Birds of Saudi Arabia: Bahrain

Showing posts with label Bahrain - Bluethroat. Show all posts

11 December 2014

Ringing again in Bahrain – Alba Marsh

Nicole and I went ringing at Alba Marsh in Bahrain for the first time in almost a year. We have stopped ringing there since we now have permission to ring at Sabkhat Al Fasl in Saudi Arabia, where we catch more birds and don’t have the inconvenience of travelling across the Bahrain causeway and passing through passport control and customs. We went to Alba Marsh as our ringing trainer, Brendan Kavanagh was visiting from Ireland and we wanted to meet up and do some ringing together. We arrived well before first light but as we had not been to the site for ten months we had to do some work clearing the net rides. We set six 18 metre nets in the red beds and along the edge of the reeds and all were set up by 07:00 hrs. We caught few good birds including a couple of nice re-traps, both of which had originally been ringed at the same site in previous years. A Water Pipit was re-trapped that was originally ringed 9 March 2012 and an Indian (Clamourous) Reed Warbler re-trapped that was originally ringed 8 February 2011 the first time Nicole had ringed at the site. The Indian Reed Warbler is resident but the Water Pipit is a migrant meaning it has returned to its breeding grounds three times since it was originally trapped and is obviously faithful to this small marsh as a wintering area. We caught 22 birds in total, which is a good catch for the location, including Water Pipits, Bluethroats, Indian (Clamorous) Reed Warblers, Little Bittern, Eastern Stonechat, Paddyfield Warbler and House Sparrow. By 11:00 it started to rain very heavily and curtailed our ringing but not until we had caught and ringed a few good birds. It was very nice to ring back at Alba and maybe I will come back a couple of times a year in the spring and autumn to see what is happening there.

Bluethroat - male

House Sparrow

Indian (Clamorous) Reed Warbler

Little Bittern - female

Water Pipit

09 January 2014

Little Bittern, Common Kingfisher & more – Ringing at Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

Nicole and I went to Alba Marsh for our first ringing trip of the year. Mid-winter is not a peak time at the marsh but we have caught a few good birds in the past in January. We set up our nets in the normal areas although the reeds had been cut back since our last visit making the nets quite open and the wind was stronger than we had hoped. Very few birds were noticeable whilst setting up the nets even though we were there before first light and after two hours we had not caught a bird and thought it may be a waste of time. We stuck at it and caught 11 birds of seven species including re-trapped Common Kingfisher, Water Pipit and Graceful Prinia all ringed at the same site in late winter 2013. The best bird we caught was an adult female Little Bittern that was only the fourth caught at the site. Other birds caught included Bluethroat, Clamorous Reed Warbler and House Sparrow.

Little Bittern - adult female

Common Kingfisher - female

Bluethroat

Clamorous Reed Warbler

Graceful Prinia

House Sparrow - male (left) & female (right)

Water Pipit

25 February 2013

A good catch – Ringing at Alba Marsh

A very early trip to Alba Marsh in Bahrain to ring with Nicole proved to be very productive with plenty of birds caught. It was one of our best catches at the site and although the birds species were all typical winter visitors / residents a few Common Chiffchaffs were a sign of spring. We set up four nets including one in a new place across a semi open area with tamarisk and this net proved quite successful and caught a good number of birds. We will be using this new net ride again over the next few weeks. Overall we caught 31 birds with plenty of re-trapped Clamorous Reed Warblers along with four new un-ringed birds. Two new Common Kingfishers were a surprise as we had not caught Common Kingfisher at this site until earlier in the winter and we have now caught eight different birds. Other birds caught included a Graceful Prinia that was the first bird of this species we have caught for a few months even though they are common at the site. A coutelli race Water Pipit and three female Bluethroats were also caught along with two adult male House Sparrows which typically had aggressive natures when in the hand.

Clamorous Reed Warbler

Common Kingfisher - female

Bluethroat - female

House Sparrow - male

Common Chiffchaff

18 March 2012

Some unwanted ticks - Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

I went ringing again on Friday in Bahrain and we went to our normal site of Alba Marsh. Things did not look promising at the start as it was extremely windy when we left Saudi Arabia and had not improved much by the time we had reached Bahrain. As I was not going to ring again for almost a month I wanted to go and see what it was like and as Brendan had not sent a message saying it was cancelled I persevered. Brendan said we should give it a try so we set up three 18 metre four panel nets and two single panel nets. As ringing was slow I kept the first few House Sparrows we caught but as numbers of birds caught increased we started letting the caught House Sparrows go without putting a ring on them. One of the first birds we caught was a nice male Black-headed Wagtail, which was a new ringing species for me as the one we had caught a couple of weeks ago was ringed by Nicole as she had not ringed one either at that stage. Although the Black-headed Wagtail was in good condition plumage wise it had two large ticks attached to its head which Brendan carefully removed to preserve and send to someone in Poland who is doing research into ticks on birds.

Black-headed Yellow Wagtail (feldegg) - male

We caught and ringed 17 birds during the morning which was much better than was thought possible at the start. Totals were one Black-headed Yellow Wagtail, four House Sparrows, three Common Chiffchaffs, two Red-spotted Bluethroats, six Water Pipits and a Woodchat Shrike (see next post for details of this interesting bird). One Bluethroat & one Water Pipit were re-traps with the Bluethroat being trapped initially on 9^th December 2011 and re-trapped on 6^th January 2012 both at the same site. The Water Pipit was trapped and ringed at the same site a week before.

