Big Year in the Western Palearctic 2017

2024, 6 years later

It's now 2024, and 6 years have passed since we finished the Big Year and I (klacke) have finally retired from work, and with all this new time at my disposal, I decided to clean up the bigyearwp site. It was originally based on wordpress, and that wordpress installation eventually died. I wrote some code that extracted the original HTML from the broken site and cleaned the whole thing up. It's now entirely self contained with no external dependencies except for the SSL certificates.

Erik is living in the countryside in southern Sweden with his family. He has renovated an old lovely house and is still working the folk/world music scene.

Mårten finally went to University and will finish his BSc in biology this spring with focus on bio diversity.

We have printed this blog as a print-on-demand book. The data, as well as all pictures are in the public domain. It's available at Big Year WP Book

Mission statement

Big year in the Western Palearctic

A couple of years ago, the three of us did a birding trip to Texas, all of us had read the book Big Year and we had also thoroughly enjoyed the movie with Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin.

When we arrived at High Island with the iconic water tank, the idea of doing a Big Year in the Western Palearctic was first briefed.

The US birders have their area, called ABA and they do Big Years in that region. We Europeans have a birding area, called WP – Western Palearctic and quite a few European birders maintain a WP list. I do. To our knowledge, no one has ever attempted a full Big Year in the WP region – that is what we’ll be doing in 2017. New Year will be celebrated in Kuwait city, and on January 1, the hunt is on.

The goal is to see as many bird species as possible in WP during 2017.

What is WP? In short it is Europe extend, in the east it’s bordered by the Urals, ranging into western Kazakhstan down to the Caspian sea,

Northern Arabia, North Africa, all the Atlantic Islands as well as Europe proper.

We will follow the borders as defined by ( Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa: The Birds of the Western Palearctic )

The borders are indeed confusing, Mathieu Wald has a nice writeup where he tries to explain the borders at The little stint

iGoTerra

Good news, we shall have a very promising collaboration with the iGoTerra team. They have awesome software which specialises in displaying observations, species, subspecies maps, etc. They will help us with the integration between this WordPress site and the feed of observations that we’ll add to iGoTerra. Nice.

iGoTerra integration

Finally the iGoTerra integration is finished. I think it’ll work excellently for us. We’re already publishing this now, both for fun, but also to test the integration. The checklist that can be seen now is our recent sightings in Stockholm, on Dec 31 the iGoTerra team will zero the list and the game is on.

Here is how it works.

• We have an iGoTerra account assigned to the project, graciously provided free of charge by the iGoTerra team.
• We’ll enter everything we see in their pocket app iGoTerra pocket while in the field. This is done offline with the country checklist previously downloaded in the app. This must be done with Internet access.
• Once we have Internet access, we hit upload on our checklist.
• Our totals will then automatically appear here live.

Tech details: The iGoTerra team developed a feature for us, whereby a team like ours can get access to the grand total. It’s ideal for e.g a big year. The integration at our end consists of a

Moving the site

The integration with iGoTerra had some technicalities to it, in particular the integration provided by the iGoTerra team consisted of a "script"; tag with inclusion of js code from their site. Beautiful. However, initially this site was hosted at wordpress.com, and they do not allow inclusion of custom JavaScript code for security reasons. Hence, I decided to host bigyearwp.com myself at my private VPS. The move included DNS domain name transfer and whatnot, anyways we’re up now and all good. Hopefully I was able to transfer all subscribers too.

A tree full of Wagtails

First day, early this morning with a tree full of White Wagtails roosting in the dark next to the highway, several hundred Wagtails sitting still in the dark. Not how we usually see this lovely species.

We have altogether 16 days of birding here, we will run short of hotspots. Today we decided to bird an area north of the city, called Jahra.

Several nice birding spots there with the best one called Jahra Pool Reserve. It looks to me as if they let the cleaned water from the city of Al-Jahra just flow into a swamp before it reaches the Kuwait Bay, resulting in a fantastic wetland. This area is closed, but the amazing AbdulRahman Al-Sirhan Alenezi who works as a local bird guide, and runs the BirdsOfKuwait site graciously stepped up and offered to guide us for free, and also arrange permits to all closed areas.

So, at dawn we entered together with AbdulRahman and a Belgian/Danish team with Joachim Bertrands. Top species in the Pool Reserve were White-Tailed Lapwing, Greater spotted eagle, the fulvescens morph.

Another species that made us jump, although expected there, was the Asian Desert Warbler.

As well as:

The afternoon was spent in an agricultural area close to the city of Jahra called Jahra farms. People grow vegetables there in a small scale. Here we found the top species of the day, Crested Honey Buzzard. A rarity, hopefully not the last! Hypocolius is nice too.

Altogether 79 species the first day, it might be that we never reach this number of new ticks ever during the remainder of the year. Tomorrow we go south to Al-Wafra, also an agricultural area, this one isolated in the desert..

Persian Wheatear at the Saudi border

Today, our second day birding the full year, we decided to do some primary birding close to the border of Saudi Arabia. The morning was spent in a farming village called Al-Wafra . Birding there was boring and slow, nothing out of the ordinary was found. All farms in the village are closed to the public, so you have to enter, find the proprietor and ask for access. Apart from the poor birding, that worked out nice, people in Kuwait are truly nice and forthcoming.

The afternoon, full focus was on Red-tailed Wheatear, a.k.a the much more exotic sounding name of Persian Wheatear. Finally we found the bird close to a village called Al-Nuwaiseeb , close to the Saudi border.

Finished off the afternoon, by asking the Arab owner of a posh beach house if we could stand on his rocks and watch the sea. He more than smiled, and also sent his Bangladesh man servant to serve us tee as the sun settled over the gulf as the Pallas’s Gulls were sweeping by.

Iraq border

Yesterday AbdulRahman accompanied us to Abdali Farms close to the Iraq border. We had two important target species there, Red-wattled Lapwing and Afghan babbler. Both were relatively easy to find, the Lapwing were hiding during the day, but recurred in the afternoon in the field where they usually reside. Major bonus species was found too, a few days ago, local birder by name of Ouda Al-Bathali found an Indian Roller which we were also able to relocate.

After two days of pretty slow birding, and also just going for birds already found by other birders, we were today eager to bird more actively. We birded parks, and shores close to the city, collecting several easy species. It feels cocky to be able to write that e.g Masked Shrike is easy.

The shores were fantastic, the amount of wintering waders is massive, I know that Oman is supposed to be even better, but I have never before seen this amount of waders before. Thousands of Dunlins, several hundred Broad-billed Sandpipers and best of all, 85 Crab plovers. Finished off the afternoon scanning the flocks of Greater Flamingo, looking for that single Lesser. Apparently the last few winters at least one, possibly the same individual, Lesser Flamingo has wintered among the large flocks of Greater Flamingo, and dang, we found it. Apparently it’s the 5th record for Kuwait.

This is a proper WP rarity.

There is a friendly WhatsApp group that is being used by local birders, the last thing that happened this evening was that a local birder reported a flock of Rock Martins in Jahra Pool Reserve, but among those martins there was one individual that was different, a pale looking martin with grey/brown throat and no breast band – thus tomorrow morning we’ll go hunting for Grey-throated Martin!!!

Mutla Ranch

The very first thing we did this morning was to gather at the Jahra Pool Reserve to have a fresh look at the suspicious Martin found yesterday by Neil Tovey. A bunch of guys. Us three, the group with Belgian birder Joachim Bertrands, Omar Ashaheen, and Marcus Craig. Omar managed to get good shots with his monster camera, and it unfortunately turned out to be a regular Sand Martin – close but no cigar.

Went to Kabd Reserve, a research station with restricted access. AbdulRahman had arranged the permits. Serious business. Desert shrub area, with a stable population of Black-crowned Finchlark that were easy to find. Joachim Bertrands group found a Finsch’s Wheatear for us, apart from that it was pretty empty there.

North of Kuwait City there is a ranch called Mutla Ranch, it’s situated in the middle of the desert and looks like a crazy good migration trap. It also attracts some wintering birds. Together with Joachim Bertrands and team, we searched the ranch for a couple of hours. Not much activity, but when we return here in April it’ll probably be teeming with migrating warblers. The type of birding where you slowly walk through thickets and search for that rarity is loved by everyone. Mårten Wikström found the gem. Dream species, a roosting Pallid Scops Owl.

Al-Abraq

Westernmost point of Kuwait, small oasis by name of Al-Abraq. Again, a classical migrant trap that we will surely visit during our April trip. For quite some time, two Hume’s Warblers have been wintering there. A good bird for us, which with some bad luck we could have missed during the year.

Together with Marcus Craig, and the Belgian/Danish team we drove straight out into the desert. Completely barren and flat. Found 4 Temminck’s Lark and 9 Greater Hoopoe Larks. Both dessert species to drool over.

The trick was to look for camel turds or general garbage that attracts the few birds residing in the barren desert. Beautiful.

Where is the Shikra

The Shikra is silently sailing up as our most wanted bird. We have now spent two days searching for it. Yesterday, we spent the morning and more in Jahra Farms A possible Shikra was reported there. We found a Sparrowhawk that made us excited for a short while. The possible one was also downgraded today to Sparrowhawk.

Today, we spent the afternoon together with Omar Alsaheen searching for two Shikras reported in Abdali Farms to no avail.

We’re confused regarding the id characteristics of Shikra, the coloration of the cheek, the book says blue cheek whereas pictures and Omar says it doesn’t have to be blue … hmmmm. No mature males here, they are easy. Nahh, it seems as if the characteristics – “slightly rounded tail” and “thick legs” – are the only reliable ones. So, apart from the bird being rare, it is also disgustingly similar to a Sparrowhawk. This will be difficult.

There were older reports of a Shikra in Mutlas Ranch and we think Marcus Craig was searching his local patch (Mutlas Ranch) looking for it today. We’re just going to have to find one ourselves. The only certain Shikras currently reported are the ones in Abdali that we searched for today, they were seen last week by Ouda Al-Bathali.

We are golden

Finally, tenaciousness pays off. Birded hard some areas today we knew other birders don’t visit that often. In the afternoon, we went to the famous Sulaibiya Pivot Fields . The area is closed for public access, apparently there were some arguments between the owner of the fields and birders some 5 years ago, and since, no one has access to one of the best birding sites in Kuwait. We decided to walk into the backside of the area and scope. It started out great with 2 Booted Eagles where we stopped the car.

Walked a gravel area for a few kilometres and Erik shouts PACIFIC GOLDEN PLOVER. It’s far away, we all scope and then some murmuring … uhh . it has an eyebrow. That’s bad – right. Until Erik again shouts – it’s not Golden Plover, it’s SOCIABLE LAPWING !!

It turns out Erik was right the first time as well, it was two Pacific Golden Plovers and two Sociable Lapwings walking together with a flock of Northern Lapwings. Possibly our best find so far on BYWP. Local birder Mike Pope says Sociable Lapwing is 9th record for Kuwait whereas Pacific Golden Plover is more common. The pics we got aren’t that great – but with some luck, other birders will try to locate the birds in the next few days and hopefully they will get better shots.

Our birds were clearly smudgy and not white on the underside of the wings during flight, the Oriental Birdclub shows it well. After raising the alarm on local WhatsApp, Omar Alsaheen and Marcus Craig immediately showed up 🙂 We then tried the south west side of the field, which is where birders usually go. There we found an additional 9 Sociable Lapwings. They are all probably wintering in the fields. Finished off with 4 Richard’s Pipits, a Pallid Harrier and an adult Eastern Imperial Eagle.

Crake Day

Today we decided to make an attempt at the crakes, in particular Little Crake should be possible, but also Baillon’s crake should in theory be possible. After less than an hour in the morning, we received an alarm in the WhatsApp group, Markus Craig had Buff-bellied Pipit at the Pivot fields where we yesterday found the Sociable Lapwings. Our first actual twitch was a go. Fast in the car, drive recklessly and arrive at the site – the bird had just been flushed by a Hen Harrier. The Pipits returned and we could tick the Japonicus. One more really good bird pocketed.

Drove back to continue the Crake search and we got fender bended by a Mercedes. Three hours, two police stations and a paper trail completed, we returned at Jahra Pool Reserve to continue the Crake search. We decided to split up, and simultaneously search different spots. Erik had good views of a Little Crake at dusk, Mårten and I missed it. We cannot tick it, our rules say that all three must see or hear the bird. We’re going to have to work more on the elusive Crakes.

Also, we’ve decided to attempt photographs of all Snipes. There is always the remote possibility of a Pin-tailed Snipe and to identify that safely, we surely need photographs. Lots of Common Snipe in Jahra Pool Reserve.

Searched and flushed a Jack snipe, good and semi-hard-to-find bird which we needed.

Goodbye Kuwait

We’re starting to run out of birds here in Kuwait, there is of course the possibility of finding new birds, but currently there is nothing here for us that we can go for. Thus we decided to make our Kuwait stay a bit shorter and go for a twitch tour in the UK, plenty of rarities there at the moment, in articular Dusky Thrush and Pacific Diver

Yesterday we spent all day in Wafra searching. We did find what we believe is the best farm there, Rosemary’s farm residing exactly on the border to KSA. We found an odd looking Yellow Wagtail that got us excited for a short while.

The stay here in Kuwait has been fantastic, and we’d like to thank all in the local birding community here for enthusiastic help.

In particular Abdulrahman Al-Sirhan Alenezi who has been invaluable. Check out Birds of Kuwait if you want to plan a trip here. Markus Craig has been fantastic, loads of help and energy, and Omar Alsaheen helped in his calm relaxed way. We’re already looking forward to the return trip here in April.

UK twitching tour

First day of crazy improvised UK twitching tour. There is a massive amount of rarities residing in the UK currently. We want them all, or more succinctly, need them.

Here is the short list as graciously provided to us by Cris Batty at Rare Birds Alert.

