Abu Simbel

Out before first light and heading 40 minutes to an area that has been good for Kittlitz’s Plover this year. A barely discernible old tarmac road leads 10 kms out into the middle of nowhere, the ‘road’ covered in many places by sand. I’m wishing I had the SUV I’d booked right about now! 

Yep, definitely a road here somewhere....

Still, I’m able to negotiate my way across the desert and the end of the road takes me to the shores of Lake Nasser. As soon as I arrive I can see several large white birds at the water’s edge and sure enough, they are Yellow-billed Storks…. One of my most wanted Western Palearctic ticks and there’s four of them! 

Lake Nasser

Yellow-billed Stork

I fire off a few shots from the safety of my air-conditioned car before getting out into the heat. The birds seem wary and I walk at a tangent to get the sun behind me but the birds stir and look even more agitated so I walk away from them and begin scanning the shoreline for any plovers and sure enough, there’s plenty of plovers. Lots and lots of Common Ringed Plovers, a few Little Ringed Plovers, Little Stints, Marsh Sandpiper and 2 Greater Sand Plovers. But no Kittlitz’s Plovers. 

Yellow-billed Storks

Walking further parallel to the shoreline reveals more of the same, so I decide to change tact and retrace my steps back to the car. The storks are still in attendance and I head around to the next bay, but there’s no KP’s here apparently. This is meant to be THE spot so I hang around for a while and just enjoy the scene around me and get rewarded with 2 Reed Cormorants fishing out on the lake behind the storks. Wow! A little distant but there they are…! Get in! And I also stumble across a group of 7 Cream-coloured Coursers here as well.

Reed Cormorants

Always nice to see Cream-coloured Courser

I jump back in the car and retrace my steps along that horrid road to another part of the lake. This requires a longer walk to reach the lake and as it’s now 9am, the temperature has soared to 41 °C. Along the shoreline I run the gauntlet of Spur-winged Lapwings and Black-winged Stilts standing on alert. There’s a few stints and Common Ringed Plovers around and they take flight when the lapwings start calling. Just a little further along I see a few small shorebirds but they are also stints…. Until another bird appears from behind some short vegetation and it has a noticeable supercilium. Wow, it’s a Kittlitz’s Plover.

 

It's the best I could do with the plover...

Pure elation sets in and I fire off a few shots but in the haze they won’t come out well I know.  I sit down on the dried mud and hope the bird comes closer but it doesn’t, so after maybe 20 minutes the bird gets spooked by what looked like a Sooty Falcon flying by but I didn’t get enough on it to be sure. Shall I go back to the car or keep looking….? I’m enjoying the birding so keep on walking around to the next bay, where amazingly I stumble upon a roosting group of Kittlitz’s Plovers in a small marshy area. 

That's a lot of Kittlitz's Plovers..!!

There’s a deep water-filled channel between me and the birds, who are about 40m away so I crouch down as I don’t want to spook them. First, I count 8, then scan again and count 12, and again I count 16. Unbelievable, and there’s a couple of spanking summer-plumage birds here as well. It’s impossible to get decent photos in the heat haze so I leave but make one last scan and spot another lone Kittlitz’s out in the bay, making 17 in total. Wow again! So I leave them all in peace and the walk back to the car is long and hot but I don’t care. That’s 3 out of 6 targets seen so far.

More views of Lake Nasser

Buoyed by my success I decide to head over to the waxbill spot again and my luck is truly in as within a few minutes of my arrival a Village Weaver flies across in front of me. I watch it fly into a mid-distant fruiting palm tree and as I try and get closer I can see several weaver nests… They aren’t finished but look quite fresh yet I can’t spot any weavers amongst the throng of House Sparrows feeding on the fresh palm fruits. Still, it’s been quite a morning and by now it’s nearly midday, so I return to the resort for lunch, a siesta and then head over to Abu Simbel Temple for the last hour it’s open. And it’s a superb place and wonderful experience as this late in the day there’s hardly anyone there. In fact, this is a must-visit site and depending on your viewpoint, far exceeds the Pyramids & Sphinx in my opinion. 

Abu Simbel

Anyway, the sun has got to me by now and I’m shattered so retire to the pool for a dip and cold beer or three!

Change of Plans...

Wasn’t expecting to be driving down to Abu Simbel today, you see I’d learned that both of the roads to the Red Sea coast are closed. The only way to get to the coast is the road just north from Luxor, so I managed to change my hotel bookings and was now on my way to Abu Simbel. The downside is that I won’t have a guide as Ismael can’t make these new dates, so I’m on my own. So nothing new there!

