Birds of Saudi Arabia: Bahrain

Showing posts with label Bahrain - Woodchat Shrike. Show all posts

31 March 2013

Catching Good Migrants - Ringing at Jasaer (Bahrain)

We arrived at Jasear at 05:45 hrs and set up four of our five nets in their normal places. We moved one net to a location inside some bushes rather than on the edge of them to see if it would yield more results. Migration had been a bit slow in Saudi Arabia over the preceding week so I was not too confident we would have a good catch. As it turned out we caught 36 birds of various species including a number of good birds. Initially we caught quite a few Common Chiffchaffs all of which appeared to be of the sub-species abientinus. A few shrikes were also caught with Daurian, Turkestan and Woodchat Shrikes all being caught including a nice adult male Turkestan Shrike.

Common Chiffchaff

Turkestan Shrike

Woodchat Shrike

The best bird was a female Semi-collared Flycatcher which is an uncommon species in the region with most birds seen being males. Neither of us had ringed this species before so Nicole ringed the bird as she is the most experienced ringer. The typical wing pattern was quite obvious on this bird and rules out the very similar Collared Flycatcher. Other good migrants included two female Menetries’s Warblers and a blythi type Lesser Whitethroat very different to the Hume’s type caught the week before in the same site.

Semi-collared Flycatcher - female

Menetries's Warbler - female

Lesser Whitethroat

We also caught two female Common Redstarts but failed to catch the really smart male samamisicus bird that was seen near the nets all morning. The remainder of the catch was made up of House Sparrows but we had a really good day with a few really good birds.

Common Redstart

22 March 2012

Eastern Woodchat Shrike (niloticus) - Alba Marsh (Bahrain)

A post by Laurie asking if we get badius Woodchat Shrike in Saudi Arabia prompted me to look into the eastern race birds a bit harder. This combined with the fact I have ringed three birds in the last three weeks in Bahrain prompted me to post a few images of Woodchat Shrikes Lanius senator of the eastern race niloticus. They occur from Cyprus, Levant & eastern Asia minor eastwards to Iran and winter in southern Egypt & Sudan.

Woodchat Shrike (Lanius senator niloticus) - Second calendar year female

Adults are told from nominate senator by extensive white on tail base measuring 25-35 millimetres and have whiter under-parts with the buff colouration restricted to the flanks. The white patch on the primaries is larger, being 17-20mm beyond the primary coverts in the closed wing of adult males compared to 10-16mm in the nominate sub-species. The female niloticus often has no black on the face even in adult plumage. Juveniles shown extensive moult of the body feathers, particularly the median and greater coverts on migration, with the equivalent moult in the nominate race occurring on the wintering grounds after migration. They are normally paler than nominate with greyer upper-parts. Birds average smaller to the west of their range and larger to the east.

Woodchat Shrike (Lanius senator niloticus) - Second calendar year male

Woodchat Shrike (Lanius senator niloticus) - Second calendar year female

Woodchat Shrike (Lanius senator niloticus) - Second calendar year male

The last bird we caught we measured the white tail base which measure 32 millimetres and the white patch on the primaries which measure 20 millimetres fitting nicely inside the niloticus range. The other measurements of wing length and bill length also fitted for all three birds caught.

Andrea Corso kindly pointed out the following......"I underline that niloticus is easy (to identify) only when typical...however, around the Eastern Mediterranean basin and Middle East there are several clinal populations with birds which are very hard to be positively ID. In the Sicilian Channel islands, for example, we used to see several birds which have really mixed or intermediate characters .... same in SE Italy, in Turkey etc etc"

As is normally the case this shows that birding is not as simple as it at first appears!

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.

Woodchat Shrike (2nd calendar year male)

Woodchat Shrike (2nd calendar year male) - Tail

. Woodchat Shrike (2nd calendar year male) - Wing

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.