• Pacific Diver Penzance in Cornwall 50.1152, -5.5309 (can be elusive)
• Hudsonian Whimbrel Perranuthnoe in Cornwall 50.1136, -5.4511
• Green-winged Teal Hayle Estuary in Cornwall 50.1762, -5.4371
• Lesser Scaup Dozmary Pool in Cornwall 50.5443, -4.5498
• Bonaparte’s Gull Dawlish Warren in Devon 50.6146, -3.4248 (elusive)
• Ring-necked Duck Chew Valley Lake in Somerset 51.3395, -2.6048
• Lesser Yellowlegs park at 50.7364, -2.0417 then walk southwest along Slough Lane and follow signs to Sherford Pool or French’s Pools (also Green-winged Teal on same pools)
• Ring-billed Gull Blashford Lakes in Hampshire 50.8786, -1.7867 (late afternoon from Tern Hide)
• Ring-necked Duck Abberton Reservoir in Essex 51.8146, 0.8263
• Pallas’s Warbler Kessingland in Suffolk 52.4107, 1.7238
• Golden Pheasant Wolferton in Norfolk 52.8235, 0.4754 (dawn is best)
• Lady Amherst’s Pheasant Lidlington in Bedfordshire 52.0375, -0.5528 (very elusive)
• Dusky Thrush Beeley in Derbyshire 53.2063, -1.6037
• Black Scoter Goswick in Northumberland 55.7091, -1.8975 (hard when windy)
• American Wigeon Caerlaverock in Scotland 54.9771, -3.4821 (also Green-winged Teal on same pond)
• Ring-billed Gull Strathclyde Loch in Clyde, Scotland 55.7888, -4.0299 (comes to bread)
• Hooded Merganser Barr Loch, Lochwinnoch in Clyde, Scotland 55.7875, -4.6262
• Surf Scoter St Andrews in Fife, Scotland 56.3451, -2.8008 (also check off the beach north of here)
• Ring-necked Duck Pitlochry in Perthshire, Scotland 56.7081, -3.7385
• On islands off the Scottish coast there are wintering Cackling Goose (Islay in Inner Hebrides), American Coot (North Uist in Outer Hebrides), Northern Harrier (North Ronaldsay in Orkney Isles), and Killdeer (Shetland Isles), but each will probably take multiple days travelling.
• The only vagrant Snow Goose (in Lancashire) has gone missing right now, but you might count one at Tittesworth Reservoir in Staffordshire 53.1320, -2.0127 as Category C (it’s not probably not good enough though!)

So, quite a lot. One bird that’s not on the list, was the reported Stejnegers’s Stonechat, a recent IOC split. That’s the bird we went for first, found it. Dang!.

We were told on site that there has been DNA taken from the bird bla bla and it’s rock solid. Apparently the DNA guys had mixed up the samples and it’s just a regular Stonechat – we were told after the twitch. Win some lose some. We also spent a few hours at the Stonechat site (Dungeness) looking for a Ring-necked Duck to no avail.

Went west, towards Poole and tried to find a recently reported Lesser Yellowlegs – again to no avail. Will retry tomorrow morning, the Yellowlegs is too good a bird to leave behind. Same pool as the hiding Yellowlegs we did however connect with our first American tick for the year – a nice male Green-winged teal.

Two really nice birding sanctuaries were visited today, lot’s of winter birds, Godwits, Chaffinches, Dunnocks etc.

Tomorrow, we’ll find those Yellowlegs, and then move on towards the Bonaparte’s gull at Exeter.

Twitching twitching

Yesterday was a bit of a disappointment, the Stonechat was rejected, and we couldn’t find the Lesser Yellowlegs at Lytchett Fields . Luckily we decided to spend the night in Poole and make a second attempt at connecting with Yellowlegs. After a few seconds of confusion with a Spotted Redshank, another wader flew into view and we had the Yellowlegs.

The Green-winged Teal was still there.

Went straight for the Bonaparte’s gull which was reported from “Johns Hide” at a marvelous area called Dawlish Warren close to Exeter. American Widgeon was twitched en route. Spent maybe an hour there until we found the bird among all the Black-headed Gulls. Easily spotted in flight with almost white under wings.

This is a really good WP bird, one of the heavy targets for our UK twitch. Moved on towards a Lesser Scaup further west into Cornwall.

At this time we decided to call it a day and go look for a hotel in Penzance, however en route we decided to give a reported 2cy Ringed-billed Gull a chance at River Gannel and miraculously we found that one too at sunset. What a spectacular twitch, six rare Yanks in the same day.

We’d like to thank Chris Batty who has sent us these well organised lists with tickable birds with exact geo coordinates making it possible for us to just move from one bird to another.

Until next time UK

It turned out to be the right move to go for a twitching tour in the UK. We were – with a lot of help from UK birders – able to locate all the rare UK visitors that we set out to tick, and then some.

All in all, 14 rare ones in the UK, with Bonapartes’s Gull, Pacific Loon and the Dusky Thrush at the top. Adding some long distance shots of some of the gems.

We were pretty close to the Lady Amherst’s Pheasant site, but we decided to not even attempt the bird. Apparently one male might still exist inside a fenced area, and it’s also supposedly really hard to get to see. Poor bird.

The thrush in Derbyshire has been around for quite some time. When we arrived at the village, there were some depressed birders there that hadn’t seen the bird during the entire day. Not good. Eventually we found it though, among all the Redwing Thrushes. Good thing we had the picture, the local birders didn’t really trust us.

Also – we have had a few questions on whether the Lesser Scaup we ticked wasn’t actually a Greater Scaup. We feel confident it’s a Lesser. I include here an additional picture from the lake which better shows the steeper forehead.

We have also noticed that there is smudge on the right side of our bird, which also shows well on “good” pictures from the lake of the Lesser Scaup there. Hence – the tick stands.

Furthermore, and I don’t think we have officially mentioned this earlier. We’re not following the Netfugl list as we originally stated. At the time, we thought that was a good idea, but Björn Andersson from the iGoTerra team convinced us that the IOC is the proper list for us to follow. Quite a few UK birders wondered why we didn’t go for the Hudsonian Whimbrel that we just drove by. That bird is not on the IOC list, it might end up there, but even that seems unlikely, hence we skipped the bird. Same thing with Red Grouse.

Since we’re able to tick sub species in the iGoTerra app (and we do) it’ll be easy to translate our IOC based list to a Netfugl one if we should so desire. I’m sure someone will do that. News today was that BOU adapts to the IOC list – so that is indeed good news. The mess with different countries running their own lists is unfortunate.

Back home

Back home for a couple of days until we head off for Morocco. There are a few rare birds around in Sweden. We went straight for the only (AFAWK) remaining Siberian Accentor. An individual that has been seen regularly in a garden in Lindesberg . The bird disappeared during the bad weather a week ago, but was seen again yesterday by the owner of the house with the garden. (Not a birder) We went there this morning an Mårten found the skulking bird after an hour or so.

In southern Sweden there is also Gyrfalcon and a Black Duck, we might pick those off during our stay home.

ABDU

We’re birding again. We’ve now spent quite some extra time doing nothing at home. Both Mårten and Erik had some personal stuff to do, but now we’re in the air again. We have managed to tick off some tricky birds at home though.

• The Siberian Accentor lingering in Lindesberg was important.
• The Arctic Redpoll is not a particularly uncommon bird in Sweden during winter, but it’s far from trivial to find. Could have been missed with some bad luck
• And yesterday, we had twitch tour to Skåne (Scania) to pick up the wintering American Black Duck that’s been there for several winters now.
• Tundra Bean Goose yesterday is also a good bird.

And tomorrow we’re leaving for Morocco. We have been wavering back and forth on the tactics in Morocco. We want to go to Mauritania, initially we thought we should do that on a separate trip. Then we found out it’s possible to actually acquire Visas in Rabat, making it possible to drive across the border from Western Sahara to Mauritania. We’ve decided to skip Mauretania on this trip, and do that later on our return trip to Morocco. It’s possible to fly there and acquire a visa at the airport. It would be too much boring driving to do all of Morocco/West Sahara and then also Mauretania in 3 weeks.

As a WP lister though, it feels as if Mauretania is very important, flipping through the Birds of Africa south of Sahara book shows quite a number of African species that ought to be possible on the WP southern most border. One can always drool over the possibility of finding a new species for the region. Dream on.

On a different topic, yesterday we got to see a flock of Grey Partridges.

When we ‘re spending time together, in the car or just hanging out, we often speculate over different species. Where/when will see this or that. Grey Partridge is such a species, It’s not especially common anywhere included in our itinerary, it would have been possible to miss. On the other hand, the bird is not sufficiently rare to deserve a directed effort. Spending a few days in Skåne is by no means a sure way of seeing the Grey Partridge. Anyways, yesterday a Common Buzzard scared a small flock that took to it’s wings. Nice. It wouldn’t surprise me that when this year is over, we’re lacking something that is pretty common, like maybe Spotted Nutcracker or Three-toed Woodpecker and there is no time left to repair the damage.

Bureaucracy and birds in Morocco

We’re birding again although our winter trip to Morocco sure didn’t start out well. Arrived at Rabat Airport and the customs officer confiscated all scopes and also my camera + 300/2.8 Canon lens. Our French suck (ashamed) so we couldn’t talk ourselves out of the problem. The Moroccan authorities are a wee bit worried over journalists entering the country, and apparently our gear looked sufficiently professional (Thanks Swarovski!!) to make them worried. We were told that we needed a permit from the Ministry of Communications to be allowed to photograph in the country. Furthermore Mårtens bag was lost en route, so we were pretty goddamn depressed when we left the airport on Jan 2.

All of next day was spent at the ministry, manoeuvring through the intricacies of north african bureaucracy. Interesting experience. Eventually we managed to convince them that the scopes were ok, and we should be able to collect the scopes, and then later when the permit was finally signed by the absent director, we should be able to also pick up the camera. At the airport though, picking up Mårtens lost luggage and the scopes, we got the camera too. Dang. Good to go.

First target was Marsh Owl, at Merja Zerga . Difficult. First evening spent on the western shore, checking for flying owls. Nada. Next morning spent on the eastern shore, several spots, looking for flying owls. Nada. We then resorted to calling Mohamed Amezian , local birder who is our goto guy here in Morocco who is running the excellent site Maghreb Ornitho . Mohamed arranged a date with a local (to the lake) guide who helped us to find the owl. It turned out that we had been really really close. The owls are hard to flush, pretty much as a Short-eared Owl. Finally we got it, not just one but four. A dream bird. The english name – Marsh Owl – is much less enticing than the swedish – “Kapuggla”

Also found a Little Owl at the site, this has been a boogie bird for me over the years. It’s not a rare bird, it’s just that I’ve never seen it before. I’ve been in the right habitat hundreds of times, and everybody says – ohh it’s easy, they usually just perch on poles in the fields, just keep your eyes open and you’ll see it – yeah right – I say not. Well, now I have seen it.

Pretty good birding in general at Merja Zerga National Park, lot’s of human activities around, but the marsh itself is apparently not possible to exploit – thus it remains. Plenty of common marsh species there.

Went quickly to Lac Sidi Bourghaba and was lucky like crazy there. Plenty of White-headed Ducks and also a few Red-knobbed Coot. It’s possible that the White-headed Duck is the prettiest of our WP ducks. Mmmmmm.

Drove into the night and had our first tent night at the so called Hidden parking lot which is inside a small forest with a population of Double-spurred Francolin. Awesome to camp with Tawny Owl (ssp Mauritanica) hooting before falling asleep. Also Stone Curlew calling in the dark. Woke at dusk, Erik screams – FRANCOLIN CALLING. We got fairly good views of the Francolins flying on stiff wings. No pics!!

Next target was Lac Aoua where the king has a residence. There we picked up the last duck. Marbled duck, and now we can almost tear out all the duck pages from the Collins guide.

Drove over the Middle Atlas mountains, plenty of snow and plenty of happy Moroccans playing in the snow. Sleepover at shabby hotel in Zeida. Tomorrow we’ll be at it again.

Into the desert

Zaida plains is the place for the Dupont’s Lark. This is the most reliable place for the species in the entire WP. The Dupont’s Lark has a spectacular song, and is supposedly hard to see. Zaida was freezing cold and windy, and we started out on the plains well before sunrise. We used our usual tactics for search. We split up, all three of us and searched – then used Walkie-Talkies to communicate. Just walking straight out onto a large plains area – which from a distance looks completely barren and searching for larks is more than nice – it’s fantastic. We searched pretty much all day for the larks to no avail. We used both the Gosney guide as well as recent sightings on eBird. We gave up in the afternoon and continued south towards Merzouga. We’ll have to revisit the Zaida plains when we come back to Morocco in April. Hmmmm. A few good species found on the plains though, Red-rumped Wheatear which was a lifer for all of us, as well as Lesser Short-toed Lark, Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Shore Lark and Temminck’s Lark.

Close to Merzouga we decided to camp in the desert. The idea of travelling with tent and camping gear rocks, it gives complete freedom and entirely removes the stress factor of finding a shabby hotel. Unless the climate is like Zaida, it’s really nice to sleep outdoors. The stars in the evening are a bonus. Woke up to find the car battery dead, decided to bird the morning hours before attacking the battery problem. Awesome birding around our camp site, which was carefully chosen as the most reliable place for Tristram’s Warbler according to the Gosney guide. And sure enough, they were there.

Also plenty of White-crowned Wheatears, Trumpeter Finch, Fulvous Babbler and Desert Lark. The nearby Village was called Merzane.

Also the Maghreb Lark was common, a recent split from Crested Lark. It’s paler, has less defined facial pattern and has a slightly longer bill.

Fixed the battery with help from mechanics in Erfoud and drove on towards a reliable place for Pharao Eagle-owl called Rissani Cliffs. The Owl was calmly roosting in the evening sun some 50 metres up on the cliff in a hollow cleft. Slept in Rissani.

