Birds of Saudi Arabia: Bahrain

Showing posts with label Bahrain - Water Pipit. 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

13 November 2013

Re-trapped Red-spotted Bluethroat - Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

An early morning trip to Bahrain to go ringing proved quite successful for us with 22 birds caught of eight species. Quite a few re-traps were processes all of which had been ringed at the same site by us. The most interesting one was an adult male Red-spotted Bluethroat that was originally caught in November 2012 and again in January 2013 showing the bird was using Alba Marsh as a wintering site. The fact we then re-caught the bird in November 2013 shows it is probably going to use the same site to winter again after having moved off north to breed. Bluethroats are difficult to assign to race unless an adult male is seen or caught, but this one looks like a svecica that breed in Scandinavia and north Asia as well as north-west North America and Canada and winter in southern Europe, North and North tropical Africa, Arabia and south and east Asia.

Red-spotted Bluethroat - adult male

Red-spotted Bluethroat - first year male

We also re-caught a Common Kingfisher that we had caught originally at the same site a few weeks earlier suggesting this bird is also going to use the site as a wintering location. Other re-traps were Clamorous Reed Warblers that are resident at the site. A few Graceful Prinias were also caught, a species we have not caught for almost a year. They are really beautiful as well as small birds weighing only 6-7 grams and are resident at the marsh.

Common Kingfisher

Common Chiffchaff

European Reed Warbler

Graceful Prinia

Water Pipit

23 January 2013

Ringing at Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

Nicole and I went ringing again at Alba Marsh very early in the morning. This was our first ringing trip for a month as I was away for Christmas and we were interested to see what had changed. We got to the site before sunrise and set up all five of our nets. One in a new area across some water with tamarisk scrub nearby. This net caught three birds including Water Pipit, Clamorous Reed Warbler and Bluethroat and looks like a reasonable place to set the net. Although there was not too much bid activity we caught 13 birds of five species with the addition to the above of Common Chiffchaff and Common Kingfisher. Nine birds were re-traps including six Clamorous Reed Warblers (see tomorrow post for more details), two Bluethroats and one Common Kingfisher. The Common Kingfisher is obviously wintering in the area as it was originally caught 5th October 2012, as are the Bluethroats, one of which was caught almost a year to the day ago showing they use the same sites to winter year after year. The only other birds caught were a single Common Chiffchaff and two Water Pipits of the race coutelli

Common kingfisher - female

Red-spotted Bluethroat - male

Bluethroat - female

Water Pipit - A. s. coutelli

14 November 2012

First Water Pipit of winter - Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

Nicole and I went ringing again at our regular ringing site of Alba Marsh at the weekend. We set off to be at the site before first light to set the nets up, but due to an unforeseen incident on the way we were delayed and only arrived at about 06:15 hrs. We set four nets, but need to work out where the best place for the fourth net, as well as a fifth net we have not set yet is. We caught 15 birds, which is quite a good return for us and as normal most birds were Clamorous Reed Warblers with seven birds trapped and two re-traps of birds caught in the last few weeks. We caught a very large Clamorous Reed Warbler and a small one during the same net round and both can be seen in the photograph below. We also re-traped a Common Kingfisher which was the first Common Kingfisher we ever caught in Bahrain and was originally caught six weeks ago at the same site. The other re-traped bird was a Bluethroat that we originally caught last weekend. Other birds caught included a Common Chiffchaff, two Graceful Prinias and the first trapped Water Pipit of the winter which was of the race A. s. coutelli

Water Pipit - A.s.couteli

Clamorous Reed Warblers

Clamorous Reed Warbler

Common Kingfisher

Bluethroat - male

Bluethroat - female

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

12 March 2012

Ringing at Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

I went ringing again at Alba Marsh with Brendan on Friday and we caught quite a good selection of birds despite the weather being quite windy. We arrived 30 minutes earlier than the previous weekend as the days are getting lighter now and set up two 18 metre four panel nets and three single panel nets to try to catch some of the warblers and wagtails that were present. We had a good start to the ringing session by catching a Caspian Reed Warbler in the first net we set up before we had even finished setting it up properly. This was the first Caspian Reed Warbler I had ringed since one at Al Ali Farm on 14^th October 2011.

Caspian Reed Warbler

Some of the resident birds were singing from the cover of the reeds with Graceful Prinia and Clamorous Reed Warbler being the most vocal. We caught a single female Graceful Prinia with a brood patch indicating they are breeding again at the marsh. We were not so lucky with the Clamorous Reed Warblers which seem to be using the taller reed bed where the water is too deep to set nets.

Graceful Prinia (adult female)

The last wintering birds are still here with Water Pipit still about in good numbers in the short cut reeds and three Bluethroats seen. One adult female caught which was a re-trap from late 2011, where it was ringed at the same site. House Sparrows were also around and managed to regularly get caught in the nets, but we did not ring any and let them go. A female Siberan Stonechat was present by one of the nets alongside a very nice male. It is difficult to know if these were wintering birds or passage migrants, but we caught the female in the mist net which allowed me to ring to another new species. I will post the photographs of this bird in another post as I have quite a number of photographs to show some of the relevant points for identification.

Water Pipit (A. s. coutelli)

There were signs of migration with quite a few Black-headed Yellow Wagtails about and a few Common Chiffchaffs as well. A nice Woodchat Shrike was sitting in the same place as the one we caught last weekend. This time we did not try to catch it thinking it may have been the bird we had already ringed but as luck would have it, it or another bird, caught itself in one of the four panel mist nets. Again I was the lucky one to take the bird out of the net and managed to get away with minimal damage to the fingers. We caught twenty birds in total which was a good return as the wind was very strong by the end of the session.