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.