Tuesday, Feb 7, the plan was to drive towards Mhamid on the Algerian border where a Pied Crow has been reliable the last few years. The weather here is hot during mid-day, thus we are trying to arrange everything so that we can actively bird during the morning hours, drive during the day, and then bird the last two hours before sunset. We drove out of Rissani and just picked the first spot that looked good, spent some time there and then picked another one. The second one turned out to be good. Found The Saharan Scrub-warbler. This bird is not a full species according to IOC and we have said that we shouldn’t spend time on subspecies, on the other hand it is split into a full species in the latest edition of Collins, and Lars Svensson is rarely wrong, thus we expect this to become an armchair tick in the not too distant future.

We found it a bit strange with the wadis, some are empty whereas others are teeming with birds although they look the same. On these plains, we split up as usual, and the wadi Erik picked turned out to be birdy, whereas the other two were empty. Difficult. Other good birds here were Bar-tailed Lark which was common, Desert Lark, Hoopoe Lark, Tristram’s Warbler, Moussier's Redstart.

Once the day started to get hot, we drove towards Mhamid, a long drive. A common bird in the desert is the Brown-necked Raven, it’s not easy to see the “brown neck” but this shot has it well shown.

Just before we reached Mhamid, two Cream-coloured coursers flew over the road. Again, a dream-bird, one of those birds from the Collins guide we have drooled over but never seen (me and erik)

Spent the last hour before sunset searching for the crow. Tomorrow we’ll get the crow.

From desert to coast

The village of Mahmid in the south-east of Morocco hosts a Pied Crow . Apparently the bird has been there for the last couple of years. It’s usually seen close to “Hotel Kasbah Sahara Services” which is the place to stay at when visiting Mahmid. We spoke about the bird to the folks at the hotel, even offering 100 money to whoever finds the bird for us. This offer triggered some frenzied interest from the folks working there. Apparently they hadn’t realized that it was possible to capitalize on a “simple crow”. Now they have, and we recommend future searchers of the crow to either stand on a hill nearby, or even better, on the roof of the hotel.

We started out at dawn searching for the crow, usual tactics with split up team and walkie-talkies. Bad tactics for this bird, better to just stand still together and wait for the crow, it’s mobile and flies by. Mårten found the bird, I went to Mårten fast by car and got it too. Erik was upheld by militaries checking him, freaking out. Eventually Erik got it too. Remember our rules, we all have to see/hear the bird.

Once we had the crow, we started out on a long drive towards Tissint where we were planning to search for Sandgrouses. There is a spot on the river, 8 km downstream from Tissint where Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse come to drink in the evening. The other Sandgrouse species drink in the morning. Once we had set our tent at the site, we started to wait for the incoming Lichtenstein’s. A car came with 3 happy Dutch birders, with Norbert Van De Grint . First thing they say once they’ve jumped out of the car – Eyy, are you the Swedes ???. We’re famous now. We all waited well into the dark for the Sandgrouses, finally Erik (as usual) finds them in the dark, poor views and we also heard them.

In the morning, we waited for the other Sandgrouses to come to drink. They came at 9.30 in large flocks. Both Spotted and Crowned. Nice.

Once the Sandgrouses were bagged, we remade our plans due to weather forecasts and Golden Nightjar gossip. Plenty of snow in the Atlas mountains made us decide to go directly south, aiming for Dakhla in Western Sahara. Good birding en route with e.g Moussier’s Redstart.

En route to Dahkla, we had the important stop of the Khnifiss National Parc where we camped, and searched all day for Kelp Gull. Eventually we got it through hard work. A really really good WP bird.

Sleepover at Tarfaya which has a really nice pier, we spent some time there before sunset. Plenty of Skuas that we’ll check more thoroughly tomorrow morning.

Sea watching at Dakhla

Dakhla is a city in the south of the Western Sahara. Watching the sea there turned out to be excellent. The city shores host a certain population of Royal Tern, so we had to go there regardless. Anyways, we parked ourselves at the tip of the point, and started to scan the sea. Hundreds of Great Skuas and Gannets.

But best of all, plenty of European Storm Petrels. At home this is an exceptionally rare bird, and having the privilege of studying the jizz of these small birds over and over again was a great learning experience. The European Storm Petrel is easy to id, more tricky were the birds we identified as Band-rumped Storm Petrel. Larger, generally blacker and completely different flight pattern. We saw these birds sufficiently well to ensure they were not Leach’s Storm Petrel. Both species of Petrels were very tricky to photograph – thus no pics.

Aouserd Road

There is paved road going from Dahkla to Aouserd which is a place of minimal significance in the desert. The road is one of those famous birding roads with plenty of wadis along the barren desert road. We were expecting more raptors along the road than what we have seen, a few Kestrels and Long-legged Buzzards.

Parts of this desert is shrubland, whereas others are – well just sand. We had a long list of Aouserd road specialities to tick off there and we got them all except the Thick-billed Lark which we can get later further north in Morocco.

We decided to camp at the most famous wadi, called Oued Jenna. If you check that point in eBird, you’ll see that we’re not the first visitors. Awesome to camp under the stars when there is no light pollution whatsoever.

Once the dark settled, we heard the first Golden Nightjars playing. At least two, maybe more. This is a fairly new WP species and AFAWK Oued Jenna is the only place you can get them in WP. We made a recording of the sound at GOLDEN-NIGHTJAR-Oued-Jenna-2017-02-13.mp3

On the other hand, driving back, we passed yet another (unnamed) wadi that looked even better than Oued Jenna, under-birded is probably not an exaggeration. A dutch team from bancdarguin camped on the other side of the road, they shared some whiskey and good company – nice guys. We drove on the road for an hour trying to get a visual to no avail.

Woke at dawn – and it was mist.

Target birds in the wadi were Cricket Warbler and Sudan Golden Sparrow. The warblers were easy – albeit hard to photograph, whereas the Sudan Golden Sparrow was harder, and we only saw a few.

The wadi was also filled with Subalpine Warblers. Felt really good with breakfast after such a morning.

Walked east in the wadi after breakfast and found two Greater Spotted Cuckoos. Soon the heat made us weak and birding was slow. It’s winter there now, however in mid day it’s above 30 degrees.

In the afternoon we went searching for Dunn’s Lark. Some 15 km west of Oued Jenna we found two. Spectacular bird. Hard to find and perfectly adapted to the sand, making it almost invisible. Thanks Norbert and team for the coordinates.

Possible future split on this species too. Spent the remainder of the afternoon searching for our lacking Aouserd species. Mårten and Erik found a wolf.

This appears to be something extraordinary, we really don’t have a clue here, but it appears as if Birding Frontiers has.

Worst possible dinner in Auserd and then slow driving back to camp in the dark looking for stuff on the road. Lots of mice, Jerboas, lizards, hares, hedgehogs etc on the road in the night. But then we saw this awesome viper – horns and all.

What a beauty. Approaching the Oued Jenna, we had a brief glimpse of the Golden Nightjar crossing the road – thus no pics 🙁 What a day, birding doesn’t get much better.

Tuesday Feb 14, woke at dawn, no mist. Two Auserd species remain, and we start with what we believe is the hardest, but also the most important. The African Desert Warbler. The Dutch guys we met earlier had seen it, and entered coordinates on observado.org. We went there and searched for maybe an hour until we found a pair – yellow eyes and all.

Desert birding is truly agreeable, it’s active, you have to search for the birds. You have to walk – which is something we all like.

Also, since it’s so barren, there are so few things – the thing you find you ponder upon – like these strange melons that grow. I ate some, and it was disgusting. I wonder who eats this – and why.

Before giving up on Auserd, we decided to search a little bit more for the Thick-billed Lark. Saw mostly Cream-coloured Coursers and Thick-knees though 🙂

Mmmmmmmm.

Now back to the north, sleeping at Hotel La Grand Gare at El-Aaiun – capital of West-Sahara.

Goodbye Western Sahara

This night we slept in El-AAiun the capital of Western Sahara. If a non-existing country can have a capital. For the politically inclined readers you can read up on that on the Wikipedia entry on Western Sahara. It sure seems to me as if the Moroccans did a major land-grab in the sixties. Anyways, we’re birders not activists so we went down to the river early in the morning. The river that flows through El-Aaiun seems to us to be one of the best spots in WP to find rarities. It just has to attract lost vagrants. Lots of shore birds, lots of reeds to hide in. Two new WP ticks there for us, Eurasian Reed Warbler and Glossy Ibis. Whoever has this as his/her local patch will one day strike gold.

Drove north and made a smoke stop at the site for the Kelp Gull close to Akhfennir and we found 4 Kelp Gulls, two adult and two what we believe are 2nd winter birds.

Drove north back to the fields south-west of Gulemim where we earlier searched for the Thick-billed Lark. This time loaded with fresh coordinates from our dutch friends, Norbert Van De Grind and the team. The fields were packed with hundreds of Short-toed Lark.

This looked promising, because a week ago there were none. Eventually we found the Lark.

Towards Agadir

Thursday Feb 16 we allocated the entire day to search for Bonelli’s Eagle in the mountains south of Guelmim . We had been told about a cliff with nests by Miguel Perea . We went there and sure enough, the cliff had hosted raptors – but none were there. Massive amounts of Wheatears though, mostly Red-tailed and also Desert, Black and Northern.

We had lunch below the cliff, spent time, waited and eventually gave up after a couple of hours. Went further on the small mountain road on chance and – dang!

A rare bird, according to Collins Bird Guide, approximately 600 pairs exist in the entire region. This one is an adult.

Went north towards the famous NP Oued Massa which is famous for it’s population of the almost extinct Northern Bald Ibis. We sneak-camped at the entrance to the park which had reports of Red-necked Nightjar. Listening in the dark after what has become Mårtens boogie-bird. He has searched for it on numerous occasions to no avail.

The morning of Friday Feb 17 started out with some excellent general birding. The main target was the Black-crowned Tchagra, but we just – birded. Lot’s of common, but nice birds.

Eventually we also found the Tchagra.

Despite its appearance, it has a beautiful – easily identified song. Two main targets remained in the area, we started with what we thought was the hardest and also most important, the Ibis. They’re not especially easy to find – they roam the area – which is large. We searched for hours on the “well known” spots. While doing so, we saw the good looking ssp algeriensis of Southern Grey Shrike. Very dark form.

Again, just spending time on the right spot paid off – a flock of 21 Ibises came flying in.

Next target was Brown-throated Martin. According to the Gosney guide, they were nesting close to a bridge, just outside of the NP. We spent some time on the bridge, but no swallow. What often happens when we wait – after a while, everybody just starts to bird. Once you do that, other birds appear. In this case, some common but nevertheless nice birds.

No Martins here, neither in a pool we also visited. We gave up, and went further north towards Agadir and Oued Sous. The Gosney guide suggests looking at a place close to the entrance of the Royal Palace. The Martin was there alright. Again, a really good WP species.

Now, just the Red-necked Nightjar remained. Birded the river and the forest around while waiting for the dark. Barbary Partridges and Stone Curlews in the forest and lots of gulls on the river.

Gosney recommends the area close to the entrance of the Palace for the Nightjar. The king actually lives there, and thus the place is heavily guarded. No chance in hell to enter. Once dark fell, we silently went without lights along the fence, listening attentively in the dark. After an hour or so, Mårten and Erik heard the bird, I didn’t due to age and too many Rock’n Roll concerts. We went further in and finally I heard the bird too … phhhu. We were fantasising about what we should say if the guards saw us in the dark, with what appears to be high-tec gear. Stay back! We’re the idiot-margot-wallström-attack-team .. mmm maybe not.

Anyways – full goddamn cleanup in Sous Massa – feels just great.

Au revoir Morocco

I’m just using a french word in the title here, it doesn’t mean anything. Neither of us speak French, which is truly detrimental when travelling Morocco. Everyone speaks French here and not being able to, feels almost barbaric. We’ve managed with English and sign language.

In total, our Morocco trip must be considered a success, the species we had on our list we missed were Dupont’s Lark, Tawny Eagle, Dark Chanting Goshawk and Egyptian Nightjar. Some of these we’ll repair later. We’re returning here in April, migration species and the Small Buttonquail. We’ll try to do some repairs then.

These last days from Agadir to Marrakech we had some great birding as usual. We started the morning in Agadir with just casual birding in Oued Sous, nothing spectacular there though. One of the palace guards came running whistling loudly, waving. We just walked away, pretending ignorance. The wild-goose-chase project of Sunday 19 was to search Sous Valley for Tawny Eagle and the probably extirpated Dark Chanting Goshawk. The last sighting of the Goshawk is more than 10 years old. Planting ourselves on a hill, we got our number 350 – Short-toed Eagle.

The Short-toed Eagles are migrating north, and later next day driving across the High Atlas, in a high altitude pass, we saw flocks of Short-toed Eagles going north. Migration has started, driving further we saw newly arrived flocks of Red-rumped Swallows, Common Swift and Sedge Warbler.

Camping the night in a dry river bed which is a known nesting site for Egyptian Nightjar. We had read recent reports of Egyptian Nightjars that have just arrived at Merzouga. We didn’t hear any though.

Sunday 19, the project of the day is to find the subspecies Maghreb Wheatear. According to the IOC it’s a Mourning Wheatear, but according to Lars Svensson and the Collins guide, it’s a full species. We followed the Gosney guide, driving slowly along a road known to host the Wheatear. It’s a species that has steep rocky slopes as its habitat. We searched such areas to no avail. Eventually Erik says – I think it’ll sit in a bush on flat ground – Mårten and I go – Yeahh .. sure. One minute later, Erik finds it on flat ground, in a small bush.

With the Wheatear (which WILL be split) in the bag, we decided to cross the Atlas mountains before dark. The Mourning Wheatear female looks like the male, this subspecies has the female all different.

Slept at nice hotel at Ait Ourir .