Anyway, the road trip should take just over 3 hours and the first section is horrid, bumpy, uneven and I’m hating the fact we haven’t got an SUV. But all of a sudden we get onto a new road and speed south for a good couple hundred kilometres. Time passes quickly and once we get to about 70kms from Abu Simbel the road reverts to the normal awfulness. I think the road builders obviously got bored at this point! Anyway, we reach the Seti Abu Simbel Resort and everything is great. No hassle from the staff, no begging for tips… The rooms are lovely but I’m shattered and fall asleep on the bed. Waking with a start at 4.30pm I’m up and out in double-quick time and set off just 20 minutes to the Crimson-rumped Waxbill site. 

Boy it’s hot and there’s no waxbills or Village Weavers around, although an Eurasian Hoopoe, several close Clamorous Reed Warblers, and some martins flying around that confuse me as they look like Plain Martins… So I return to the hotel, tail between my legs, feeling a bit down and will make a plan for tomorrow…

Sunset at the resort...

Aswan

So yesterday we drove to Aswan and along the way had to pay a policeman to go through a security checkpoint! There was no apparent reason for it, as to this point the ‘highway’ had been very poor and there was no way I had been speeding. Initially he wanted 300 Egyptian Pounds (only about £5) just from me, but then he indicated that each of us should the same, and then I became annoyed and told him to go away and drove off!! The rest of the day was uneventful and we reached the Zen Wellness Resort in the mid afternoon. It’s a seemingly nice place, quite a way out of downtown Aswan and we had to take an electric buggy to our rooms, some distance away…. But it’s ok, with views of the Nile etc.

This morning, I had arranged a boat trip with Ismael Khalifa of Aswan Birding, so after a 6.30am pickup and 30 minute drive into Aswan, we boarded a boat and headed north up the Nile at first and then swung over to the west bank where a huge number of Squacco Herons, many Purple Herons and stacks of common species were present. 

I've never seen so many Squacco Herons in one place before.....

I was particularly hoping to get better views of Greater Painted Snipe, and I certainly did as we found a male preening in a marshy field beside the river, where I took some half decent photos.

 

Greater Painted Snipe was probably my most wanted WP tick on this trip

The early morning light was stunning and it proved to be a very nice few hours, with close Gull-billed Terns, many Ferruginous Ducks, Spotted Redshanks, Wood Sandpipers, Common Moorhens etc. On the riverbank we saw many African Green Bee-eaters, both Red-backed & Woodchat Shrikes, Brown-necked Raven, and a fine Black-winged Kite.

The Nile....

More Squacco Herons

The local race of Barn Swallow (savignii) has red underparts

There were so many Ferruginous Ducks on the Nile as well

Garganey were present in reasonable numbers as well

Gull-billed Tern

Spotted Redshanks had just started to pass through on migration

A few African Swamphens were always slightly obscured or had a reed stem or grass in front of them, until we had one bird right out in the open towards the end of the cruise. 

African Swamphen...... sadly lumped in Western Swamphen for the time being...

The Nile this morning 

As we sailed downriver we passed a flowering Acacia and found at least 3 Nile Valley Sunbirds (WP tick) feeding, and we followed this with a few close Senegal Thick-knees roosting in the shade on some large rocks mid-river. We moored up for a break and had some tea and biscuits, and this was where a Little Bittern flew by and a group of Red Avadavats(WP tick) flew over calling. 

Nile Valley Sunbird

Much better views of Senegal Thick-Knee today

So by now it was mid morning and time to head inland to search for Three-banded Plover, a few of which breed in Egypt. Driving for a good half an hour took us to some small pools in a shallow wadi where the birds have been hanging out, but most were dry. I had high hopes of seeing this much-wanted species but luck didn’t seem to be with us, as we were kicked out of the area by some surly army people and had to leave the area immediately! And that was that. I was feeling very annoyed right now and decided to return to the hotel early as we’d seen everything (bar the plover) that I wanted. Ismael proved to be an excellent guide and very knowledgeable about birdwatching in Egypt, and it was at this point that I discovered our planned route towards the Red Sea tomorrow was closed and we would have to make a massive detour of something like 10 hours to reach our next hotel. So I spent the afternoon frantically trying to rearrange our ‘holiday’ but this would mean I couldn’t meet up with Ismael again in Abu Simbel as we’d previously arranged and I feared this would seriously impact my chances of success….

Heading to Luxor

Bit of a rubbish day all round. The staff in this hotel come across as really arrogant and rude - I’ve never experienced it at this level before. So after my wife was conned out of some linen a few days ago at a store, we had a little confrontation with a receptionist who was totally out of order and aggressive. Amazing really. We even experienced a huge argument between staff at the breakfast buffet as well. So we couldn’t wait to leave Cairo and fly down to Luxor. 

