Ha'ir, Saudi Arabia

As it's migration time and you can never tell what will turn up I took another trip down to Ha'ir pivot fields today.

I arrived to hear common quail calling from one alfalfa field, I flushed one and heard another three. From a ploughed field I also flushed a rufous-tailed rock thrush and finally managed to get some half decent photos of a species which I'd seen a lot of in the mountains of the UAE but never managed to capture on camera.

Rufous-tailed rock thrush

The northern lapwing were still on the short cropped areas but the numbers are now greatly reduced in fact I only saw four and still no other plovers with them.

Namaqua dove

Working the Ha'ir pivot fields is fairly hard work, you can't drive a car into the farms so any days birding means covering the area on foot and walking as much as eight miles. But the areas around the pivot fields between the crops and desert are very productive. Today I found plenty of desert wheatear, a few isabelline wheatear, a couple of migrating pied wheatear and several species of shrike including a nice male woodchat shrike.

Woodchat shrike

Isabelline wheatear

A great thing about the pivot fields at Ha'ir is their proximity to the Riyadh river from where they draw the water to irrigate the fields. I found the same little bittern at the waters edge for the second day running and a single citrine wagtail by the pools. Three smart thunbergii yellow wagtail were among the white wagtails using the irrigation equipment as a perch.

_____________  FULL LIST _____________ 

3 mallard

1 Common quail

1 Little bittern

8 Grey heron

5 Purple heron

4 Marsh harrier

2 Common kestrel

2 Lesser kestrel

3 Moorhen

4 Northern lapwing

1 Green sandpiper

15 Feral pigeon

80 Collared dove

30 Laughing dove

9 Namaqua dove

1 Common swift

12 Green bee-eater

15 Hoopoe

1 Isabelline shrike

2 Southern grey shrike

1 Steppe grey shrike

1 Woodchat shrike

1 Brown-necked raven

5 Short-toed lark

35 Crested lark

2 Rock martin

25 Barn swaloow

2 White-spectacled bulbul

50 White-cheeked bulbul

20 Graceful prinia

3 Black scrub-robin

9 Bluethroat

1 Rock thrush

8 European stonechat

2 Pied wheatear

15 Desert wheatear

2 Isabelline wheatear

5 Common myna

14 European starling

3 Yellow wagtail

1 Citrine wagtail

80 White wagtail
5 Tawny pipit
1 Red-throated pipit

80 Spanish sparrow

3 Indian silverbill