Birds of Saudi Arabia: First Bluethroats of the autumn

Nicole and I went ringing again at Alba Marsh on Friday morning. A 04:30 hrs start allowed us to get to the site just before daylight and set the nets up. Nicole has now got her own nets, three 18 metre and two 12 metre nets and we were going to try to put all five up, however, after setting two nets in the best positions we had already caught a few birds so after setting the third net we began processing the caught ones. As it turned out we caught steadily all morning and ended up with 19 birds so never did set the other two nets. We caught mainly Clamorous Reed Warblers (12 birds including three re-traps all ringed at the same site late last year or this year), but we also caught a flava Yellow Wagtail, two Red-spotted Bluethroats (one race svecica) which were the first returning birds of the autumn and four Common Chiffchaffs. There were quite a few Water Pipits present, but we failed to catch any as we never got the time to set a net in their favourite place. As Nicole has got her own nets now, we returned Brendan’s nets to Abdulla to give back to Brendan when he sees him in a few days’ time in Ireland. It was really great of Brendan to let us borrow some of his nets when he returned to Ireland or we would not have been able to continue ringing until this week. It was also good to see Abdulla again after such a long time and we have arranged to try to meet him on the weeks we go ringing on Friday, as his advice and help are invaluable to us. Abdulla has not been catching a great deal of birds over the autumn but has managed to catch a few good ones for Bahrain including Wryneck, Western Marsh Harrier, Long-legged Buzzard and Hobby.