Last real birding day in Morocco, High Atlas and high altitude species at the ski resort Oukaimeden which at least for birders is more famous for the African Crimson-winged Finch than it is for its slopes. We had read quite a few birding reports with groups failing to get all the way to the end of the road due to weather conditions. Not to worry, we got there and lot’s of high-altitude birds there, in particular the price bird.

This bird recently used to be the same as the similar looking Eurasian Crimson-winged Finch which we’ll tick in Turkey, but is now a split. This appears to happen quite often with species that are the same/similar, but have radically geographically distributions. Same thing with the Desert Warbler. Lot’s of other good birds at Oukaimeden .

As well as the locally resident Horned Lark which is a possible future split

Now that we’re diverging into the minefield of subspecies, why don’t we all go full dutch, i.e split everything. I give you the Atlas Chaffinch and the Moroccan Pied Wagtail

Final remarks on this Morocco trip. Morocco is a very easy country to travel, people are friendly and helpful, and even though we don’t speak French, everything went smooth and easy. Massive amount of police checkpoints, especially in the south. However, the policemen are correct and friendly, it just takes time. We’d like give super special thanks to Mohamed Amezian who has provided excellent help on a number of occasions when we were stumped. Thanks!! and hopefully we’ll hang some on our April return trip.

Pale Martin

After careful consideration we have concluded that the Martin we saw in Kuwait, indeed must be Pale Martin (Riparia Diluta) and we tick it. Plenty of good pictures of the individual, included here are two of the best ones captured by Omar Alsaheen.

Good arguments provided by Wouter Faveyts

“Looks interesting indeed! I checked the Alula article from 2007 (Schweizer & Ayé) again, and it seems that the bird could really be a Pale (Sand) Martin (Riparia diluta). Greyish cast, lack of clear distinction between dark ear coverts and paler throat, pale head with dark eye and lores are all ticking the right boxes. Also diffuse breast band, although this feature seems more variable in comparison to Sand Martin.”

As well as by Alan Joseph Dalton

“I think this is a Pale Martin. Note the darker new inner primaries on your bird, which fit in well with 2nd gen molt for the species. There are quite a few records in Oman, where it’s probably easily overlooked, so a Kuwait record would not really be unexpected. Head pattern and upper chest look good.”

The Alula article from 2007 (Schweizer & Ayé) seems to correlate with the Kuwait bird we saw.

KORC has not yet decided on this matter.

Twitching Iberia

Unplanned twitch trip to Portugal and Spain with a quick stop in Amsterdam. In order to get a really high year-tick number, we don’t only have to go bird all the different countries in WP, but we must also do some twitching. So when those rare and lost vagrants appear, we must pick at least some of them. We cannot go for all of them, that is just too much. For example, the other day A White-throated Bee-eater was reported at Maghreb Ornito found at the very same hotel where we stayed in Dakhla, Western Sahara just two weeks ago. We’ll leave that Bee-eater alone.

However, we decided to go for a couple of rare ones reported from the Iberian Peninsula. First things first though, quick stop in Amsterdam for the Baikal Teal. The original plan was to take a cab from the Schiphol airport to the Teal, instead someone got the bright idea to ask our FB group for a friendly Dutch driver, Martin Miske volunteered and drove us to the Teal. We had maybe 4 hours to search for the duck in small ditches. We never found it and our first actual dip was a fact. Boring. Anyways, thanks Martin, and when we meet again, we owe you a beer.

Landed in Lisbon at midnight, and decided to skip sleeping and drove through the night to northern Spain. In the sleepy village San Cibrao in Galicia, a Thayer’s Gull has been wintering for the last couple of years. We arrived at dawn and started to search for the Gull. It’s non trivial to locate among the thousands of Yellow-legged Gulls in the area. After a couple of hours we started to despair, however we did find an Iceland Gull which is also a good bird.

After lunch we decided to “return to the crime scene” which is always a good tactic. Most sightings of the Thayer’s Gull have been at a fish farm west of San Cibrao. The farm attracts massive amounts of gulls – and then – dang. It’s there.

It was clearly smaller than the Yellow-legged Gulls, and the legs are bright pink. Thank’s Canada.

Loong drive going all the way to the Algarve coast for an American Herring Gull and a Sora.

Mårten got to know Thijs Valkenburg when working in Portugal a few years ago, Thijs brother Joost Valkenburg grew up in the city where the Sora had been seen for the last couple of weeks and Joost stepped up to help with the Sora, and also show us his childhood local patch. Beautiful little city called Silves on the Arade River. When we’re two hours away from Silves, Joost texts us and says that the Sora is still there. The Sora had been seen on the very same short stretch of reeds for several weeks, so it should be easy. We cannot find it though, it’s hiding. Instead we went for lunch and the American Herring Gull in Portimao . That bird – which actually didn’t look to well – was there.

It feels very good to have this species pocketed. When we visit the Azores later this year, we can then safely ignore all (I guess continuously ongoing) discussions there over gull characteristics. Gulling is hard. Fun, but sometimes it can be overwhelming.

Went back to Silves to search for the Sora. The tide was going up, and the reeds where the Sora had been seen were slowly getting under water. Finally, by pure skill and split vision, Erik sees the bird flying away. Landed on the other shore and we could get pics.

Phu Www. With 3 Yanks ready, we decided to go to Castro Verde which is a fantastic spot in southern Portugal. Vast plains with Bustards, Larks and in particular the endangered Spanish Imperial Eagle. I made a really bad choice of just stopping the car on the highway there (bird), and a police car came. Here are the tactics I recommend, just agree and repeat what they say.

Officer: Uhh, you cannot stop here. Me: No, I know, I cannot stop here. Officer: What were you thinking of stopping here? Me: Sorry, I wasn’t thinking at all. Officer: It stupid to stop here, it’s dangerous. Me: Yes, it’s stupid. We’re idiots.

At this point, the officer will shake his head and just go away. It makes a small dent in your pride, but it’s worth it.

Thijs put us in contact with Bruno Herlander Martins who is a biologist at LPN . Bruno works with the protection of the Spanish Imperial Eagle and he told us about the various measures they take to aid the eagles. Ranging from fixing the branches on the eucalyptus trees which are too smooth to hold the nests, to befriending and educating the local farmers. Interesting work indeed.

We met with Bruno at dawn, and went searching for Bustards and Eagles. Before jumping into the car, Bruno asks – Do you guys need a Long-eared Owl. Haha, Mårten has been bitching over that bird since we skipped a site in England. It’s one of those birds that are rare – but not sufficiently rare to make a directed effort to find. Bruno had a roosting tree in the village.

Bustards were easy to find, especially Greater. Also plenty of Calandra Larks on the plains. Eventually we also found the Eagle. Thanks Bruno !!

Ticked a few Category C species on the way back to Lisbon, we even grabbed a “future Cat C” – talk about future proofing the list.

We have a whole bunch of Cat-C remaining in Portugal, and we’ll have to spend some more time on those when we revisit in August.

Sweden-forest

We have just surpassed 400 species with our latest forest trip to the north of Sweden. It felt good to go birding at home, although birding in the Swedish winter forest can be slow. It’s cold and snowy, and it is far between the birds.

We started out with a recently reported Steller's Eider on the coast of Medelpad just north of Sundsvall . Beautiful, cold sea.

After a cold walk out on the point, I had a short glimpse of a bird with clear wing bands and called out the bird. It disappeared and we searched for hours through the small flocks of Common Eider, quite a few of the females had good wing bands so we concluded that my initial observation was wrong. We came to the conclusion that the reporter had stringed the Common Eider I saw, and that was later confirmed by the original reporter.

Spirits still high, we put this setback down to our normal mode of operandi. This has now happened several times, we start out with a dip and then later strike gold.

Next day was allocated to normal forest birding inland from Sundsvall, and we quickly found a number of good forest birds.

This area of Sweden is the epicentre of fowls, thus just spending time in the right forest habitat should deliver Black Grouse and Capercaillie. The Hazel Grouse is usually tricker. The Capercaillie has now sailed up as the most-discussed-bird since we didn’t find a single one during our Norrland trip. Unbelievable. Almost none of the forest birds can be easily located, you have to just spend time in the forest. The Siberian Jay comes to feeders though.

The Pine Grosbeak is the opposite, you just have to be lucky.

In the afternoon we decided to drive further north towards a well known spot for Great-grey Owl close to Umeå, small village called Degernäs . Björn Melin (who tagged along on this trip to Norrland) eventually found the majestic Owl just before dark, much to the joy of the other birders there – also searching for the owl.

At Degernäs, we met a local birder who seemed to know his stuff. We told him that we were planning to visit a spot nearby for Grey-headed and Lesser-spotted Woodpeckers. Yeah, he said that’s good, and there is also the Woodpecker we cannot name there – just so you know. We immediately picked up on that and went into full Voldemort mode. The whereabouts of White-backed Woodpecker in Sweden is semi-secret. There are a few known spots, where birders visit, however there are most certainly quite a few secret spots. This turned up to be one of those, and sure enough the White-backed Woodpecker was there. Impossible to miss. In a manner it was a shame he told us about it since we’d already decided to go there. Had we just found a WB Woodpecker on chance – We would have screamed.

We ticked the Hazel Grouse the same morning, first we heard it playing it’s low-volume high-pitch sound. Later we got good views of two males feeding on seeds in the trees.

Dipper was also ticked in the area.

The remainder of the day was spent looking for fowls, mostly by driving slowly on small forest roads. We saw, Elk, wolf tracks and Reindeers. The Reindeers are not wild, they are kept by the Sami.

Next day, we continued to search for fowl, eventually we found a flock of Black Grouse, no Capercaillie though.

Finally got good views of the (so far only heard) Grey-headed Woodpecker too.

Decided to give up on the fowl and go south, towards Uppland where I own a small cabin in Esarby which is a good area for both fowl, but in particular for Owls. The evening in northern Uppland produced an abundance of playing Tengmalm’s Owl. Next morning, well deserved we slept late (partly due to the drinking session in the cabin) and went back to Stockholm.

Next birding day, we went south searching for some missing species reported in the Stockholm area.

Much of this day was allotted to the search of Lesser-spotted Woodpecker. During the day as a whole, we visited a large number of well known spots for the species. The Lesser-spotted Woodpecker should be easy, but it’s still lacking on our list. The afternoon we went north towards Uppland (picking up a Glaucous Gull downtown Stockholm)

and the evening was spent with good friend and awesome birder Johan Södercrantz who showed us the Ural Owl in northern Uppland. The Ural Owl was our #400 tick. Here we are, anxiously waiting for the Ural Owl to start displaying.

On the way back, Johan suggested a long-shot, a place he knew that had kept wintering Short-eared owls in the past. And, sure enough, in the dark with a powerful torchlight we found the owls. It’s the first time any of us ever saw this day-active owl in the dark.

Holland-cleanup

On our way to Israel, we decided to stop in Holland to get the lingering rarities as well as all the goddamn Cat-C species they have in Holland.

For the benefit of readers who are not up to speed on the categorisation of birds into categories A-E I’ll now diverge a bit on what that is. The list is different for each country. We have the following list:

• Cat A. Regular birds that breed or appear naturally in a country.
• Cat B. Birds seen in the country but not since 1949
• Cat C. Introduced, but now with a self-sustaining population.
• Cat D. Odd shit
• Cat E. Cage birds

Many birders (and listers) do category A (and dream on, B) whereas e.g the WP listers to A-C. Since we’re doing a Big Year WP, we have to go through the Cat C species since that is what other WP listers do. At home, this is easy and a no-brainer, Ring-necked Pheasant and Canadian Goose breed and have healthy populations. In the more southerly parts of WP it’s different though, there are quite a few introduced species and we have to tick them. Dutch birders frown (today's understatement) upon this.

Anyways, two-day stop in Holland to get the Cat-C and the rarities. Our good friend Arjan Dwarshuis (world champion !!) offered to have us crash at his place as well as tagging along. Arjan brought his friend Vincent van der Spek who made up the day-plan to go through all Cat-C as well as the good stuff. Busy day, starting out with Alexandrine Parakeet in a park inside Amsterdam. Both Arjan and Vincent are brought up with the idea that Cat-C is dirty, whereas we are not. Being a Swedish birder, it feels quite natural to consider both Ring-necked Pheasant as well as Canada Goose parts of nature. I guess this changes if you live in a country where any released cage bird might change the birding scene. When Arjan did his now famous Big Year he ticked zero Cat-C species, we on the other hand are forced to.

Following Vincent's plan, we just went through all the Cat-C birds, Arjan and Vincent complaining loudly when a bird was found, silently actually enjoying it, but nevertheless feeling dirty. They both came around at the very end of the day though, when we searched an area with reeds and Arjan finally found the Vinous-throated Parrotbill. It was nice and we all shared the moment.

Most WP listers get this Chinese bird in northern Italy, and we believe that the population in Holland is not well know,

The full list of Cat-C for the day was: Alexandrine Parakeet, Mandarin Duck, Black Swan, Vinous-throated Parrotbill and Bar-headed Goose. Earlier we had seen Egyptian Goose in Holland.

Almost Cat-C was a Snow Goose. This is tricky stuff, Snow Goose is bred in Holland and domesticated, and you can find it here and there. This unringed bird though, arrived together with Barnacle Geese this fall, thus possible to tick. Deemed to be the real thing according to Vincent.

Clearly not possible to determine just by looking at the bird.

Apart from the Cat-C birds we had two good birds to locate. The first one was Red-breasted Goose. It was reported a couple of days ago to be seen inside massive flocks of Barnacle Goose. We searched for maybe an hour, and eventually Arjan (yes – I’ll give it to him, world champ and all, he is good at finding the birds) found two of them.

Next one was a recently reported Blythe’s pipit. We went to the site, searched for hours, freezing cold and eventually gave up. Decided to go to a forest known to host Middle-spotted Woodpecker instead. Also on Vincent's itinerary. Played the call and it came immediately. Easy.

Now, after the easy woodpecker, the group was in a much better mood (after the non-existent pipit) and we had lunch and then made a new attempt at the Blyth’s pipit. When we arrived there it was already relocated by other birders at the site.

