28 January 2020

Largest gathering of Black-necked Grebe in KSA – Lake Dumat Al Jandal

Whilst in the Al Jouf area this winter we visited Lake Dumat Al Jandal. This lake has held numerous good birds in the past including Bewick’s Swam and White-tailed Duck. We saw some good birds here including Pochard, Whiskered and White-winged Terns and plenty of Little Grebes. The Little grebes were however, vastly outnumbered by Black-necked Grebes, which totaled 192 birds. There were probably slightly more than this as we could not see all the small bays on the far side of the lake from where we were counting. This is the largest gathering of this species I know of for Saudi Arabia and it was a truly amazing spectacle.
Black-necked Grebe

Black-necked Grebe