Near the hotel in central Abha

Even a walk round the block can produce good birds within urban Abha. Bernard Bracken and I went for such a walk just before dusk on Friday. Birds such as Yemen thrush, Graceful prinia and Ruepell's weaver were easily seen on a piece of wasteland near by.

Bruce's green pigeon

One tree had three Bruce's green pigeon in.

Shining sunbird

There were two birds we hadn't seen all day during 10 hours of birding. These were shining sunbird and black bush robin. Unfortunately the first bird was in heavy moult and wasn't looking its best.

Black bush robin

The black bush robin was of the local sub species only found in the Asir highlands. It's not really black but more of a dark brown.

If I have any regrets about our weekend at Abha it was not spending more time on the edge of the city. It has great potential.

In the next blog, I look in some depth at what we saw on Saturday outside Abha on the Muhayil road (north west of the city). 

Muhayil north side of the wadi

I visited Muhayil in the south west of the country over the weekend. Muhayil is on the western foothills of the Asir mountains. It is in the Afro-tropical eco-zone where birding is always interesting and different to Riyadh in many respects.

I was hosted by my friend Shane Ngahere and am grateful for his hospitality. 

Other birding colleagues have in recent years given Wadi Muhayil mixed reviews. I understand this is because the fauna has been affected by not having a permanent stream any more.

However I found the town's birding to be good anyway.

Also Shane's contacts came up with a locality near-by which does have permanent water and had distinctive birding. Indeed it was where I added the 318th bird to my Saudi list. I'll write about there in the next blog. 

Meanwhile this blog looks at the birding I did walking straight out of the hotel on the north side of Wadi Muhayil within the town.

white browed coucal

A classic Afro-tropical bird of the Tihama (lowland) south west Saudi Arabia is white browed coucal. It was one of the birds seen directly outside the hotel and as it turns out also in three other locations around the town. It is clearly not uncommon here. 

Arabian babbler

One of the other larger birds seen on the north side of the wadi was Arabian babbler. Actually Muhayil has the highest density of this species that I have encountered in the whole of Saudi Arabia.

white spectacled bulbul

Other birds there were white spectacled bulbul and African collared dove. The latter bird is especially common.

African collared dove

Laughing dove were also present like in virtually every community in Saudi Arabia.

laughing dove

More similarities with the centre and west of the country though not the east was the presence of little green bee-eater and black bush robin. 

little green bee-eater

The sub-species of black bush robin is the same as in Riyadh too whereas directly  up the mountains to Abha from Muhayil there is a much duller brown rather than black sub species.

black bush robin

The variety of smaller birds seen outside the hotel showed considerable Afro-tropical influence. 

male Rueppells weaver

The most common smaller bird was Rueppells weaver.

Rueppells weavers

The breeding seasons for this bird vary considerably with altitude.  Though I don't yet know all the details, it appears that the lowland birds breed very early and new nests were seen this weekend. The males were in breeding plumage too.

Blackstart

Blackstart was a more surprising bird to see within the wadi as it is often thought of as a bird of dry places. 

male shining sunbird

Two types of sunbird were plentiful. There were both shining sunbird and nile valley sunbird.

Nile valley sunbird

The silverbill here were all African silverbill which were flocking.

African silverbill

Relatively few wintering birds were seen in this section and compared with all the other sites around Muhayil.

Daurian shrike

Daurian shrike and a Siberian stonechat were the only ones observed. 

Siberian stonechat

Other birds seen here included both fan-tailed raven and brown-necked raven, kestrel and graceful prinia.

A full list of all birds observed over the weekend will appear in a future blog. The next one will look at a water-bearing wadi from out of town.

Circular route north of Yanbu.

After visiting Yanbu dump and waste water lakes on Friday morning, Brian James and I travelled east and then completed a circular route up to Umluj and down the coast (but not birding there) back to Yanbu. 

male shining sunbird

The route was speculative birding since I couldn't find any previous records. It was also probably a little too ambitious. In the end we only had time to bird in the three areas with red circles in the map below. And although the birding was all above 1000 metres we didn't find a way up into the higher areas. We failed to find a route up Jebel Jar (marked A on the map).

One of the most remarkable features was that we only saw three bird of prey throughout this trip though one was a lesser kestrel. Another was common kestrel.

We did pick up some more highland species. For example shining sunbird is only found at altitude in Saudi Arabia. It was seen at the northern most point of our journey.

circular route from Yanbu round Jebel Jar to Umluj

Probably the most common bird seen and certainly the most widespread was white spectacled bulbul.

white spectacled bulbul

In the drier areas blackstart were common too.

blackstart

Another bird of altitude is Tristram's starling. We found this most often close to human occupation.

Tristram's starling

Of course house sparrow were near human occupation too.

house sparrow

In the  large, greener wadis especially in a plateau area the bird life was most diverse. 

Arabian babbler

In one of these we saw our only Arabian babbler and hoopoe of the trip.

hoopoe

In the remoter areas and in the small bushes there were many warblers but nearly all were of two species.

unidentified warbler

All those identified  were either willow warbler (on passage) and Menetries warbler (wintering).

The dropped wings and cocked tail is typical of a Menetries warbler as in the picture above. However as I write this blog I am unhappy with the colour of the tail. It's the same bird in both pictures. I would expect to see a dark tail in a Menetries warbler of all ages.

unidentified warbler

I will review my pictures and post to BirdForum. If anyone reading this blog can identify the bird, please say in the comments. The breast is a buff-rufous wash and so sub-alpine warbler must be a possibility. Interesting.....

A few little green bee-eater and black bush robin were sharing the bushes with the warblers.

Relatively few wheatear were seen and all were northern wheatear (passage) or desert wheatear (wintering) except one wintering eastern mourning wheatear which allowed close approach.

Eastern mourning wheatear

Other notable birds included a third bird of prey which was a steppe buzzard.

steppe buzzard

An Asian desert warbler was of interest too. Though this one was not in the company of a desert wheatear as is so often the case.

Asian desert warbler

In summary, this trip was useful for providing new data points for ebird database and so improve collective knowledge on species distribution. Next time it could be improved by making a full day out of it and by picking out a more minor route which takes in higher land and short cuts the journey (see the map at the start of the blog for that route). 

In the next blog, I'll write about our Saturday journey doing coastal birding.