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18 June 2017

Breeding Striated Heron in Bahrain – Bird record by Jehad Alammadi

Jehad Alammadi found the first record of breeding Striated Heron for Bahrain when travelling offshore. The bird was nesting between some poles in the seabed. Birds are uncommon in Bahrain a vagrant to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Eastern Province records include one remarkable inland record of a bird at Sabkha 40 on 30 May 2010 in the huge desert of the Empty Quarter. This is a species usually associated with the coast of Arabia and had never been recorded this far inland before and was the first record for eastern Saudi Arabia. It would have had to be a migrant, but its position at Shaybah raises the interesting possibility that it had travelled across eastern Arabia from the Arabian Sea en-route to the Arabian Gulf. The only other Eastern Province records, were one in Al Fanateer marina, Jubail on 15 February 2014 and one on 7 June 2015 at Sabkhat Al Fasl, Jubail. The increase in records in recent years may mean that birds are spreading northwards and the breeding record in Bahrain strongly supports this theory.
breeding Striated Heron

breeding Striated Heron

breeding Striated Heron