Picture isn’t great, but we had great views of the pipit, and at least I love it when you see a bird that is hard to distinguish from other birds and it’s crystal clear that you see what you think you see. We heard the call too.

Having done a complete cleanup in Holland we had a whole day with nothing to do before embarking to Israel. Options were to (a) Get High in Amsterdam, (b) Do some regular birding without anything tickable (c) Go to Northern France (Calais) and find yet another Cat-C species, The Reeves’s Pheasant. We opted for (c). In the car on our way to France, Erik discovered by accident and random www surfing that the group of Reeves’s Pheasant close to Calais are not tickable. We believe quite a few WP listers have actually ticked these birds. France does have a tickable population of Reeves’s Pheasant on an Island outside Marseille, Îles d'Hyères. Mårten called Pierre-Andre’ Crochet to confirm and sadly so, the birds in Calais are bred for hunters and would not survive on their own. Halfway to France, turning the car around we started to appreciate our Dutch friend's view on Cat-C – It is dirty. Once again with nothing to do, we had a long lunch in Breda, and decided to attempt to relocate the Baikal Teal close to Amsterdam that had now been gone for 11 days. This is the same Teal we were searching for with Marten Miske several weeks ago and – Dang!

So – thanks Arjan, Vincent and Holland. I’m sure we’ll return some time later during this year, when that mega arrives. Great birding country. Tomorrow we’ll be in Israel – another great birding country.

Shalom Israel

We’ve arrived in Israel. What a birding country, and spring migration is in full swing. Warblers everywhere and a steady stream of raptors, storks and cranes pumping northbound.

It’s not just birds that are abundant, but also birders. The competition Champions of the flyway runs now, and all the teams are scouting. We have been graciously invited to their WhatsUp group as well as the Telegram group for rare-birds-alert in Israel so we are all set information wise.

Yesterday, we just had a few hours in a park in Tel-Aviv and started out in Israel where we left off in Holland, a Cat-C bird! Vinous-breasted Starling, a bird from south-east Asia.

Generally good birding in the park, including all 4 WP kingfishers in the same park. Lots of good birds and year ticks.

Drove through the night towards the Dead Sea and slept in Arad .

This morning, we started real early, with Wadi Salvadora as the first goal. This is a well know spot for Sinai Rosefinch, a price bird. Also an important bird for us, since if we can find it here, our trip to Egypt later will be much easier and we can fly to Hurghada instead of Sharm El-Sheik. Walking the steep slope up the wadi we soon found shy Striolated Buntings.

A good bird, soon thereafter we also found a pair of Sinai Rosefinch, picture sucks, but hey.

With the Rosefinch in the pocket, we descended and found a Cyprus warbler on the way down, mmmm and also a Scrub Warbler.

We continued to Ein Gedi and the tourist trap Wadi David where a Pallas’s Leaf Warbler had been seen for quite some time. The touristy paved path was teeming with birds, warblers everywhere. Common and rare.

Tristram's Starling was abundant and everywhere.

Our goal was the Pallas’s Leaf Warbler, however it’s not easy to keep focused when such new lifer birds as Cretzschmar’s bunting appear. Erik screamed ROSTSPARV (Swedish name) and physically vibrated when he saw it.

Finally we found the lost vagrant, the Pallas’s Leaf warbler in a small stream of water.

With a spectacular start of the Israel trip we had a slow lunch at Arad and then went searching for Long-billed Pipit in an area where both of our friends Joachim Bertrands and Markus Craig had seen the bird previous years. An area with a habitat that exactly fitted the description of preferred habit in the Collins Guide, slopes with flat rocks and herbs. We walked those beautiful slopes for several hours, each step a joy for the nose. It smells of the kitchen while walking in herbs. The area is some distance north of Arad, and birding in general there was just great. Blue Rock thrush, Spectacled Warbler, Rüppels’s warbler, Eastern Orphean warbler, Prinias, Finsch's Wheatear, Woodchat Shrike, Subalpine Warbler, Chukars, Steppe Buzzard, Pallid Harrier, Masked Shrike, Cyprus Warbler and more. Finally after many kilometres in the legs, Mårten found the bird.

Finished off the day with searching for crakes in a sewage pond close to Mitzpe Ramon where we spent the night in a cheap weed-smoker hippie hostel. Long day, but a spectacular birding day, 87 birds in total and 23 new for the year. Maybe later during our two weeks in Israel when/if we run out of new species we’ll try for a Big Day.

Going south – no North

Woke up in the dark at the hippie hostel at Mitzpe Ramon and had breakfast at sunrise at nice sewage ponds outside the city. The idea being that Baillon’s Crake could possibly be there. No crakes but plenty of other nice birds.

We also had a suspected Marsh warbler, it wasn’t hanging out in the reeds, instead it chose the thick bushes close to the water. It was grayish in general, and the rump was clearly lacking red and brown. Since Marsh warbler is uncommon in Israel during spring, instead of ticking Marsh, Mårten took the extra time to do a deep study in the Advanced Bird Id Handbook: The Western Palearctic and the picture below shows that the emargination on the outer web of p3 levels with secondary tips, in Marsh warbler more towards the wing tip, thus it is indeed a Reed Warbler ssp fuscus. Very very difficult, and truly hard to id in the field without the bird singing. The book Advanced Bird Id Handbook, is an invaluable complement to the Collins guide.

Drove on to Sde Boker to look for Syrian Serin. First thing we heard when jumping out of the car was a calling Syrian Woodpecker.

Also the Palestine Sunbird was everywhere.

We met two local young birders there, Gal Marinov and Leor Dor. When we said that we were looking for a Syrian Serin in Sde Boker, they said – uhh – why? You should be searching at Ben Gurion Memorial, we have the spot. A swimming pool next to our school. We went there but couldn’t

find the Serins. Desert Finches outside the Kibbutz though.

Gave up and went to a wadi close to km 152 where Rikard Ek had seen Arabian Warbler a few days ago. We found the warbler in the dry wadi at the very last light of the day.

Next day we started in Wadi Yahel, supposedly a safe spot for the Syrian Serin. Almost all birders we met have said that the Serins are easy in that wadi. Starting a day with some birding in the sunrise, and then do breakfast after an hour or two is a good way to start a day. No Serins though, Cretzschmar’s bunting, Scrub Warbler, Eastern Orphean Warbler, Subalpine Warbler and Ortolan Bunting.

At this point, the damned Serin sailed up to an unthreatened most-wanted-bird position. The Syrian Serin winters in the south, and breeds in the north at high altitude. When we received fresh reports from Avner Rinot with 6 Oriental Skylarks close to Kfar Rupin and a group of Cinereous Buntings at Mount Gilboa We decided to go north, to Mount Hermon where the Syrian Serins are easy. Since we were now in the South, very close to the known site for the Black Scrub-robin, we decided to tick that first.

We arrived at the right fields in the north with maybe an hour left until sunset. The fields were packed with Yellow Wagtails, several thousands. Mostly Feldegg, but also Beema and Superciliaris. Difficult to search for the Larks with the distracting flocks of Wagtails. We didn’t find the Larks, but it felt good. Thus we decided to give the same field another go the next morning. Started at sunset to methodically walk the fields. Soon we flush one Oriental Skylark, and then another. Decent views and we all heard the call perfectly. Nice, a hard-to-find bird in WP.

Went to Mount Gilboa to search for Cinereous Bunting. A nice hike up the mountain. No buntings though. They are on their way to Turkey. We did find Long-billed Pipit again though. A few days ago we worked really hard to get it, and now we just got it for free.

Compare to the picture from the Collins Bird Guide – it’s the right bird ehh.

Continued north, via a lunch at the shore of Sea of Galilee, where we got Pygmy Cormorant and Pallas’s Gull.

Arrived at Mount Hermon, Majdal Shams in the afternoon. Now it was time to nail that hard to find Serin. No Serins, a few year ticks though, Western Rock-Nuthatch and Sombre Tit. Birded the slopes of Mount Hermon into the dark and gave up, freezing like crazy.

Next morning, at dawn, we’re back in the same hills, and we find the Serin immediately. Perseverance pays off.

With everything in the north ticked off, we went south again. Passing through the city of Pardes Hana-Karkur where Nanaday Parakeet was seen many years ago. The Parakeet is considered exterpitaded from Israel, however nothing wrong with having lunch there – dreaming – you never know. Pushed on towards Nizzana where we after a few hours searching found the McQueens Bustard in the last light.

This was a bird on the difference list, Mårten saw it in Kuwait, but although we searched for hours there for that bird, we never saw it again. It feels good to be able to remove a bird from the difference list.

Mårten maintains the difference list, and we have quite a few birds on that list today. Whenever there are two good beds and one not so good, whoever has the most birds on the difference list gets to get the poor bed. The idea being that the person that is worst at sharing gets the worst bed. Erik got a really good bird on the difference list this morning, one that’ll be hard to repair. Boring.

Meeting COTF and Crake bonanza

We camped at Nizzana with the idea that we should wait by the drinking pools for Pintailed Sandgrouse to come drinking. They didn’t, or maybe they did, but not where we were. The Pin-tailed Sandgrouse would be good to get here, although if we don’t get it here – it’s possible to repair it later in Spain or France. While waiting at the pools, we did find a resting Collared Pratincole.

Gave up on the Sandgrouse before noon, we started to drive – again – towards Eilat. Eilat is one of those world famous birding sites, up there together with Cape May and Falsterbo. On the way we stopped at some salt ponds, teeming with waders. Red-necked Phalarope had been reported there, but we just found all the regular expected waders.

Finished off by birding the famous North Beach of Eilat, the White-eyed Gull was common.

The Whatsapp group for the Champions of the Flyway had announced a drinking session at a bar, downtown Eilat. We were eager to meet all the COTF guys. Very nice to meet many of the participants of this great bird race. We will surely attend one day, maybe next year.

Late hungover, morning with some slow birding in Eilat city parks. Lots of migratory birds in the parks. We were looking especially for flycatchers, no luck though. House Crows are everywhere in Eilat.

Went up into the Eilat Mountains to check for raptor migration. Some raptor days are better than others, this was a slow raptor day. Picked up the Hooded Wheatear on the mountain.

In the afternoon, we went to a pond at kilometer 19, searching for crakes and it turned into crake bonanza. Best craking ever, we got all 3 crakes in the same pond. The Baillon’s crake is especially good, possibly the most elusive little bird in the entire Collin’s Guide. When dusk settled, a group of Lichtensteins’s Sandgrouse came flying into the pool to drink. Birding doesn’t get much better than this.

Howling and Owling

Israel is now running out of birds, we only have a few birds left here. We’ll make an effort for Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, and we will continue to search for that possible Caspian Plover. Anyways, I’m getting ahead of myself here. The first day for this post was allocated in it’s entirety to search for a Batteleur, an African Eagle lost in Israel for the last couple of years. Large beautiful fields in the area of Gal’on , we spent the entire day searching the fields. No eagle, enormous amounts of White Storks and raptors though. Black Kites, Short-toed Eagles, Steppe Buzzards, Long-legged Buzzards and one Greater Spotted.

No Batteleur though, maybe we’ll make time for one more effort on that bird, it is there.

Camped just outside Sde Boker kibbutz, with the idea to jump up early and search for Barn Owl in the Kibbutz. Just before we went to sleep, we heard wolves howling, then just after that, the jackals also howled and we got confused. But then we saw them, two Arabian wolves walking in the moonlight. Mmmm.

No Barn Owl there, we’ll get it later, no harm in trying except sleep deprivation. Once in the car again, Erik checked Facebook, and shouted out – hey – President Trump has resigned. Uhh, we go – maybe not. It's April first. We then post on our FB that we give up due to “social tension in the group” – we thought that was funny. Sde Boker is not as good for migrants as the Ben-Gurion memorial site close by, we went there and found a Hume’s Warbler (which we already had from Kuwait)

As well as a pair of migrating Collared Flycatchers.

Next wanted bird was the Dead Sea Sparrow, which we had already half heartedly searched for. Now we went to – tada – the Dead Sea, they have to be there. Searched tamarisk bushes here to no avail, and then died in the shadow of a nearby petrol station. Once the heat became non-lethal we went back to the same bushes and continued the search, and now with less heat the birds were more active and we could easily find them.

Set camp nearby the site of the Dead Sea Sparrows, perfect camping spot in a small wadi. In the evening we had a date with Barak Granit for a session to see Nubian Nightjar and Hume’s Owl. Two difficult species. Barak Granit delivers.

We had excellent views of the Hume’s Owl as well.

I’ve said it before – camping is great. And what is absolutely best with camping is that you wake up on the birding spot. At first light – even before coffee – we all wander about and do random birding. Lovely and completely unorganised. We had:

With the Dead Sea species pocketed we went south again, towards Eilat, with a short stop at some ponds where Red-billed Teal was seen last year .. hmmm. Spent the entire afternoon on the famous Yotvata Fields . Spectacular birding there, nothing new though. A tricky Pallid Harrier forced us to look close at the characteristics.

Goodbye Israel

Goodbye Israel, thanks for two marvellous weeks of birding. What a birding country, great birding, great people. Zero problems with authorities or police. Excellent food. Just A ok.

Our last three days started slow, mostly because we spent an enormous amount of time failing to find a Caspian Plover. We woke up early in Eilat, hotel night, sorely needed. Birded Ofira and Central parks before breakfast. The parks of Eilat attract quite a few exhausted migrants. Nothing new (tick wise) but generally good birding.

We also spent some time in IBRCE where I got to capture Little Crake from the hide. Imagine how much we fuzzed about Little Crake in Kuwait when Erik found one and Mårten and I didn’t. Probably not the last time we fuss about a bird we get easy later on.

Always nice with a good hide. Birds come close.

Here we are in IBRCE.

