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!