Coucal Chasing!

I wake up bleary eyed, the taste of alcohol still alive and well in my mouth from last night’s revelry at our supposedly posh hotel! A quick, cool shower helps to wake me up, as does a Starbucks latte from the 24 hour mall next door. I’m being picked up and driven south to Faiyoum to meet local guide Ahmed Mansour and make my way outside the hotel at the appointed time of 4am. There are several security guards looking at me a bit perplexed but none of them stop me. Tourists are well protected in Egypt, sometimes it looks a little overbearing but they are here for our safety and I don’t have a problem with them so far. If you pick a hotel too close to an embassy, then the hotel security will ask you some questions about your optics, and that could well cause problems. Every hotel has security scanners in, but I simply walk around them here!

Anyway, I find myself speeding through the relatively quiet Cairo streets in the early hours (4am to be precise). Our route running parallel to the Nile… passing silhouetted pyramids at Giza… and continuing on into the desert. Sleep beckons and I drift off despite the large amounts of Starbucks caffeine coursing through my veins and we eventually reach Faiyoum at 6.15am where we meet Ahmed. 

He’s a jolly chap and is keen to get going and find Senegal Coucal, my main target here. He says they are easier in the spring and getting a little bit trickier this late in September! Uhho!! So we check roadside scrub and bushes at frequent intervals along a bery long straight road, with Ahmed doing a very good impersonation of the coucal’s call. The first few attempts draw a blank but I hear several White-throated Kingfishers calling around us. Shortly after we head away from Lake Qarun and follow a dirt track alongside a drainage ditch. We drive a few kilometres beside this waterway, seeing numerous Pied Kingfishers & Squacco Heron, a few Black-winged Kites and plenty of more common species, before turning around and driving back.

Black-winged Kite

Either side of us are olive tree orchards and scrub, which means plenty of cover to hide in for coucals… Another few minutes pass and then suddenly our driver spots a coucal in a palm tree and we stop. I jump out and put my bins on a pair of Senegal Coucal. Yes! A true Western Palearctic mega and one which you have to visit Egypt to see.  The drainage ditch is between us and the birds and they aren’t moving despite of Ahmed’s coucal imitation… But then behind us another coucal is spotted quite close to the track we are stood on and we both walk around and get close views but the bird is always obscured by branches…. Until it decides to fly up onto overhead power cables and there it is in all its glory, with clear blue skies behind. 

Senegal Coucal

I don’t normally like taking photos of birds on wires but what are you going to do? And I fire off shot after shot, way too many really and I know I won’t be editing many of them tonight! This bird then flies to a distant palm tree and then another bird appears and flies up onto a mini pylon. Again not the photo I want, so we walk over to the palm tree and that bird skulks behind foliage. But I’m happy and walk back towards the car but pause when yet another coucal begins calling from a small palm tree right beside me, and as I walk around to  get better light on the subject it drops down into some sort of crop field. 

Senegal Coucal in its natural habitat

So I wait a while and another bird appears on some tall stalks – and I think these are obviously the original pair we first spotted. And one bird flies up onto a different mini pylon and the other bird hops up onto a tall stem and also begins calling. This is the pose I wanted and in a much more natural setting and again I fire off numerous shots, hoping my settings are ok… They sort of are ok but it’s not until I return to my hotel room later this afternoon will I realise I haven’t been shooting in RAW. Idiot! 

And they also seem to like vegetation too!

Anyway, I couldn’t have wished for better with these coucals, so we drive on and come across a pair of Senegal Thick-knees beside the track. But they fly off without giving me a chance of a record shot, so I have to make do with a close African Green Bee-eater posing right next to the car just a short way further along the same track. Three WP targets in the bag before 8am baby!

 

African Green Bee-eater

There’s more bee-eaters and thick-knees to follow, flocks of Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters flying around the clear blue sky, Common Bulbuls are everywhere, and the odd Eurasian Hoopoe appears. The 4th target, Indian Silverbill is next up and gives decent views from the car but is all too brief. And so we set off back towards the lake shore and some marshes where I’m hoping for Greater Painted Snipe. 

The snipe marsh

At the first stop beside a reedbed with a small pond at least 2 Marsh Sandpipers are present, along with a Ruff & Green Sandpiper. Getting out of the car, everything flies off, including a male Greater Painted Snipe that jumps up from just a few metres away and shoots away to the far side of the marsh. Amazing! 

Senegal Thick-knee

Over the next hour or so we check out more marshy areas without seeing any more snipe but do find a pair of Senegal Thick-knees in some waste ground and get the best views of this species today. Moving on to the lake there’s many Little Stints feeding in company with 100+ Pied Avocets, along with some other common shorebirds and a flock of Slender-billed Gulls. And that is pretty much it for today. I did get a brief view of a tiny passerine flying away over the reedbed that could well have been an avadavat but I just couldn’t nail it. So with the temperature rising I have a quick coffee and omelette at a nearby hotel before heading back to Cairo in the early afternoon and have plenty of time to chill.

And to admire the extremely striking sunset over Cairo, beer in hand, from our balcony. It's looking rather like a scene from The Mummy!