On Saturday 17 January Phil
Roberts and I went to Wadi Thee Ghazal near Taif. This is a well-vegetated wadi
with large mature Juniper trees and other large plants and was a site where
Arabian Golden-winged Grosbeak had been filmed by a camera trap in 2009 set to
look for Arabian Leopard by the Saudi Wildlife Authority. As we were trying to
see the species it was an obvious choice to bird and as it turned out the
birding was excellent here. We failed again to see the Grosbeak but located
Arabian Wheatear with both males and females seen, Yemen Linnet and Yemen Serin
of the Arabian regional endemics. Other good birds included Arabian Warbler,
Scrub Warbler, Song Thrushes, Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Abyssinian White-eye,
Eastern Black Redstarts, Tristram’s Starlings, Palestinian Sunbirds,
Brown-woodland Warblers and Pale Crag Martins. The number of Song Thrushes was
very high with about 50 birds seen during the day possibly due to the cold
weather further north where snow fell in Jordan, Lebanon and northern Saudi
Arabia a few days before. This is an excellent site for birding with a lot of
birds present although the species total was low. The location where the
Arabian Golden-winged Grosbeak was seen was 21.0795N, 40.3435E that is
approximately 2000 metres above sea level.
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| Arabian Wheatear - male |
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| Arabian Wheatear - male |
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| Arabian Wheatear - female |
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| Arabian Warbler |
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| Eastern Black Redstart |
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| Eurasian Sparrowhawk |
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| Tristram's Starling |
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| Tristram's Starling |
