I had a couple of
spare hours between dropping the family off and picking them up again in town
so went to the Al Khobar Sea Front. This area is being heavily developed but
has good tracks along the sea front allowing views over the tidal mud flats.
The tide was completely out when I went which is not an ideal time but I did
see a few groups of Greater Flamingos feeding quite close to the shore in wet
areas left by the retreating tide. I counted 120 birds including both adults in
bright pink plumage and juveniles in their more drab greyish pink plumage.
Greater Flamingo numbers are not very high in Dammam / Al Khobar when compared
to Jubail, where several thousand birds spend the winter every year, but still
several hundred birds use the Gulf close to the urban areas and are always a
pleasure to see. A bird with a large white plastic ring, originally ringed in
Turkey also spent one winter in the Al Khobar area recently although all the
birds I saw lacked any rings unfortunately. This is the first time I have seen
the Greater Flamingos so close to the shore, as normally they feed out by the
tide line and remain quite distant.
