Birds of Saudi Arabia

Showing posts with label Bahrain - Yellow Wagtail (feldegg). Show all posts

21 April 2024

More Yellow Wagtails – Dhahran Hills

Whilst birding the Dhahran Hills football fields in the spring the number and type of Yellow Wagtails has been very high. The main numbers were Sykes Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava beema amongst them, which is an early migrant with March and April being the best months for seeing them. They are more often seen in spring than autumn. The other common Yellow Wagtail seen was Black-headed Wagtail feldegg which is part of the Yellow Wagtail complex a group of birds that are common spring and autumn passage migrants, sometimes in hundreds. Yellow Wagtails pass from mid-February to May and again from early August to mid-November with many races identifiable in the field including feldegg, melanogrisia, lutea, flava, thunbergi and bema. Sykes's Wagtail and Blue-headed Wagtail are sometimes difficult if not impossible to separate in the field.

Sykes Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava beema

Yellow-headed Wagtail Motacilla flava lutea

Black-headed Wagtail Motacilla flava feldegg

Blue-headed Wagtail Motacilla flava flava

28 September 2017

Some spring migrants in northwest Saudi Arabia – Bird record by Euan Ferguson

Euan Ferguson was in Saudi Arabia with a couple of other birdwatchers in spring 2017, conducting an environmental survey and found a number of good birds and many migrants in the northwest if the Kingdom at Sharma on the Red Sea coast and further inland at Dumat. The survey team added a lot of knowledge to the birds seen in the area showing how valuable environmental surveys can be. Euan sent me a number of his photos and has kindly allowed me to use them on my website some of which are shown below.

Bluethroat

Little Bittern

Green Bee-eater

Ortolan Bunting

Common Quail

Savi's Warbler

Spotted Flycatcher

Turkestan Shrike

Wryneck

Black-headed Wagtail

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.