Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
26 June 2019
Arabian Spotted Eagle Owl - Tanoumah
Whilst in Tanoumah in May Phil
Roberts and I managed to see and photograph an Arabian Spotted Eagle-owl. I
initially saw the bird on some overhead wires where it stayed for a few minutes
before flying off. I have seen the bird here last year on the same wires. When
it flew, it did so only a short distance and landed on a nearby building where
it started calling very softly. We got out of the car and moved closer getting
to about twenty metres of the bird where I got some very poor IPhone recordings
of the call. After about ten minutes the bird flew again and disappeared. We
walked down the road the way it had flown and I saw it again perched on some
more overhead telephone wires. Here we managed to walk behind large sets of
building walls and get in front of the bird allowing reasonable photos to be taken
at close range. The owl was not disturbed by our presence, and stayed on the
wires the entire time until we left it in peach in the same location. The
subspecies in Arabia is an endemic sub-species to southwestern Arabia and
although not rare is difficult to locate. Birds are resident near the Red Sea
coast north to Jeddah and can be seen in the Tihamah and Asir areas including
Najran and Hejaz north to Taif. Other birds have been seen in a wooded wadi
eight kilometres east of Wadi Juwwah in April and near Tanoumah at various
times of year. The taxonomic status of form milesi,
significantly isolated in southwest Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman, is uncertain.
It is a rather small eagle-owl with long, erect ear-tufts and with race milesi smaller and more tawny coloured.
They use a variety of habitats, from rocky outcrops in desert to woodland with
sparse ground cover: particularly favours areas with mosaic of low hills,
grassland and scrub; prefers semi-open woodland, and rocky hills with scattered
trees and bushes; also found in thorn savanna; avoids dense forest. From sea level
up to c. 2100 metres.