30 mins north to Either Mangroves, where the 'Mangrove' Reed Warbler duly obliged after a bit of wading to get closer to the mangroves with a slow incoming tide, and also seeing Clamarous Reed Warbler and a Little Bittern. Plenty of shorebirds were around the mudflats including some cracking Broad-billed Sandpipers, Tibetan Sandplovers, Terek Sandpipers and more. Over in the park migrants were found such as Eurasian Wryneck, Isabelline Wheatear, Common Chiffchaff and Red-backed Shrike... 

It was then that we met Martin Kennewell and his group from BirdTour Asia who had earlier in the day found a colony of Arabian Golden Sparrows. THE SPARROW!! They duly gave us the location and we hotfooted it an hour or so north where we found the sparrow right beside the road where we parked. And we spent a good hour watching and taking photos of these awesome birds. there were several nests and maybe 30 or so individuals coming and going, and a few seemed to be drinking sap leaking from one of the acacias. 

The amazing Arabian Golden Sparrow

What a relief this was and we were still celebrating on the 90 minute drive down to Jizan.

it was then that things got interesting.... A huge storm hit us, starting with high winds and a massive sandstorm that reduced visibility to just a few metres. it was scary and we trundled along at 30kph for a long time. And then it started raining very heavily. Lovely! Anyway, the fuel gauge needle had been on red for a good while and we hadn't passed any gas stations until, finally, we reached one, Phew! Just in time. But they were closing so we had to continue! The storm had eased by now and we reached another gas station and thankfully they were open and we got a full tank. The only thing was it seemed to be one of the few gas stations in Saudi that didn't take credit cards... and none of us had any cash! What!!? Fortunately we could change US dollars in the supermarket here (thanks Stefan!) and we were on hour way, just another 15 minutes drive to our apartments in glitzy Jizan. What A day!!

Fantastic Farasan Islands

 It hurt waking up so early this morning. My alarm sounded like Big Ben chiming inside my head at 03:30am and I fumbled around the apartment trying to figure out where my gear was. Clothes on, bins, scope, camera, batteries, baseball cap, car keys, sandwiches, flasks of hot water.... I did boil the kettle right? Think, i've got everything then realise i've left the milk in the fridge.....! Eventually everything came together and the 5 of us left at 4am, reaching the port at 4:50am. We weren't totally sure as to the procedure but it all worked out and we boarded eventually, after the car was x-rayed via a large truck carrying an x-ray machine.... Yeah i know! So we got some seats by the windows on the right hand side of the ship, with some of us standing to look out of the one window that was reasonably clean and you could see out of. Couldn't go to the left side of the ferry as that was female only!!! The ferry left a little later than the scheduled 7am and we were off. 

Pretty quickly we were seeing numerous terns flying by, with several large flocks. Most of them seemed to be White-cheeked, but the odd Lesser Crested and Greater Crested Terns joined in. And the boobies..... Man, there were stacks of them, We passed numerous buoys with 4,5,6,7 Brown Boobies on them and we must had seen several hundred by the time we reached the port on Farasan Island. Upon arrival our boat contact was waiting for us and took us to the nearby marina, after some more formalities logging in our passports. Anyway, eventually 2 Brits, 1 Dutch and 2 Swedes boarded a nice little boat in the soaring heat and we were off. Had Sooty Falcon arrived yet? They should have, we hoped and with fingers and everything crossed we started cruising around the first couple of islets, stopping to get some really nice close-ups of Brown Booby and a Bridled Tern.

Bridled Tern

Brown Booby

It was fantastic to get so close to these birds, but we had one eye falcon-watching and we carried on around the small, rocky island. Nothing. we just started to leave to head over to another larger group of islands when a rocket-propelled Sooty Falcon shot across our bow and up into the sky. Wow! Just then, another Sooty Falcon appeared and the pair soared around above us in the clear blue sky and circled, swooped, and gave us the full range of their flying skills for what must have been a good 10 minutes.

The incredible Sooty Falcon....

We had a fantastic time watching this dashing species and what a relief it was. High-fives all round and smiling faces. Result! We then spent the next 3 hours cruising around the islands and mangroves enjoying the experience. And boy there were lots of seabirds and we filled our boots with numerous photos as we sailed up close to them.....

Having fun on the water...

A typical Farasan Scene

We also cruised along the mangroves...

Species such as Bridled and White-cheeked Terns were abundant, Lesser Crested and Greater Crested Terns less so, Brown Booby was everywhere, White-eyed Gulls were on most islets and the odd Common Noddy was also present. 

Bridled Tern

Brown Booby

Brown Booby & White-eyed Gull

Brown Booby

Lesser Crested Tern

More seabirds....

White-cheeked Terns

White-eyed & Sooty Gull

White-eyed Gull mobbing a Brown Booby

White-eyed Gulls

Sailing in to one picturesque bay we found a flock of Crab-Plovers....

Crab-Plovers

And as we neared the marina a Goliath Heron was an unexpected bonus, stood next to a Pink-backed Pelican.

Goliath Heron & Pink-backed Pelican

But boy it was hot - like 48 degrees Celsius hot, so I wasn't sad to get back on the ferry and return to Jizan. An hour and a half later we were back on the mainland and returned to our apart-hotel for dinner and a well deserved rest. What a day!

Abha to the Coast

 Raidah Preserve is a very interesting site to visit.... Just for the extremely hair-raising drive down the steepest drivable tarmac road in the world and the return journey up is something else. Our journey down had a nice background of burning brakes and we had to stop half way down to let them cool off, but that happened to be at a spot for Black-crowned Tchagra, really our main target bird here as it's a potential split (possibly, maybe, who knows...?)  Yet Raidah Preserve is full of birds and at 5.30am we were driving down the precipitous road, dodging Arabian Partridges along the way that simply wanted to walk out right in front of the car.