Bought food and prepared for a few camping nights. The temperature in Negev is now high, birding mid day sucks, activity is very low. We went to Kilometre 20, searching for Caspian Plover. Instead we found the Red-necked Phalarope that had been reported from the salt pans earlier. A tick and a species which is not rare, but we had no plan to see it anywhere it breeds, thus this was good.

Searched Yotvata fields for the Plover all afternoon. Just when we had raised the tent at Yotvata, dusk arrived, and a Nightjar flew by the camp. No one saw any white markers on the wings, but too poor views to definitely id the bird. We drove the roads around Yotvata in the dark, and saw nothing but a few jackals and foxes. Mårten birded in Israel some 5 years ago, and had great birding at Yotvata at the time. It’s been a standing joke in the group, whenever Erik or I ask about a bird, Mårten has said – Yotvata. We have had good, but clearly not spectacular birding at the famous Yotvata fields.

During the night, we rigged my cellphone together with the bluetooth speaker and a power bank, playing the call of Caspian Plover all through the night. The idea being that it should bring down migrating Caspians right down to our tent, so that we can just find them first thing in the morning. Brilliant idea that didn’t work, instead we searched all the fields – again – to no avail. A compost had attracted a nice mix of Pipits and Wagtails though.

Came back to the camp and a short sand storm had wreaked havoc with our camp, which was now dispersed in the desert.

We decided to spend the mid day birding a few of the Kibbutzim nearby, there are several and they all have pretty good birding. Lotan produced no new ticks, but some nice photos.

Drove to Nizzana, close to the Egyptian border and birded the small village of Ezus which produced absolutely nothing. Set camp at the exact spot where Barak Granit had told us the Pin-tailed Sandgrouse appear in the morning. Awesome camping in the desert, whiskey, stars and the moon, close to an IDF army camp.

Early morning, rise and shine. We’re standing at the spot, at the time according to Barak Granit, and sure as clockwork they arrive.

Drove north, and decided to make one final effort on the Batteleur. We set up the scopes at the same spot again, just north-west of Gal’on. Mårten finds the eagle almost immediately.

Tenaciousness pays off, what a goddamn WP bird. Mmmmm. Towards Tel-Aviv and then spent a few hours in the afternoon in Yarkon Park. This turned out to be a stroke of genius, we just ticked off migrants there. Especially the Semi-collared Flycatcher which was a wanted bird but also a Levant Sparrowhawk was very nice.

To finish up, we want to thank the Champions of the Flyway teams for sharing info about observations, Barak Granit for guiding (Hume’s Owl and Nubian Nightjar) and accuracy with the spot for Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Markus Lampinen and Hannu Huhtinen for providing the spot for Baillon’s Crake. Also thanks to Gal Marinov and Leor Dor for helping us to id the Barbary Falcon.

Now – new countries – new birds.

Hortobagyi – Possibly the best birding site in Europe

Since it’s impossible to fly directly from Israel to Kuwait we had to make a forced layover somewhere en route. I’ll refrain from making any sarcastic commentary on this, anyways we decided to make a short stop in Hungary. The Saker Falcon is possible to get in Israel, Turkey and almost anywhere in South-eastern WP. They breed in Hungary though so we decided to go there.

Out of chance I saw a comment on our FB from a birder with a Hungarian sounding name and I reached out to Bence Kokay who provided perfect instruction to a pair of nesting Saker Falcons one hour south of Budapest. The birds were perching on pylons close to a nest box mounted high in the air on a pylon.

We had allocated yet another day to search for the Saker, so we decided to go to Hortobagyi National Park for some general birding.

We disrespectfully wrote on our FB once the Saker was secured, “It took us five minutes to clean up Hungary! Saker falcon, near Dömsöd”. We’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to Hungary for that comment. Hortobagyi is possibly the single best birding site in all of Europe, it cannot be cleaned up in 5 minutes. It’s situated on the famous Hungarian steppe, the Puszta, some two hours drive east of Budapest. Vast steppe and enormous reeds with lot’s of water (fish ponds) We had a full day of amazing birding, totalling 111 species making this day our best so far during the year.

Savi’s warbler was very common with maybe up to 50 singing males during the day.

Also Bearded Reedling was common.

Whitestared Bluethroat was nice too, the Bluethroat race with a white patch on the throat.

At the very end of the day, we bumped into a group of French birders who said that they had had a group of 120 wintering Lesser White-fronted geese far out into one of the lakes. It was already getting dark, and it was a 7 km walk to the place. Strenuous, but worth it. Spectacular birding at the tower at the end.

Thousands of Black-tailed Godwits, thousands of everything except the White-fronted Goose. A flock of approximately 120 birds could be seen on the grass on the other side of the lake, the birds were small and had a clear white front. This could very well be the birds, too far to make sure though. We decided to wait into the dark and hope for the birds to choose to spend the night on the lake instead of on the grass. They didn’t.

On the way back in the dark, freezing and tired we had awesome views of calling Barn owl and Long-eared Owl. Especially the spooky Barn owl is something extra.

Thanks Hungary, we’ll meet again.

Back in Kuwait

Arrived in the middle of the night in Kuwait, our second visit to the country. This time in search of migrating birds as well as rarities. Markus Craig called a couple of days ago and said that AbdulRahman had arranged a pelagic out into the gulf. We were invited. A few hours sleep and then off to a boat trip out into the Gulf. On the boat we met all our old friends from Kuwait, Markus Craig, Omar Alsaheen and AbdulRahman. A bunch of British birders were also on the boat – a nice group.

Right off the coast we saw the first Bridled Terns perching.

Close to shore we also saw the first Lesser Crested Terns.

These two were most expected, the first good bird we saw a few miles off the coast. The Socotra Cormorant.

Kuwait was our only chance to see this bird in WP, and we now think it would have been hard to find the Cormorant off the coast. Thanks AbdulRahman!!

Off the coast of Kuwait, there are a few coral islands, we went ashore on two of them, both real rarity vagrant magnets. I we were resident Kuwait birders we’d own a boat 🙂

A bunch of Skuas were nice, Pomarine was called out, but as far as we could judge they were all Arctic.

Nice group of Phalaropes was found far out in the Gulf.

Wikipedia states – Kubbar is a sandy island of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf, covered with shrub. It is located roughly 30 kilometers off the southern coast of Kuwait and 29 kilometers off the coast of Failaka.

Lesser and Greater Crested Terns nest there in good numbers.

We went ashore on Kubbar and the small island was teeming with vagrants. The whole group scattered on the island and species were rapidly called out from all directions. A problematic female Pied Wheatear caused some headache – possibly a Variable. Very difficult – need a male (or exceptional footage) to determine for certain.

Soon Mårten found the good bird, a Sykes Warbler.

Here we see the core of the Kuwait birding community running towards the BYWP team and the Sykes Warbler.

The Kuwait Birding community is small, nice, friendly, competent and inclusive. It’s a privilege to hang out with you guys.

Rarity Hunting

Day two in Kuwait, we started at Mutla Ranch, Markus Craigs favourite patch. Mutla is a low-end ranch where they grow dade and some grass. It’s scruffy and has exactly the right size to be thoroughly searched. Lots and lots of migrating birds, everywhere. Mostly Redstarts, Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers (who finally went off the difference list)

Better birds were Semi-collared Flycatcher and White-throated Robin. Primarily though, we were searching for Shikra and Basra-reed warbler. Erik found a Reed Warbler that looked very promising.

We got pictures of the bird in two different sessions and then – at Mutla – we convinced ourselves that this indeed was the rare one. We ticked it and reported on iGoTerra. Later at night – scrutinising the pictures we had second thoughts and made a back step on the Warbler, it’s just a Eurasian Reed Warbler (ssp fuscus) with a longish beak. Not an easy bird to safely id the Basra Reed Warbler, we will make further attempts later this week, maybe at Abraq.

After the debacle with the Reed Warbler we went together with Markus to Al-Liiah, a strange nature reserve in the north where an odd row of trees had been planted in the desert. The reserve turned out to be better than good for migrants, a drivable dirt track with small scattered sparse trees along both sides. Migrants everywhere, mostly Lesser Whitethroat, Willow Warbler, Blackcaps. First good bird was an Icterine Warbler.

Sufficiently good to make Omar get into his car and drive there. Other good birds were a cooperative Eastern Orphean Warbler .

And a few Nightingales (ssp golzi) aka Eastern Nightingale (possible future armchair tick) and a few Turkestan Shrikes.

After a few hours though we briefly saw, several times, poor views – a suspicious looking Whitethroat. It looked dark and big, and we spent quite some time until we finally tracked it down and nailed it as a Hume’s Whitethroat. A really rare bird in WP – and difficult to id safely too.

Omar had arrived for shots of the Icterine warbler, and we helped him search for it but unfortunately it couldn’t be relocated. Omar suggested we should go nightjaring at JPL in the dark. He has seen Egyptian Nightjar on the dirt tracks there at night this time of the year. No Nightjars, but a Jack Snipe hiding from the lights as well as a wounded (hunter gunshot or snakebite) White-tailed Lapwing.

What a birding day, high energy adrenaline birding.

Next day, our third day here in Kuwait, we decided to go to Jahra Pool Reserve and search for vagrants. The first bird on the way in was a nice perching Isabelline Shrike as well as a Spotted Crake.

We started to scan the beach for waders, there were quite a few but not massive amounts.

The first good bird, which we would have screamed in joy for just a few weeks ago, now we just call out – without any major agitation – Pacific Golden Plover.

Next, Erik finds a bird he thinks looks suspicious, and part of this post is going to be a study of the psychology of rarity birding. Mårten has a friend at home who birds as – everything is a rarity until proven otherwise. If you think like that, you find rarities, otherwise not. Anyways, the Stint Erik bitches about looks like nothing to me, and when Erik suggests that we should pursue that bird – actually by wading across a creek – I just dissed, nah it’s nothing.

Erik persevered, and going for the Stint, we first flushed a Caspian Plover !!!! Also a Pratincole was sitting next to the Caspian Plover – more on that later.

Once we got close to the Stint, we got some footage of it, and also a crappy video.

And it looks like a Long-toed Stint. We got this confirmed by first Raul Vicente and later by Arjan Dwarshuis and we had our first self found MEGA in the WP. Other Kuwaiti birders arrived at the scene and the Stint could eventually later be re-found. A first for Kuwait. It’s got long toes !!

Now, back to the Pratincole. We had seen it fly, and I saw zero white trailngs on the wings, and wanted to see more of the bird. Both Erik and Mårten had a Collared Pratincole feeling and just wanted to move on. Anyways, we flushed the bird again, this time with cameras ready and we got some poor shots of both sitting as well as of the flying bird. Looking at the pictures, I persisted, it’s got no trailing white edges on the wings, whereas both Mårten and Erik said – well it has some … on this pic here … see.

We gave up on that and went back across the creek, back to the parking lot, a British birder (Pete ??) found a Kittiwake, the second for Kuwait.

Going back to the hotel, scanning the pics on the Pratincole while Erik drives, I again – said – the bird looks good, and back at the hotel room, both Erik and Mårten starts to get excited about the bird. And, given help by friends, Raul Vicente and Arjan, we came to the conclusion that the bird was an Oriental Pratincole.

The Pratincole is questioned, and it may very well turn out to be a Collared Pratincole in the end. It's a matter of tail-streamers and nostril shape. It’s up to KORC now, hopefully someone can secure better footage of the bird today.

— UPDATE:

I keep the original text, and add the update here. The Pratincole has now been confirmed by the premiere expert on the matter, Gerald Driessens, who co-authored the Dutch Birding paper on how to distinguish a Collared Pratincole from an Oriental. We reached out to Gerald who promptly replied:

“Thanks for your mail. Interesting bird. This is for sure a Collared Pratincole with worn-off trailing edge. On the outerweb of the outermost tail feather, the proportion of black along the shaft is too large for Oriental. Tail feathers also seem to show strong emarginations and look long. Contrast between coverts ands remiges is obvious. Also head pattern is more in favour of Collared.”

So – back to the psychology part – the Stint was secured by Eriks stubbornness and the Pratincole by mine. It’s good to be a team, a team that can argue without pride getting in the way. What a rarity day – hard to beat.

43 degrees in the shade

With just a few days – and birds left in Kuwait, we’re trying to focus on the few important birds we have left. In particular Basra Reed Warbler and Shikra. The weather is getting worse, the first few hours in a day are good, but then mid day the temperature goes haywire (+43) and bird activity drops to nothing. All birds we see in the trees sit exhausted with beaks fully open. We get exhausted too, the strength just runs out when walking in bushes.

We reached out to an expert in Pratincole identification, Gerald Driessens, and the suspected Oriental Pratincole from yesterday was rejected, it was a regular Collared Pratincole. It was a tricky bird indeed where many good birders and friends of ours also thought it was an Oriental. Well well – win some – lose some.

Starting in the morning, we went to a pool at Al-Liyah checking for Pale Rock Sparrow which had been seen there previously. The Al-Liyah is a reserve, with guards. The guards were friendly, and when they saw that we were birders and not hunters, we were allowed to enter. Just as we enter, they wave at us and make “photo” signs. We got out of the car, a bit confused, but they just wanted us to photograph a roosting Eurasian Scops Owl, roosting right next to their little shed.

Remember the stir-up with the feathering of the claws on the Pallid Scopes Owl, this one clearly has no feathering on the middle tow.

No bird at the pool though, a nice male Montagu's Harrier came in. Also an awesome lizard ran in the desert, a massive Egyptian Spiny-tailed Lizard, a beast.

With the morning spent, we went to Mutla searching for Shikra. The heat was devastating and bird activity was at an all time low. In a dry tree, we found a Yellow-throated Sparrow.

A hard bird to handle that heat so well. Chilled out in the AC area and then went back to Al-Liyah. Birding there was pretty good, with for example several Upchers Warbler.

Also saw a few Hume’s Whitethroat there again. When we were just about to leave, a flock of European Bee-eaters came in to roost in a tree. Beautiful.

