Paddyfield Warbler is a rare vagrant in the Arabian
Peninsula with very few records documented. Kuwait has three records one in
August 2012, one October 2013 and one September 2014, Saudi Arabia has yet to
record the species, Qatar has two records in December 2011 and November 2013,
United Arab Emirates has two records January 2000 and October 2007 and in Oman
it is a vagrant. Bahrain also has only two records with the first a bird seen in
the late morning of 13 September
1991 at Ghalali, close to the airport at Muharraq in an area of fields with
crops such as sorghum and grass, ditches and lines of small palm trees along
the tracks between the fields and the second the bird we trapped and ringed at
Alba Marsh 28 November 2014. The bird
was trapped along the edge of a small marsh where we have been ringing for a
number of years. We had not ringed at the site since January 2014 as we are now
spending time at a larger site in Saudi Arabia that has easier access but went
back to meet up with our ringing trainer Brendan Kavanagh who was visiting
Bahrain and had no visa to enter Saudi Arabia. As a result we went to Bahrain
to meet up and trapped the Paddyfield Warbler that certainly made the trip very
worthwhile. As it was only the second record for the country it was obviously a
new ringing species for the Bahrain ringing project and was good timing by
Brendan to be there when it was trapped as he set up the ringing group but is
now back in Ireland with his work.
