Birds of Saudi Arabia: First Water Pipit of winter

14 Nov 2012

First Water Pipit of winter - Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

Nicole and I went ringing again at our regular ringing site of Alba Marsh at the weekend. We set off to be at the site before first light to set the nets up, but due to an unforeseen incident on the way we were delayed and only arrived at about 06:15 hrs. We set four nets, but need to work out where the best place for the fourth net, as well as a fifth net we have not set yet is. We caught 15 birds, which is quite a good return for us and as normal most birds were Clamorous Reed Warblers with seven birds trapped and two re-traps of birds caught in the last few weeks. We caught a very large Clamorous Reed Warbler and a small one during the same net round and both can be seen in the photograph below. We also re-traped a Common Kingfisher which was the first Common Kingfisher we ever caught in Bahrain and was originally caught six weeks ago at the same site. The other re-traped bird was a Bluethroat that we originally caught last weekend. Other birds caught included a Common Chiffchaff, two Graceful Prinias and the first trapped Water Pipit of the winter which was of the race A. s. coutelli