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| Brown Noddy |
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| Brown Noddy |
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| Brown Booby |
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| Pink-backed Pelican |
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| Sooty Gull |
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| Offshore Island - Farasan Islands |
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| Whinchat |
Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
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30 September 2013
Brown Noddy & Sooty Falcon - Farasan Offshore Islands
On one day we hired a boat from just south of
the Farasan Coral Resort. We left at 06:00 hrs and kept the boat for five
hours. The boats cost 150-200 SAR per hour which it may be possible to get for
a cheaper rate as we were short of time and had no car so did not try to
negotiate too hard although the original price was 250 SAR per hour. We started
by looking for dolphins but failed to see any and then went to a rocky island
to look for a few birds and found my two target species quite quickly, a Brown
Noddy and a Sooty Falcon. I only saw one Brown Noddy but it was perched in full
view on a rocky island, although taking photographs of it was not easy as it
was almost directly into the sun.
We also saw Pink-backed Pelican, Striated
Herons, Brown Boobys, Lesser Crested Terns, Little Terns, Common Redshanks,
Common Sandpipers and Sooty Gulls. We found a big feeding flock of terns but
nothing unusual appeared to be in with them. After spending some time looking
at the fish and collecting shells with the family, where I saw a Greater Hoopoe
Lark, we returned to try to find the dolphins. Luckily I found a huge group,
with a minimum of fifty animals, on the way back.
A very tired Whinchat landed on the boat but
was so close I could hardly photograph it. The boat driver caught the bird by
hand but we made him release it. It stayed on the boat for some time before flying
off to a close by island. This was a real reminder of how difficult it is for
small birds to migrate long distances and how tired they get in the process.