Red-spotted Bluethroat - 2nd calendar year male

Bird numbers were down on previous visits with many Water Pipits and particularly Bluethroats appearing to have moved on. Common Chiffchaff numbers were significantly down on our previous visit as well but birds were certainly keeping low due to the wind as a male Pallid Harrier flew over the reed-bed and flushed more Water Pipits than we had previously seen. Two of the Water Pipits we caught had different shapped longest upper-tail coverts with one being rounded (adult?) and the other pointed (2nd CY?).

Water Pipit (A.s.coutelli)

Water Pipit (A.s.coutelli) - adult

Water Pipit (A.s.coutelli) - 2nd calendar year

04 March 2012

Some colourful birds - Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

On Friday 2^nd March, Nicole and I went ringing at Alba Marsh with Brendan. We got to the site early and set up two 18 metre four panel mist nets and a 12 metre single shelf net. The reeds had been cut very short in one of the places where we normally erect one of the 18 metre nets so we moved it to a new location. Nicole suggested putting in an area near to the tall reeds and although we had put nets in this area without too much luck in the past, we put the net up where she had suggested. This location turned out to be very good and we caught a lot of birds in this net as they were disturbed from the short cut reeds by us walking towards the net. As the three nets were catching quite a lot of birds we did not put up any more. At the end of the mornings ringing session we had caught 31 birds with seven re-traps all of birds ringed at the same site this winter. We re-trapped three Bluethroats, one Graceful Prinia, one Water Pipit & two Clamorous Reed Warblers. When we got to the site we saw a nice male Woodchat Shrike sitting in a low bush by the side of the marsh. This shrike seemed to favour one particular bush and when Howard King arrived he put out the spring trap with a worm attached to try to catch the bird which proved successful. I was closest so had the pleasant task of trying to extract the bird without it drawing too much blood. They are quite adept at attacking figures and I took the bird out with the help of Nicole with only a couple of scratches. This is the first time I have ringed Woodchat Shrike and they are fabulous birds in the hand, excepting their aggressive nature.

Woodchat Shrike (male)

As we were walking through the reeds we flushed quite a large number of Water Pipits and a smaller number of Bluethroats, most of which were Red-spotted types. Other birds flushed included a Little Bittern and a few Common Snipe neither of which we managed to catch. A singing Savi’s warbler was a nice surprise as we were erecting the net in the new site but it stopped singing and was not seen again after first light. The Water Pipits were in partial moult and coming into nice summer plumage on the underparts.

Water Pipit (A. s. coutelli)

Red-spotted Bluethroat (male)

Clamorous Reed Warblers were singing from many different points in the tall reeds as always but we had failed to catch any birds since 6^th January 2012. It was a pleasant surprise to catch two birds today, both of which were re-traps and one of which was a female with a well-developed brood patch, indicating breeding at the site again. The first confirmed breeding for the species in Bahrain was noted last year at the same site. Good numbers of warblers were present in the reeds and Tamarisk scrub, with the vast majority of them being Common Chiffchaffs. Birds winter in the region but the first large numbers of migrants have just started passing through in the last week or so and these were almost certainly migrants many of which had large reserves of fat ready of onward passage. A number of the Common Chiffchaffs seen were quite yellow in colour, although the one photographed below is not as bright as many.

Clamorous Reed Warbler

Common Chiffchaff

Whilst doing a net round Nicole informed me she had seen two Yellow Wagtails with Black-heads in the short cut reed area. We walked through this area between the two 18 metre nets and flushed the birds one of which flew just past the net and landed. As we moved closer the bird flew again and caught itself in the net allowing me to extract it take it back for processing. As neither Nicole nor I had ringed the species before I let her ring the bird and I took some photographs. They are really stunning birds in the field and even more so in the hand.

Black-headed (Yellow) Wagtail - male (Montacilla flava feldegg)

14 February 2012

Ringing at Alba Marsh - Bahrain

An early morning ringing session at Alba Marsh, with Brendan, produced fewer birds than normal. This period is relatively quite as wintering birds start to move out and new spring migrants are still yet to arrive in numbers. This couple with a fresh wind that blew up whilst on the way to the site created less than ideal conditions for ringing. We persevered and set up three four panel nets and three smaller nets to see what we could catch. One pleasant finding whilst setting up the nets was the fact that the pollution which has been a problem at the site over the last few months now seemed to be less, or possibly stopped altogether. The first bird trapped was a new Red-spotted Bluethroat which was not in such good plumage as the birds we caught two weeks ago, but was still a nice start to the day.

Red-spotted Bluethroat

As birds were few we ringed some of the House Sparrows that we caught, including three males and a female. They are not very friendly birds in the hand and like to peck unwary hands. We caught a couple of additional House Sparrows but let them go without ringing them. At least they gave me additional ringing practice and allowed me to get a few photographs of them in the hand.

House Sparrow (male)

House Sparrow (female)

The number of Water Pipits we saw whilst setting up the nest and doing the ringing rounds were fewer than in previous weeks but we still managed to catch five birds making ten birds in total. The Water Pipits are coming into summer plumage with a nice warm buff colouration to the flanks which I have not seen before.

Water Pipit (A. coutelli)

A few good birds were seen at the site whilst ringing included a Little Bittern, one Common Kingfisher, two Jack Snipe and a Western Great Egret. A few Barn Swallows were present and waders included six Common Greenshanks, 15 Little Stint, four Common Redshanks and a Common Ringed Plover.