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.
