Ha'ir, Saudi Arabia

Today I took another trip to Ha'ir pivot fields with Rob Tovey. This time we stayed out all day and after all that yomping over sand and ploughed fields my legs can certainly feel it!

Here's a view of the area from the air showing the outflow river (Riyadh River) that flows beside the irrigated fields. We walked most of the pivot areas today.

Hai'ir pivot fields

The main crop grown in the pivot fields is alfalfa. One of the fields was lying fallow and one had been recently ploughed. Given the comparative monoculture there is no shortage of birds in the winter but the number of species appears somewhat limited so far.

Having said that, virtually the first bird we saw was a juvenile greater spotted eagle on the ground in the centre of one pivot. A flock of brown-necked raven were in the same field.

Greater spotted eagle

We then flushed a single green sandpiper from the rivers edge and spotted a coot swimming for cover. Both new birds for my KSA list as was the eagle. Bluethroats were soon found on the waters edge too.

The fields again held good numbers of lapwing and white wagtail but the field perimeters where they touch the desert were just as productive with plenty of desert wheatear and several pairs of european stonechat. Other raptors seen included several marsh harrier drifting across the fields from the reed beds, a single sparrowhawk and a ring-tail harrier that was too far off to identify but appeared to be a Montagu's harrier.

Desert wheatear

The dominant pipit by far appears to be tawny pipit, we searched for Richard's pipit without any luck but towards the end of the day I saw and heard 2 water pipit in the centre of the newly ploughed field.

Young tawny pipit

A quick dash across the road to follow an unidentified falcon with what appeared to be a snake was fruitless but it did bring us to a flock of sparrows which upon grilling seemed to be all or almost all spanish sparrow. A small flock of avadavat (with no males) then flew up to land on some of the irrigation machinery, no doubt an introduced bird in the past the numbers are evidently huge and the species breeds freely in the area and would therefore be considered a self sustaining category C population.

Spanish sparrows

As we walked back across the fields into the setting sun the final bird of the day for me was a white-throated kingfisher.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ FULL LIST _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

1 Little bittern

6 Cattle egret

4 Purple heron

4 Grey heron

6 Marsh harrier

1 Sparrowhawk

6 Greater spotted eagle

5 Kestrel

45 Moorhen

1 Coot

1 Green sandpiper

12 Snipe

75 Lapwing

1,200 Collared dove

200 Laughing dove

2 Namaqua dove

150 Pallid swift

1 White-breasted kingfisher

70 Little green bee-eater

1 Hoopoe

100 Crested lark

2 Pale crag martin
5 Long-billed pipit

70 Tawny pipit

2 Water pipit

120 White wagtail

70 White-cheeked bulbul

3 Black bush robin

6 Bluethroat

8 European stonechat

8 Isabelline wheatear

12 Desert wheatear

5 Graceful prinia

5 Desert warbler

2 Desert lesser whitethroat

3 Daurian shrike

3 Turkestan shrike

10 Southern grey shrike

15 Brown-necked raven

60 Common mynah

100 House sparrow

50 Spanish sparrow

40 Streaked weaver

15 Avadavat