Anyway, we eventually found a tchagra but not everyone got on it, but there were some really great birds here such as African Grey Hornbill, Dusky Turtle Dove, White-throated and Arabian Green Bee-eaters, 2 Shikra, Grey-headed Kingfisher, Arabian Sunbird, more babblers, more Blackcaps, more Willow Warblers etc etc.

Shikra

African Grey Hornbill - we saw 3 pairs at Raidah Preserve

We returned to the hotel in Abha, loaded up and drove 90 minutes to an area 50kms north of Jizan to where a colony of Arabian Golden Sarrows had been present last month,. Disappointingly, the colony was deserted, but a search of the area revealed European Nightjar, Black Scrub Robin, Nile Valley Sunbird, and at some pools Red-throated Pipit, several Namaqua Doves, and other common species.

It was roughly an hour's drive south to Jizan in order to purchase tomorrow's ferry ticket to the Farasan Islands, which we made with 15 minutes to spare before the office closed! And then we hit McDonalds for a very late lunch and some cool air, as the temperature had soared to 48 degrees celsius! We reluctantly left here and drove up to North Corniche Park. Here the road runs alongside the Red Sea and there's plenty of parking. The tide seemed to be almost in but there was one area of exposed mudflats still uncovered and we were in wader heaven with 10+ Broad-billed Sandpipers, 37 Crab-Plovers, and a fine selection  of other shorebirds such as many breeding plumaged Curlew Sandpipers, Tibetan Sandplovers, Little Stints and many commoner species. There was also a Gull-billed Tern, Caspian Tern, several Little Terns, an Osprey, some Pink-backed Pelicans and more. 

Always love seeing Crab-Plovers...

Broad-billed Sandpiper

At one point a couple of Broad-billed Sandpipers flew in and landed directly below us and we ended up with a pair of Crab-Plovers feeding really, really close in front of us with the setting sun creating some magical lighting to end another action-packed day in Saudi Arabia.

Heading to Abha, partridge, serin & pizza!

 Heading out at 6am we had a couple of hours to find Arabian Partridge before breakfast and departing for Abha. Our first stop drew a blank, so we returned to Wadi Dana and scanned from a different location resulting in decent scope views of Philby's Partridge - it's such a stunning bird but ' not the drone we were looking for...' (get the Star Wars analogy?). Anyway, we drove around to Wadi Al Gathal and immediately had the most co-operative and inquisitive Asir Magpie that stalked us the entire time we were here, calling repeatedly. 

A true Saudi Arabian endemic - Asir Magpie

The sound after an hour's continuous calling really was like nails down a chalkboard! Anyway, eventually we heard Arabian Partridge in the distance and hiked down lower into the wadi. It was at this point that a really loud local bird photographer approached us and scared the partridges into silence. Apparently he could show us Asir Magpie if we wished, pointedly ignoring the raucous calling of a magpie about 15 feet away from me! Once pleasantries were exchanged, along with phone numbers we continued searching for the elusive partridge. Sure enough, after a lengthy scan Keith spotted a partridge on the skyline and there it was, Arabian Partridge looking stunning in the mighty Swarovski scope. In fact there were 3 of them and we watched them for quite a while, being really appreciative of our success after a tense morning's battle. 

A confiding Tristram's Starling from this morning

After breakfast back at the hotel we drove just under an hour and a half to Abha, and called into a supermarket to buy items for our picnic lunch. We survived more or less unscathed from some of the craziest driving it's been my misfortune to experience by the local population and finally turned off the highway onto more sedate roads where people drove a little slower and didn't seem intent on killing us! We ate lunch in the shade of some trees and walked around looking for migrants, the best of which was a Thrush Nightingale skulking in the biggest bush around, but there were also quite a few Common Redstarts, Willow Warblers, Blackcaps and at least 2 Marsh Warblers.

Leaving here it was just a few minutes to get to the rocky Habala plateau where it took maybe 30 seconds to nail Rufous-capped Lark, with one song-flighting right above our heads. We had it on the deck a little later as well and had good views.

Rufous-capped Lark

Our next target was Buff-breasted Wheatear and we pulled up at the gate of my spot but they were locked. Oh no! Disaster! But as I climbed up to look over the wall, I spotted one perched on a mound of earth and with a bit of judicious footholds on the wall everyone managed views of it. But there were no worries as another appeared behind us, and then a short while later another pair were found in a field and everyone enjoyed great scope views. 

Great scenery here looking from the edge of the escarpment

Our final target of the day was Yemen Serin, a very tricky bird I think in Saudi. Well, there's a tale about how we discovered a flock of over 30 birds feeding in the same field as the wheatears were in. But we didn't find the flock until much later, after Keith & Bart said they'd observed a few serin sp. feeding in bushes beside the road. We decided to check out the flock of serins a little later and after a confusing spell of initially seeing some with dark streaked crowns and malar stripes, we only saw paler birds without malars. 

Not bad for a phonescoped Yemen Serin

After a while it was apparent that we were seeing juveniles as well as adults, and add to the mix a couple of Arabian Serins feeding quietly nearby, it took us a while to work out what was going on. But my, oh my, such a big flock of Yemen Serins was totally unexpected. I've only seen small groups in Oman, so to see such a number was pretty exciting. And that was our day. Dinner back in Abha, was at a nice Italian restaurant next to the hotel. Pizza baby!