An early morning trip to Sabkhat Al Fasl was
cancelled due to the thick fog in Dhahran. It is dangerous enough driving on
the roads of Saudi Arabia without the added problem of thick fog with ten-metre
visibility. As a result I waited for it to become almost light and went to the
‘patch’. I visited a number of places including a wet field near the football
field that has been attracting a few waders recently and where I also saw the female
Northern Pintail once. I found an interesting small wader hiding in the grass
front on, that turned out to be a Temminck’s Stint, and whilst watching it I
heard a Pacific Golden Plover. On looking up the bird was high overhead and
made a rapid decent to land on the field not too far in front of me. I had the
camera with me and grabbed a few photographs before the bird again flew off
calling showing off its dusky under-wing nicely. It only remained on the ground
for about ten seconds but the plumage and call are diagnostic. This was a new
local ‘patch’ species for me taking my total to 200 species. This is a good
return for three years birding I would say, although I do go to the site almost
every day, and amongst the 200 species are a number not previously recorded in
the area before.
In Saudi Arabia as well as the Eastern Province it is a scarce passage migrant and rare winter visitor. It
was previously regularly
observed at the former Damman Marsh lagoons with at least four wintering there
in 1980-81. Adults in summer plumage have been seen in May & June with a
maximum count of up to 30 birds in April, September and October. Most of the
records away from Dammam have been in the coastal zone from March to April and
from September to October. Inland records have been noted at Abqaiq in September.
The species appears to have become scarcer with the only recent records being
one individual seen outside Dammam 6th April 1999, one at Sabkhat Al
Fasl and one at Ash Shargiyah Development Company farm (Fadhili) 12th
October 2012.