Birds of Saudi Arabia: Sooty Gull

Showing posts with label Sooty Gull. Show all posts

16 August 2022

Jizan Cornice

Whilst birding Jizan Cornice in July I found a few Sooty Gulls sitting on the seafront. As it was a public holiday there were few people about in the early morning allow very close approach to the gulls. The species is a partial migrant or nomad with most populations undergoing southern post-breeding dispersal movements in September-November. They inhabit coasts and inshore islands and is hardly ever seen inland or at freshwater. It nests on coastal or inshore coral islands preferring smaller outer islands of old coral that are sparsely vegetated, rocky and sandy, preferably protected from the ocean by live reef. They feed mainly on dead fish and fishermen's offal, as well as tern eggs and chicks turtle hatchlings prawns and small fish. Apart from the Sooty Gulls there were not that many birds about although we did find a couple of Pink-back Pelicans fishing.

Sooty Gull

Pink-backed Pelican

04 October 2021

Birding the Sharma Beach area - Sharma

The Sharma Beach area is now part of the NEOM complex and is thus difficult to access many previously available locations. The beach area is good in winter for waders and Gulls with some places where you can drive a four-wheeled drive vehicle along the beach edge. When we were there in January we located a Sanderling working its way along the beach. This is a species I do not see very often in the East of the country so spent some time trying to obtain a few decent photographs of the species. Only a handful of Large White-headed Gulls were found and most were Caspian Gull with a reasonable number of Sooty Gulls intermixed with them. The only other bird of note was a fly over Long-legged Buzzard.

Sanderling

Sooty Gull

Long-legged Buzzard

01 October 2020

Farasan Islands Boat Trip

Whilst visiting the Farasan Islands we made a boat trip to see birds on the offshore islands. The bots can be hired from local fisherman at a rate of 150-200 SAR per hour, and we took a boat from the harbor next to the main port where the island ferry lands and departs. As a foreigner, you need to have your iqama or passport with you as it is checked by the coastguard office before you can leave, which is situated next to the harbor itself. The trip time starts only after the all clear from coastguards has been obtained. We spent three hours on the boat and saw birds at very close range including Pink-backed Pelican in the harbor as we were leaving as well as offshore. Brown Booby was a common breeding bird on the offshore islands with birds nesting close to the edge of islands allowing very close approach and never leaving their nests. Other breeding birds seen in good numbers included both Sooty Gull and White-eyed Gull, with the former much more common than the latter. Good number of terns were seen fishing offshore that were mainly White-cheeked Tern but several Bridled Tern were in amongst them. The terns looked bluish on the underparts due to the strong sunlight reflecting the colour of the shallow blue-green water onto the white undersides of the terns.

Brown Booby

Pink-backed Pelican

Sooty Gull

White-eyed Gull

20 September 2019

Gulls – Jizan fish market

Whilst birding the Jizan fish Market in Summer with Phil Roberts we saw plenty of gulls waiting around for fish scraps from the nearby fish market. Occasionally a fish trader would come out and put all the fish offal in the road and the gulls would have a feast. There were plenty of White-eyed Gulls and Sooty Gulls sitting around and a couple of Baltic Gulls were also present. We spent quite a long time trying to get good photos and they normally come out less well than anticipated. Some of my best shots are below.

Baltic Gull

Sooty Gull

White-eyed Gull

01 November 2018

Jizan Corniche - Jizan

This site is one of the main birding locations in the region and has good wader habitat holding the highest concentration of shorebirds along the Saudi Red Sea coast. The site is easily viewed from the cornice road and in the early morning the sun is behind the observer allowing good viewing conditions. We birded the coast from the cetre of Jizan a short distance to the south, but did not go too far due to the issues near the Yemen boarder. The Corniche is also good for birds other than shorebirds with Black-crowned Sparrow Lark, Sooty Gull, Spur-winged Lapwing, White-winged Tern, Namaqua Dove and Pink-backed Pelican all photographed. The only waders photographed were Bar-tailed Godwit and Black-tailed Godwit.