On 13
January Phil Roberts and I travelled to Haradh an area of extensive pivot
irrigation fields three hours drive from Dhahran. We were primarily looking to
see if we could prove Sociable Lapwing wintered in the area as we had seen
birds here in February 2016 but were uncertain if these were wintering birds or
very early migrants. We left at 03:30 hrs to allow us to be at the site at
first light. We tried a set of fields off the main road some distance and
eventually found some access to some very good looking fields in various stages
of growth from ploughed to fallow to newly growing. We eventually came across a
newly ploughed field that had over 100 Northern Lapwing in it, a habitat and species
that were used by associated with by lasy years Sociable Lapwings . After a
couple of minutes I saw two Sociable Lapwings in flight in the flock that flew
around and landed in the ploughed field. We drove around to the area where the
access track was to the pivot irrigation bars and moved down this into the
middle of the field. Here we scanned through the Northern Lapwings we could see
and eventually found three Sociable Lapwings. The three Sociable Lapwings
eventually flew off and we went looking for further birds. Another filed that
was in the process of being ploughed also held several hundred Northern
Lapwings and four Sociable Lapwings making a total of seven birds. The birds
never came close enough for good photos and were very timid when we were on
foot so the below poor photos are all that I obtained. These birds are only the
third time the species has been recorded in the Eastern Province after an adult
at Haradh farm on 25 February 1982 and our 16 at Haradh on 5 February 2016.
These birds seen on 13 January are much too early to be passage migrants and
show that Haradh is a new wintering location for the species. This is not the
first place for the species to winter in Saudi Arabia as other winter in the
northwest of the Kingdom at Tabuk and others still in the southwest near Jizan.
