Steppe Eagle over the Golf Course – Dhahran

The last few days on the ‘patch’ have been interesting but still only a few birds are present. There have, however, been a number of different species passing through that have kept the interest levels up. One such bird was an adult type Steppe Eagle flying over the Golf Course. I had not seen Steppe Eagle in Dhahran until this autumn but this is now my third sighting so, hopefully, it will be a good year for raptors. I did not have my camera with me when I saw the Steppe Eagle but Viv Wilson took a very nice photo of a similar bird at Tabuk this week and kindly sent it to me and allowed me to use it on my website which is shown below. 

Steppe Eagle

 Other birds of interest were four Eurasian Skylarks feeding around on one of the football fields with the large numbers of Water Pipits and White Wagtails. I was hoping one may be a Small Skylark, but unfortunately they were not. An Isabelline Wheatear was the first record of that species I have seen on the camp for a few weeks and the number of Western Cattle Egrets have now built up to a minimum of thirty birds. Another interesting sight was a number of small flocks of Great Cormorants flying over looking to see if the percolation pond had water in it, but unluckily for them it is still dry.