Birds of Saudi Arabia: Ringing at Alba Marsh

20 Oct 2012

Ringing at Alba Marsh - Bahrain

Nicole and I went ringing again at Alba Marsh on Friday Morning leaving Dhahran at 04:30 hrs to get to Alba for first light. It is proving to be a good time to go as the causeway to Bahrain is quiet at this time and when we come back at around 11:00 hrs it is also not very busy. This makes life a lot more pleasant than getting stuck in the traffic as I often did when coming back in the evening. Nicole is going to be buying some new nets but in the meantime we are using the four nets Brendan left behind for us when he went back to Ireland. We set all four nets in similar places to last weekend with one positioned changed to a location where we used to have it at the start of the year. Our normal two nets caught all the birds this time and numbers were down compared to the last two trips with only six birds trapped and ringed. Two were recaptures, both ringed at the same site previously, with one a Graceful Prinia from 26^th August 2011, which was my first Graceful Prinia ringed and so I was happy to see it still doing well. The other was a re-trapped Savi’s Warbler, which we caught last week in the same place. We also ringed two Clamorous Reed Warblers, Great Reed Warbler and an immature male Little Bittern. The Little Bittern is only the third one we have caught at the site so was a good bird for us.