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!!