Saw several hunters in the reserve, cruising with 4WD cars, guns sticking out the windows, ready to shoot down any Bee-eater they see. Sad sight indeed.

Next day was Basra Reed-warbler and Shikra day at Al-Abraq. Woke up real early and were at Al-Abraq at first light. Plenty of Sparrowhawks flying around, we photograph everyone in hope of a Shikra – non alas. We walked the thickets, searching for Basra Reed. Mårten and I stand together peeing on a tree, think father-son moment, when we hear very very close the call of an Eastern Nightingale inside the tree/bush. We look at that at 50 cm distance, when Mårten whispers – I have a Basra Reed Warbler inside here, very close. It took us a few hours to secure good footage of the Reed Warbler.

It says something of how skulky and slow the birds are, when it took us 30 minutes to realise that a White-throated Robin

was also sitting inside that same small tree without us seeing it. We notified everyone else on Whatsapp about the Basra, and AbdulRahman – with two clients, Paul Chapman and Maximilliano DeTorri arrived to see the bird too. Now, the heat was once again unbearable, chilled out in the AC/coffee area, and finished the day in Jahra East where some Eurasian Curlew (ssp orientalis) were feeding. The bill is really impressive.

Next day we went back to Mutla, once again searching for Shikra. Met a local birder there, Bassel, who had just found a Black Bush-robin at Mutla, an exceptional bird for Kuwait. We on the other hand – hit a rock with the car in a manoeuvre to get a better view of a flying Sparrowhawk. Car is broken and we are depressed, waiting for the toll.

Open letter to the Emir of Kuwait regarding immoral hunting practices

Dear Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, Emir of Kuwait. I’m writing this open letter to you as a result of our recent visits to your country. We are foreign bird watchers, ornithologists and naturalists, and we have just spent a couple of weeks in Kuwait in January, and now a week in April bird watching.

We are shocked by the amount of immoral hunting we have seen. We think that hunting and nature conservation can co-exist, but clearly not the way your people are currently behaving. The way hunting is practised here in Kuwait, or rather should I say killing is immoral for the following reasons.

• It’s not your birds, the migratory birds are just passing through here, they are not yours to kill.
• Hunting should always have an element of sportsmanship, driving a 4WD through the nature reserves where exhausted migrating birds rest on their way north and shoot from the car window is barbaric.
• Some birds are rare, whereas others are not. Many people, all over the world, appreciate hunting. Indiscriminate killing of rare birds is unacceptable, the hunter MUST know what he or she shoots. Case in point, a group of 16 Caspian Plovers were resting in north Kuwait recently, this is an endangered species where elsewhere in the world, people spend time and money to ensure the survival of the species, here in Kuwait, this winter, they were all shot, for fun.
• And finally, the worst of them all, killing for fun is clearly immoral. Shooting arbitrary birds for target practice is almost evil. This we saw several times. An especially memorable moment was one of the days when we came down to the beach at Jahra. A father and a son were there, the father playing bird calls from the car, and the son, maybe of age 15, was shooting swallows over the sea. When we started to watch the birds through our binoculars, while they were killing them, they both must have felt ashamed as they left the beach looking down into the ground.

Mauritania blockers

We finally went to Mauritania, we have been wavering back and forth whether we should go here or not, eventually we decided for. It’s not an especially easy country to visit, logistics are difficult. Through a friend of Markus Craig, who joined us for this trip, Rob Tovey who lives in Mauritania, we got in contact with a Dutch guy called Just, running a hostel called Bab Sahara in the city of Atar. Anyone who ventures to follow us here, and go for the WP price birds in northern Mauritania should get in contact with Just. It’s not possible to rent a car, you have to get hold of a good 4WD such as a Landcruiser, and getting a good driver is invaluable. Just arranged this for us in an excellent way. We met up with our driver, Sidaty, at the airport and spent the first night in Nouakchott at a decent hotel. Early in the morning we headed towards Iwik, a small fishing village in the Banc d’Arguin National Park .

Banc d’Arguin is mostly famous for its impressive amount of wintering waders. From a WP lister point of view it also holds a healthy population of Grey-hooded Gulls.

As well as two species of cormorants, the Reed Cormorant.

More complicated are the White-breasted Cormorants that breed by the thousands in Banc d’Arguin. They are not easily distinguishable from the Marrocanus ssp of Great Cormorant. Possibly more research is required to determine which is what here. There were thousands of Cormorants, all looking like this adult.

The Banc d’Arguin was truly an interesting place to visit, the rich sea meets the barren desert, and the shores were teeming with waders. The large flocks of Spoonbills, White-breasted Cormorants, Great White Pelicans and Royal Terns flying by.

Ruddy Turnstones in particular were abundant.

This is possibly also the easiest place in WP to see the Royal Tern.

Migrating Black terns were a bit unexpected.

There are decent sleeping and eating facilities in the little fishing village of Iwik. We had a nice fish meal for dinner prepared by the villagers and slept in a small house. No need to camp.

The borders of WP are essentially the 21st latitude, with an exception for the islands outside of Banc d’Arguin. Thus, nothing on the mainland is tickable, only birds over the ocean and on the islands. We also must not be on the mainland. So are the WP rules and we abide by them.

Next target was a small wadi just south of Choum. Pierre-Andree Crouchet recently found a Blue-naped Mousebird there, and we just followed his footsteps. Easy.

The area of these Mousebirds was very barren, with vast areas of rock. A wadi with sparse trees and bushes held the birds.

This is the habitat of Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse, the third time we see this beautiful Sandgrouse this year.

The distances of Mauritania are huge, the country is big. Driving between the sites takes time, long time. And every little stop takes time, if there ever was a time to quote the Douglas Hofstadter theorem it is now. It goes: Everything takes more time than you would expect, even if you consider Hofstaders theorem. Next target was an area north of Oudane, close to the famous Eye of Sahara. The Auberge Bab Sahara was ideally situated in between, and it was truly a relief to be welcomed there with excellent food and some home brewed cold beer. Thanks Just!!

The drive to Oudane was also a long drive on a dirt road. Once we reached the wadi, which is just north of the 21st latitude, we started to search for the African Grey Woodpecker that was recently seen there by Pierre-Andree. Birding in the wadi was good in general, lots of good WP birds. The Sudan Golden Sparrow was the most common bird with large groups seen all the time. Cricket warbler was also there, not as common though.

Also common was the western variant of Eastern Olivaceous warbler, a.k.a Saharan Olivaceous warbler, as well as many Isabelline Warblers, Namaqua Doves and Western Orphean Warblers.

A Fennec Fox had its den close to our camp, certainly the cutest fox.

Another rare WP bird that was common in the wadi was the African Collared Dove. The call was unmistakable and it’s easy to distinguish from European Collared Dove.

However, it was the woodpecker we were searching for, not the regular WP birds. The bird was not easy to locate, and just before sunset Mårten has the bird on playback, he never sees it, but it responds to tape. We were all searching in larger and larger circles, and gathering the group took some time. Eventually when all 4 of us were gathered at the spot where the woodpecker responded, we could not relocate the bird before the sun set. It was a pretty frustrated group that went back to camp for dinner. We did enjoy the beautiful desert sunset though. No denying.

Woke up before sunrise to pursue the search for the Woodpecker. Went back to the crime scene and playbacked the call. No response. Again, we started to search the area in general. This time together though, since the batteries of the Walkie-talkies were dead. Finally we connected with the Woodpecker – which this time did not respond to playback at all.

We decided to do some additional birding further up in the wadi, and found one additional African Grey Woodpecker there. This upper area is smaller, and for the benefit of other WP listers trying to find this bird, the upper area is probably the best bet.

With the Woodpecker secured we had lunch and decided to go back. Waiting for our driver, Sitatty to fix some broken tires in the village of Oudane, just outside the WP border we hung out in the shade, enjoying the Black Scrub-robins.

Morocco revisited

Second trip to Morocco. Since we picked off all the important migrating warblers in Mauritania, the target list for this Morocco trip was pretty short. This time we flew to Casablanca, not to Rabat where they confiscated optics gear at the customs. This seems to be a general tip for birders visiting unstable countries, go to the tourist resorts, not the capital unless you want to gamble with confiscated scopes and cameras. Our next trip is Egypt, and we have chosen to fly to Hourgada instead of Cairo for this very reason.

Starting off with a long drive up into the low Atlas, the first good birds we encountered was a group Seebohm’s Wheatear. The females appear to be poorly documented on the Internet. Here are two females.

On our February trip to Morocco, we had a suspicious female Wheatear, possibly Seebohm’s, but we could not find sufficient documentation to safely determine if it was a Seebohm’s female or not.

The Seebohm’s Wheatear is still considered to be a subspecies of Northern Wheatear by IOC, we would not be surprised if the Seebohm’s Wheatear is soon elevated to full species status. The male stands out.

Kept driving into the evening all the way to Zaida for the Dupont’s Lark that we couldn’t find in February. We made a short attempt on the Zaida plains the same evening to no avail. It was raining and the wind was high. Instead we took up on information from our friend Arjan Dwarshuis that the birds start singing in the dark, one hour before sunrise. Thus, the morning after, in the pitch black dark on the Zaida plains we go. We drive up to the area and just before we stop the car, Mårten says “Ett två tre kryss” (One, two, three, tick) and as we open the car door we can hear the very characteristic song of the Dupont’s Lark out in the dark. Later as the light came, we got good views.

A very secretive bird indeed, we saw the Larks running away in the grass, fast runners with a hunched fast running style. Like mice.

With the Lark finally secured we headed west towards Rissani where we met up with Hamid Gbt of Gayuin Birding who met us at the entrance to Rissani and graciously showed us the needle in the haystack, a day roosting Egyptian Nightjar. Very very difficult to find.

What a camouflage. Hamid and his brother Brahim Gbt run a professional bird guide company here in Morocco, Gayuin Birding. Nice setup.

Headed back towards the Ifrane area in the Low Atlas. This is a most beautiful part of Morocco with green slopes, cattle and sheep. Found a wonderful Auberge, and Eriks girlfriend Anna Malmström met up there. Next bird on the list was the Atlas Flycatcher, it was easy to find the NP close to Ifrane.

The forest was nice to walk in, and the high altitude temperature was a relief compared to what we’ve had earlier.

When we woke up the next morning, stepped out on the balcony at the Auberge the first Roller of the year sat on a wire.

In the forest we also had Firecrest, and the Short-toed Treecreepers were everywhere.

After an excellent lunch in Ifrane, we went to the Lac Oaua, which we also visited in February. Nothing new there, but we got some exceptional photographs of Black-necked Grebe.

As well as of the

Next group of target birds were way down on the coast south of Casablanca, a looong drive to a spot for the weird bird Small Buttonquail. I remember the first time I read about the Small Buttonquail many years ago and thought – I will never see this bird, ever. Now we were on the spot. It turned out to be very difficult. We spent the entire evening on and around the spot. We walked fields, playbacked and waited. During the entire evening the Buttonquail called two times. The call is very strange, it sounds like a distant cow. We never saw the bird, only heard it.

We found a beautiful little hotel in the little tourist village of Oualidia. First slow time during the entire year, several days to spend and very few target birds to chase. As a freak accident, just as we are here in Morocco, IOC decides that the subspecies ambiguus of European Reed Warbler should in fact be part of the African Reed Warbler complex. Good writeup at Magornitho by Muhamed Amezian.

I remember we spoke of this when we heard singing Reed Warblers in Western Sahara in reedy breeding habitats. Thus, we go Reed Warbler hunting along the coast wherever we see reeds. Soon we find several singing males. This one is African.

Shorter Primary Projection and very light underparts and throat are the characteristics as well as pale back.

Next day had some good winds, and we decided to do some sea watching from a point on the coast . Good winds, and hundreds of Northern Gannets. Quite a few Cory-like Shearwater, but we never got sufficiently good views to nail them. Cory’s and Scopoli's Shearwater are very similar, this article is a good writeup on the differences.

The last day, we made a stop in the early morning hours at the Buttonquail site. It would be nice to see the bird. This time we heard the bird once. It’s gotta suck to be British here – when you HAVE to see the bird….

Naked in Egypt

An expression amongst birders is – to go naked. That means don’t go without binoculars. That’s what we’re doing here since customs and airport security confiscated our binoculars and scopes upon entry to Egypt. We did some manoeuvring with different flights etc, so we actually have one Swarovski scope and we also have the two 400mm lens cameras, plus a borrowed bin, thus we actually get by. Gear will be returned to us when we leave the country. Anyways, apart from the authorities here, birding is great.

First actual birding day, we went on a short boat trip in Hurghada, vaguely searching for Sooty Falcon over the city. We did get excellent views of the common White-eyed Gull.

As well as one single Sooty Gull.

Started the long dive through the desert towards Luxor and the famous Crocodile Island. The road was strange, almost empty and had good asphalt. Lots and lots of Spotted Sandgrouse along the road.

Stayed at a fancy pants hotel in Luxor, and we thoroughly enjoyed a beer in the evening, watching the massive Nile flow by and listening to the displaying Senegal Thick-knees.

Once on Crocodile Island, we went with the first light searching for the Painted Snipe, which was fairly easy to locate. Apparently it is common in suitable habitat along this stretch of the Nile. It’s a skulky bird though, and if they are inside the reeds, they can be missed.

The impressive African Swamphen was also common on Crocodile Island.

The Island also had quite a few Green Bee-eaters, the Cleopatra sub species which lacks blue. Nice bird.

Herons breed by the thousands along the Nile, especially Squacco is common.

Driving south along the Nile we made several short stops looking for African Skimmer. Later we learned that the Skimmers are only present along the Nile in the winter. The Nile is spectacular, wherever you look into the water it is just boiling with fish and other critters. No wonder there are so many Herons and Kingfishers.

The Barn Swallows in Egypt are of the subspecies savignii and they are beautifully dark.

