29 January 2016

Few few good birds near Dammam – Bird records by Vinu Mathew

Vinu and his friends have located a good bird-watching site near Dammam that they have visited several times in recent weeks. This was partly due to the fact that many of the good local bird-watching sites are now out of bounds for various reasons and new sites were needed to continue birding. Vinu managed to take a coule of excellent photos of two species seen there. Desert Wheatear is not a common species locally but is resident in the right habitat. They are always good to see and are surprisingly difficult to photograph so Vinu has done well to capture the image below. He also photographed a male Red-spotted Bluethroat, again a bird that is not so easy to photograph well, but a species that is common in the winter months from September to March especially near reed beds and water. Another good bird that was seen was an Eastern Black Redstart, but unfortunately no photographs were obtained of this bird.
Desert Wheatear
Desert Wheatear - male
Red-spotted bluethroat - male
Red-spotted bluethroat - male