White-throated Kingfisher at Udhailiyah – Bird record by Douglas Horn & Rachel Abel

A White-throated Kingfisher was found at Udhailiyah Golf Clubhouse duck pond a couple of weeks ago by Rachel Abel who works there. She told Douglas Horn, who also works there, and he went down a couple of times to try to find and photograph the bird. Yesterday he successfully managed to locate the bird in a tree on the middle island of the duck pond and took a photograph with his 200mm lens and 1.7x converter. Douglas kindly allowed me to use his photo on my website which is shown below. White-throated Kingfisher is not a common bird in the Eastern Province and this is the most southerly record I know of for the Province. Most records come from more northerly areas such as Sabkhat Al Fasl but they have been seen as far south as Dhahran in previous years. The winter of 2013-14 has been a good one for the species in the Eastern Province with an overwintering bird at Sabkhat Al Fasl from 31 August 2013 until mid-January 2014 at least, a bird seen at Qaryat Al Ulya on 27 September 2013 and this bird from Udhailiyah in January 2014. Up until the end of the 1980’s there had only been two records from the Eastern Province, both from the Dhahran area but there have been more sighting since all from the Jubail to Al Khobar region.