Well, we left it quite late and basically make the gate with a just a few minutes to spare and are the last ones to board! That was after traversing 3 (yes 3) X-ray/security machines during the airport fiasco. And so it was that we take off 40 minutes late anyway and after a 1h 40mins flight touch down in Luxor just before 7pm. We meet the Sixt rental agent out in the car park (they don't have an office at the airport) and find out they’ve switched our SUV for a saloon car – an upgrade apparently….. No doubt it’s another scam and judging by the poor state of the roads I really wish we had the SUV I had pre-booked.

We head to the hotel, a good one along the Nile, traversing numerous speed bumps, evading even more horse & carts, motorbikes without their lights on, as well as people randomly walking out in front of us to cross the street. Just a note about Sixt - very rude on WhatsApp messages with constant “hello?” If I didn’t answer them immediately! So you see how it goes in Egypt.

The drive to the hotel only takes 25 minutes and is pretty slow going despite it being a 9km journey. Traffic is relatively light thank goodness and once at the hotel we find the staff to be amazingly friendly, polite, helpful and…. Well, normal. Such a contrast to the Cairo hotel staff.

Not a bad view from the balcony of our hotel room

The following morning I get up late but refreshed and we head over to Karnak Temple after breakfast, during which there were 4 Eurasian Hoopoes feeding on the well manicured lawn right next to us. The temple is pretty cool, despite one of the guards trying to con us out of some money because he pointed out a few things in the ruins around us! I tell you, everyone wants something from you here. On the walk in we are accosted by someone purporting to be a guide and wants to take us around, saying “don’t worry about the money”… and he wouldn’t leave us alone for ages despite repeated “no thank you’s from us”. Oh and let’s not forget the numerous market stall vendors hassling us to buy their tat! 

Karnak Temple

During the morning I get a WhatsApp message from Sixt Rental starting they had a report I’d been speeding at 176kmh yesterday, which apart from being utterly ridiculous there’s nowhere in the 9kms I drove from the airport to our hotel that would have been possible in the narrow, bumpy streets, with numerous speed humps, horse carts and mopeds without lights weeving erratically everywhere! So another scam and one I addressed with strong words and threats of the British Embassy.

After a break back at the hotel I drive 15 minutes downriver to Crocodile Island. Unbeknown to me this is a private island and I shouldn’t be here, but once across the bridge (where I have to leave the car’s driving license at a security checkpoint) I then realise the score here. The island is basically owned by the Jollie Ville (or something like that) Hotel and only for their clients to use. 

No way i'm going to see any snipe here...

Anyway, I walk around it pretending I am staying there and actually have an enjoyable couple of hours in the late afternoon. I am particularly hoping for better views of Greater Painted Snipe but the riversides are covered in tall grass and reeds and I can't find anywhere that a snipe would venture out onto. Still, I see at least 4 Masked Shrikes, many African Green Bee-eaters, 4 Senegal Thick-knees, several White-throated Kingfishers, lots of Pied Kingfishers, Clamorous Reed Warblers, Graceful Prinia, lots of Squacco Herons and a few African Swamphens, plus more commoner species......

 And then I'm escorted off the premises by security staff……! 

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!

The Great Pyramid of Giza & Sphinx

Well that was a short night or so it felt as we are picked up at midday by local tour guide Alfred. Everyone seems to know him and he proved to be a very articulate, knowledgeable and fun guy. We drive maybe half an hour to Giza and our date with one of the last remaining Wonders of the World - The Great Pyramid of Giza. I’d always been fascinated with ancient Egypt from a young age and was excited to be here today. Normally, I’m culturally shallow but this is up there with the Taj Mahal & Angkor Wat. 

The Great Pyramid of Giza

If you watch YouTube travelogs about this place, you’d be prepared like me for no end of hassle from beggars to street vendors attempting to sell you all sorts of tat. But that is no longer the case (mainly) as there’s a massive new entrance with a bus shuttle system that’s been in operation just for a few months and it is all very well organised. It’s a big site and there’s 5 stops along the way, but you can choose which ones you want to stop at. I was mesmerised by the whole thing and my first view of a pyramid as we drove to the site left me open mouthed. Am I really evolving? Anyway, with Alfred giving us his insight it was a very enjoyable couple of hours (even for me) and I took way too many photos on my iPhone. 

The incomparable Sphinx

Yes I'm really here....

The Sphinx was incredible too, the weather spot on, and Alfred’s stories left us wondering just how 4,500 years ago the ancients were able to make such geometric calculations and such enormous constructions.  I mean 100,000 workers were used in the making… maybe if Carlsberg did pyramids it would look something like this?

And that was it really. Back to the hotel by 5pm, food, cocktails, more food, wine etc etc… But I’m now looking forward to getting out birding tomorrow…..  

