I went birding on 29 January to
Jubail on a very cold and windy day. The temperature was 5 degrees Celsius, the
coldest temperature I have seen in Saudi Arabia since I have been here.
Temperatures in Hail in the northwest of the Kingdom reached minus 3 degrees
Celsius some of the coldest weather in the country for more than fifty years.
The temperature felt even colder as a strong wind was also blowing and as a
result the birds were hiding from the wind and not really showing well. One
example of this was the 100+ Greater Flamingo’s. They are normally spread out
over the sabkhat in loose flocks but this time every bird was huddled together
in a tightly packed group to keep warm and out of the wind. The adults were in
the middle and the less knowledgeable juveniles on the outside. Other birds
hiding from the wind included 18 Western Cattle Egrets, and I suppose many
other species as well as our total for the day was well down on normal. We only
really saw the winter visitors in any numbers with large numbers of White
Wagtails and Water Pipits and smaller groups of both Spanish Sparrows and
Common Starlings. Wader numbers were well down on normal as combined with the
cold weather and strong winds was high water so there was not many places for
waders to use. We did see a few Black-winged Stilts, Common Redshaks and Common
Greenshanks but very little else. The only other birds seen in any numbers were
Squacco Herons, Gulls of various species and terns including four Whiskered Terns. A few early migrants were located including Barn Swallows, Common House
Martins and Common Swifts.
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| Black-winged Stilt |
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| Common Greenshank |
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| Common Starling |
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| Western Cattle Egret |
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| Western Cattle Egret |
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| Spanish Sparrow - male |
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| Spanish Sparrow - male |
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| White Wagtail |
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| Whiskered Tern |