Whilst birding the Jubail area in late May I came across three Temminck’s Stints. This is a species I see quite regularly but they are normally quite distant, and I have not really obtained any good photos of them previously. These three birds were in the corner of a sabkha area where I could drive the car along a raised bank and as a result, I could get relatively close to them. The below photos are the best of those I took. The Temminck’s Stint is a migratory species breeding across northern Eurasia above the Arctic Circle and wintering south of the Sahel region in Africa and Arabia to Southeast Asia. It has a status in Saudi Arabia of an uncommon passage migrant (March to May & August to November) and uncommon winter visitor. They prefer inland freshwater sites with shallow pools as well as coastal mudflats and flooded sabkha.
