The family travelled on a Saudi Aramco run trip to Shaybah
on 4th October. This is a very special trip as this area is
basically out of bounds to most people residing in Saudi Arabia, and when you
take into account how few foreigners live in Saudi Arabia the number of foreigners
who have visited the area is very limited. We went by bus from Saudi Aramco
Dhahran camp to the Saudi Aramco section of Damman Airport. Here we boarded a
one hour flight that took us to the small landing strip at Shaybah where we
disembarked. We were shown around the Shaybah camp and allowed two hours to enjoy the dunes and allow me a bit of time to
see if I could see any bird species. The community uses recycled water to water areas and
has a number of green sites including a large grass football field. This field
was a haven for birds with over 200 House Sparrows, ten Eurasian Hoopoes, seven
Yellow Wagtails and a Steppe Grey Shrike present. Other birds seen flying over
included Barn Swallow and House Martin and a few Laughing Doves were around the
compound. As the site is in the middle of the largest sand desert in the world
it was quite amazing to see such a number of birds and shows that birds must be
passing over the entire country during migration and can drop down onto
suitable sites if found. I assume all birds were migrants with the exception of
the Laughing Does and House Sparrows.
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| Eurasian Hoopoe |
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| Eurasian Hoopoe |
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| Eurasian Hoopoe |
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| Yellow Wagtail |
.jpg) |
| Yellow Wagtail |
.jpg) |
| Yellow Wagtail |
The Rub Al Khali, is the largest desert in the world and has
an area of about 650,000 sq km and it remained virtually unexplored until the
1950’s. Rub Al Khali means "Empty Quarter"
in Arabic, reflecting the barren and forbidding nature of the southern Arabian
desert with considerably more than half the area of the Eastern Province being
covered by desert. The terrain is covered with reddish-orange sand dunes with heights up to
250 metres interspersed with gravel and gypsum plains and contains no oasis. Areas of the desert in the south-east,
within the Eastern Province, are a vast, lowland, inwardly draining basin, with
immense numbers of relatively stable, longitudinal, wind-driven dunes on a
level substrate of sabkhas (salt flats) at 80-100 m above sea level. Some
desert areas are covered with shifting sand dunes, while others are more stable
flat or rippled expanses of sand. Shaped and moved by winds, sand dunes take
the form of long ridges or tall hills. Sand, gravel, or bare rock basins lie
between the dunes and few plants grow in these arid desert areas. Most of the area is totally waterless and is one of
the driest on earth and is classified as ‘hyper-arid’, with typical annual
rainfall of less than 30 millimetres and daily maximum temperatures averaging
47 °C but can reach as maximum of 56 °C. It is uninhabited
except for a few wandering Bedouin tribes and some Oil exploration camps with
the only settlement being the Saudi Aramco Shaybah camp. Even so 49 bird species were
recorded during a survey in 1991
including nine proven or probable breeders (six within the sands proper). The
most common species were Hoopoe Lark Alaeman alaudipes and Brown-necked
Raven Carvus ruficaIlis (resident) and Desert Wheatear Oenanthe
deserti and Desert Warbler Sylvia nana (wintering). A probable breeding
site for Moorhen GaIlinula chlarapus was found, and a Crab Plover Dramas
ardeala was seen, suggesting an overland passage. Open sandy areas with a
good cover of bushes form the habitat used by most species. Extreme aridity and
the absence of trees and annual plants are probably the major factors limiting
diversity and density of species.