Getting to Egypt

A last minute change of plan sees me heading to Cairo with Mrs B, with an intention to check out the birding sites, meet some guides and have a stab at some really cool Western Palearctic megas! But first the airport and the main thing that scares most birders from visiting - getting your optics confiscated at the airport when you arrive. With that in mind I had arranged some help, and after getting our visas on arrival, which was ridiculously quick & easy, we are met by a local Mr Fixit at Baggage Claim and whisked out of the airport pretty quickly. No checks, no hassle, nothing! In fact it was one of the quickest journeys through an airport I have ever experienced. We hop straight into a private van and drive half an hour to a fantastic hotel somewhere in downtown Cairo along the banks of the Nile. It's pretty late by now, due to Egypt Air arriving nearly 2 hours beyond their scheduled arrival time but it doesn't matter. We are here, in what appears to be a city that never sleeps! There’s 25 million people living in the vast, sprawling metropolis that is Cairo and from our balcony the noise is incredible. Despite being nearly 2am it’s time for a beer and to wind down… with the bars here open to 4am it shouldn’t be a problem!

New Western Palearctic Birding Website

Following on from my recent ramblings and musings about Western Palearctic Birding I think this might be a good time to go public with something i've been working on.... I run the Zoothera Birding and Oman Birding websites solo and have now begun work on a brand new website, which is all about birding in the WP: www.westernpalearcticbirding.com  

My idea is to create as much information as possible about all things WP:

a] Latest Rarity News

b] Country Profiles with links to birding tours from all companies, local guides and top sites to visit

c] A gallery with rare bird photos

d] Identification papers

e] News from the Greater Western Palearctic

f] Where to see the rare WP species

g] I'd like to post links to the various relevant blogs

And here's the thing.... It is a mammoth job and I need help! I'm looking for contributors to write articles, provide photos, links for i.d articles, magazine links, provide latest news, and anything at all that could help. My vision would be to make this a birding community-based website with contributions from as many people as possible. I've been told that is rather naive as there would be too many egos involved! So am I wrong....?  I'd like to think that isn't the case.....

So, if you would like to be involved please send me an email to: birders@westernpalearcticbirding.com

Lammergeier and Cinereous Vulture

Grey-necked Bunting is a sought-after WP species

Western Palearctic Birding.... Time to Do it...?

 So what is this all about....? Western Palearctic birding.... What is it that drives birders to seek out all the birds in this man-made boundary? As someone who has birded all around the world,  admittedly as part of my job as a tour leader, I seem to be swept up in a wave of enthusiasm for this concept. What I mean by that is, having conducted a number of tours in Turkey where I met quite a few keen WP listers I may have caught the bug! Is that the right word? I've always had that twitching instinct and I used to be a very keen UK lister (admittedly up until the point I became a tour leader) and have always got a kick finding/seeing birds out of range. For instance, I took my group to see a Greater White-fronted Goose near Point Pelee, Canada once and got an adrenaline rush! We also saw a Ruff on the same trip and that was really cool too. I found or was involved in finding 5 new birds in The Gambia, the 1st Naumann's Thrush in Kazakhstan, the 8th (I think) Steppe Grey Shrike in Israel, and there's been others I can't think of right now. Oh and let's not forget all those rare birds from Oman. The point i'm making is that there's degrees upon degrees in birding. Our motivations fluctuate. We keep garden lists, local patch lists, year lists, county lists... and so it goes on.... So why not the WP. And alongside that there's the choice of increasing the interest to The Greater Western Palearctic - or not... And to be honest i'm not sure about that one. 

Anyway, on a personal note my WP list is poor (667) and my GWP list not much better (791). And until relatively recently I was not interested/bothered in my own lists. By way of my job I have built up a moderately decent Life List of 7,557. And until my heart attack in August 2024 I was going to reach 8,000 inside a couple of years. But i'm not really bothered now about the 8K and my obsession with Oman Birding has been the major motivating factor in my birding. And this is where WP birding comes in. It may be a desire to increase my own WP list or it may be something inbuilt inside myself to be relevant or it may be just about understanding that WP craving of others. Or maybe it's a little bit of each? Whatever it is, the bottom line is I just love birding and this is all something sort of new but with shorter flights!!

So for Zoothera Birding we've got incredibly popular tours to Turkey, which we've done for a while now. And there's Egypt, Jordan & West Kazakhstan, that are heading the same way too. And there's quite a few more trips i'm planning in the Western Palearctic region in the future, so I wonder where this is taking us...

Can't even remember seeing Cinereous Vulture in the Western Palearctic!!!!

Definitely haven't seen Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse in the WP. Gotta go to Egypt for that.

I have seen Yellow-browed Bunting on the scillies. Time to get out there and get that list moving...