Next spot was the city of Aswan where we arrived in the evening. Mårten suggested that we should check out the dam, so we drove to the vantage point at the last light and brought up our only scope. Soon we saw militaries in the distance coming running towards us, thus we packed up real fast and drove off real fast feeling real stupid. Of course the dam is protected, what were we thinking of. Close call.

First light the next day, we went to the fish ponds of Aswan where we were able to quickly locate the Three-banded Plovers. These fish ponds are well known to birders, and if you go really early in the morning, there are no guards and you can enter freely.

Birding in the ponds was generally good, and we got our first good views of the Nile-valley Sunbird which we’d only seen poorly earlier (No bins !!)

Heading further south towards the WP border and the city of Abu Simbel where I now sit and write this. Staying at a nice, albeit pricey place called Nubian Guesthouse (not much to choose from here)

Abu Simbel is truly a famous WP birder spot, just on the border of Sudan. Many African vagrants have been found here over the years, and the big Lake Nasser also hosts a couple of WP prize birds. Arrived here in the afternoon and immediately went birding along all the small bays north of Abu Simbel. Two tools are invaluable here, Google Maps Satellite and a good 4WD car, not just any 4WD but a rough one. We have a Jeep Wrangler and driving mud and sand is almost as fun as birding, but not quite. The third or fourth bay we checked, a Kittlitz’s Plover came flying calling ‘kittlitz’ ‘kittlitz’ (Is that a coincidence or what’s the story behind that ?? Kittlitz was a naturalist in the early 19’th century, was he given the Plover due to the call ??)

Next day we organised (through the Guesthouse) an all-day boat trip on Lake Nasser. Went at first light with packed lunch. On one small island, we found two African Pied Wagtails.

Soon the wind picked up, and we were not able to pursue further north towards a bay where we the previous day had seen a couple of Pelicans in the far distance. We had to turn back. After a short stop on an island, the motor broke down. Eventually help arrived and we headed back to the guesthouse for lunch. Good birding in the lake though, few but good species.

Clamorous Reed Warblers and Graceful Prinias are abundant.

The Island where we were stranded when the motor broke down hosted a number of Senegal Thick-knees. In the evenings you hear this species everywhere but they hide well during daytime, requiring some work to get good views.

The temperature here now is nice, not too hot. Swimming in the lake is refreshing though.

In the afternoon we took the car, heading for the bay where we had earlier seen the Pelicans. Off road driving like crazy, we came to a couple of sheds. Suddenly a couple of guys take off in a hurry, running. They are as afraid of the authorities as we are. Our black Jeep looks intimidating. Mårten understands quickly what’s happening and manages to hold the guys off. Once they understand that we’re not authorities, Mårten offers some cigarettes, we’re all friends. Their bay does indeed host a couple of Pelicans. The first ones we see are Great White Pelicans though, we’re looking for the Pink-backed Pelican. Eventually two Pelicans came flying in, landing in the distance, and they looked smaller. Drove there and – Dang! – Pink-backed.

Tried some more bays and points for the African Skimmer, but no luck. The Skimmer is the second bird this year that we miss, the first was the Shikra in Kuwait. We met a group of German ringers at the Guest House, they had been on Lake Nasser for two weeks, ringing on the islands. They hadn’t seen any Skimmers in two weeks on the lake, so I guess they are still in Sudan. Win some – lose some.

Travelling, Sleeping, Eating

I wanted to write a bit about how we travel, what we do and what we don’t do. What works well and what doesn’t. We’ve now travelled to quite a few countries and learned quite a bit. So here goes.

Camping

The advantages of camping are several, it’s cheap (free actually) but the best is probably that it gets you species. Usually we try to camp on the spot for one or several birds. A good example is the Golden Nightjar spot in Western Sahara. Camping lets us be on the spot late in the evening, and then also waking up on the spot early is obviously good. We’re carrying a 3 person dome tent as well as cooking gear. The stove we use is a Primus multi fuel stove that runs on petrol as well as on diesel. Petrol and diesel are easy to buy everywhere. The dish we have settled on we have nicknamed Golden Rice, since the first time we cooked it was at the Golden Nightjar spot. The ingredients vary, but it’s basically rice, tomatoes, onions, chilli powder and whatever. If sausages are available they go in too. Fry everything, add rice and water – boil – eat. Everything in one casserole.

We’re also travelling with sleeping bags and sleeping mattresses. All this is pretty bulky, and almost one entire bag is full of camping gear. It’s worth it though, especially since it makes us much more flexible. When driving, we know that we have the camping gear, thus there is almost never any panic as to where we shall sleep, we can always choose to set up the tent somewhere in the dark.

Internet

So far we have managed to have proper internet access in all countries we have visited. We have a low-end Android phone, and we buy new SIM cards in the countries we visit. This can sometimes be a bit of a hassle, but usually works fine. The low-end phone has the local SIM card, and then we use WIFI tethering on that phone to share the internet to our regular phones and laptops. We consume almost 1 Gig per day. Internet is cheap though, especially so in countries like Morocco and Egypt. It’s invaluable to have the Internet on the road. It makes things like eBird research and hotel bookings just so much easier. Prior to the year – while researching which birds are where, we did enter a lot of eBird/observado GPS points into a shared “Google My Maps”. From there it’s possible to export a KML file, which can be imported into an (Android only) map app called Locus. Thus, even without internet, we would have access to offline maps with GPS points for the important birds. So far we haven’t used the Locus Map that much since we have had proper Internet.

Hotels

Usually we sleep in hotels or sometimes in apartments. We use the booking.com app or sometimes just the regular hotel search on google maps. This has worked very well. We usually try to make the bookings as late as possible en route in the car. We don’t want to be tied up by hotel bookings, it’s better to focus on the birding tactics and late in the afternoon decide where to sleep. Flexibility is key. Prices of hotels are very different and sometimes it can be ridiculously cheap. Especially in Egypt, we have had a few full board hotels for as little as 10 Euro / night for the three of us. It’s probably subsidised by the Egyptian government.

Customs, police and checkpoints

Countries like Morocco and Egypt have checkpoints on the roads pretty much everywhere. The Moroccan ones were especially irritating since each stop could take up to 10 minutes with police men writing down the details from our passports. A good trick is to have ready made copies of your passports that can just be handed out to the police at a checkpoint. In Egypt the checkpoints are military, not police, and pretty relaxed.

In Morocco we developed the ultimate checkpoint tactics. Here goes – read this and use it for the remainder of your lives. When driving into a police checkpoint you must never ever, under no circumstances have any eye contact with the officer standing there making the split-second decision whether to stop the car or let it through. That’s it, and it works unbelievably well. Since we started to employ this tactic, our checkpoint track record is stellar.

Customs and Airport Security is a harder nut to crack. In Rabat, Morocco we had our cameras and scopes confiscated by the customs. There the story was that we needed a permit from the “Ministry of Communications” in order to travel the country and photograph. We think they were just generally afraid of journalists, especially journalists travelling south into Western Sahara. We were able to get the damned permit, but it took the best part of a day to get it. However, the trick when flying with optics into Morocco is easy, just don’t fly to Rabat, choose Casablanca or Marrakech where they are more accustomed to tourists and optics are fine there in the customs. On our second trip to Morocco, we flew to Casablanca. The customs inspected our optics and there were no problems.

Egypt is a different story altogether though. In short – it appears to be a random process. Some birders get optics through customs, some don’t. We had almost all our optics, including the binoculars confiscated at customs. We’re not the only ones, others have had similar bad experiences with Egyptian customs. This situation is so bad, and random, so until this changes we cannot recommend Egypt as a birding destination at all. Unless you’re desperate for those (pretty awesome) WP ticks, choose another country. If you do go to Egypt, put all optics into the checked in luggage. If possible, choose a camera lens that is smaller. We have Canon 100-400/5.6 lenses and those went through.

This is something for Birdlife International to work on. Egypt is a fantastic birding country, and it would be a shame if birdwatching tourism died out due to idiotic rules.

Music

We spend a lot of time driving. Offline music in the car is extremely important. These are some of our offline Spotify lists. Enjoy.

Pet Sounds Stefan from the hipster record store in Stockholm.

Lennart Persson a collection of what now deceased music critic Lennart Persson wrote about

Klackes Songs

Leon Hennings our friend Leon has impeccable taste in music, these are his most listened to songs last year.

Mangrove mania!

With this trip to Egypt it’s clear that the character of our project is slowly changing. We are doing less and less of what us birders call primary birding e.g going to good birding spots and just observing what's there. Now with over 550 species on our list, the days with twenty new species in a day are long gone. Our focus now is almost exclusively very specific targets, like the Yellow Bittern in Lahami mangroves. It was discovered in 2012 by Jens Hering and his German research team. Only 26 birders have registrerad the bird on their Netfugl list . We went there determined to find it.

The mangrove is fairly small and in 2013 at least 3 pairs were breeding there. It might sound like an easy mission but nevertheless the birds proved extremely tricky to locate. We arrived in the evening just before sunset and went straight out into the mangroves wading in waist deep muddy water. But no sign of the Bittern. Went back the next morning now walking around and into the mangroves again, for hours, listening and play-backing hoping to get contact. No luck.

During low tide we moved on to another patch of mangroves where another target bird, Goliath Heron sometimes hung out. Walking the tidal mudflats in the 40 + heat is somewhat energy consuming. Saw some nice birds there but no Goliath…

Next morning we were back at Lahami mangroves before sunrise, again trying for the bittern. All of a sudden a bittern-sized bird comes flying centimetres from Klackes nose and crashes into a mangrove tree just next to us. Hearts pounding we encircled the bush, almost sure that we would now get our precious bird. Mårten sticks his head into the tree and surprisingly calls out. “It’s a fucking Corncrake!”

An hour south of Lahami lies El Shalateen, a small town just on the Sudan border which is famous for its big camel market and amongst us birders as THE place to see Lappet-Faced Vulture in the WP. We went there. To enter the town you must pass a good number of military check-points making the day trip a nervous one for us. Utterly afraid that they would find and confiscate our last remaining scope. Luckily they didn’t and the vulture was easy.

On our third day of searching for the bittern in the mangroves it felt like an impossible task. The birds were clearly not calling and seeing one felt even more unlikely. We had decided to give it one last try before continuing north and were back at the same spot wading out in the mangroves as the sun was rising from the turquoise sea. Then it happened! A Yellow Bittern called three times with its characteristic “whop whop whop” BINGO! We were relieved to leave the mangroves, never to go back!

Some other nice birds from the mangroves.

Our next target turned out to be much much easier. After a nine hours drive with Valerie June and Swedish Radio documentary about the spectacular Arlanda Airport robbery in 2002 we arrived at the site for Chestnut-Bellied Sandgrouse south west of the small town Al Bahnasa.

It was a hot day, too hot to move so we found a good vantage point and started scanning. After about 1 hour I spotted three birds in the distance going down in some fields one km away. We quickly drove there and as we entered the field the owner of the land approached. As always we took our Collins Bird guide, smiled and said “Tayir” bird in Arabic, and pointed at the picture in the book and the area where the birds were. The owner smiled and said something in Arabic and after some advanced body language we had access to his fields and were invited for a nice cup of tea. Very nice!

The following day it was time for another WP speciality namely Saunder’s Tern on the Sinai peninsula. A few years ago our friend Mohamed Habib found a nesting colony close to Ras Sedr again showing how under birded this country is. The terns were very easy and present in good numbers. Another one down! Two more to go before we leave Egypt and get our binoculars back!

Wrap up Egypt

Our Egypt trip is now almost finished, yesterday we got our last two remaining target birds here in Egypt. The Senegal Coucal and Streaked Weaver. They were both relatively easy to locate in the agricultural fields close to Abou Hamad just north-east of Cairo. The Coucal we found almost directly

The Weaver was harder to locate and we walked the foot paths among the fields for quite some time. Eventually three birds came flying over and landed shortly in some reeds so that we could all get good views. Pretty good birding in general in that area, with lots of Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters and also quite a few Greater Painted Snipe.

Apart from the debacle with binoculars at Egyptian customs, the Egypt trip must be considered a total success. We missed two species, the African Skimmer and the Goliath Heron, neither were present we believe.

Despite the chaotic traffic, we have managed to have zero incidents with the car, which by the way was a great car. Jeep Wrangler.

We were very happy with the 4WD jeep, so when we got stopped by the military at Suez and they asked if the car was 4WD, we said yes yes officer – it’s 4WD. That turned out to be the wrong answer there, no 4WD vehicles are allowed at all on the Sinai peninsula. Apparently this was part of a drive from the Egyptian authorities to fuck with the beduins – who they for some reason don’t like.

We have received a lot of help from various friends during our two week trip here in Egypt. Thanks a bunch !!!

• Tomas Axen Haraldsson has led several trips to Egypt over the year. Tomas provided valuable information during the entire trip. He also set us in contact with:
• Haitham Ibrahim, who also provided good info several times. Haitham set us in contact with:
• Atyat Ghareeb, she borrowed us Haithams old binoculars. We would have missed species without those.
• Mohamed Habib provided good info.
• Bob Swann, provided the call of the Yellow Bittern. Without that we would have missed the bird. The song that exists on Xeno Canto is all wrong. We later also got the same song by email from Santamaa Markku.
• Dan Pointon had good information on the Saunders Tern.
• Istvan Molodovan who does field work in Egypt had good information on which roads were possible to use.
• Pierre-Andre Crouchet, who provided the final piece of the puzzle for the Yellow Bittern.

Kazbegi Georgia

Absolutely wonderful to go birding in a normal country where we don’t have to look out for police and militaries all the time. Normal customs, normal traffic, normal. The goal was to visit Kazbegi National Park . We rented a 4WD in Tbilisi and drove to Stepantsminda which is the mountain village at the foot of the impressive Kazbegi mountain.

We did a number of short road stops, the first by a small river which had some nice birds, nothing spectacular though.

Next shortstop was better, with Green Warbler and Red-throated Flycatcher.

Nice lunch en-route where we, after travelling to many muslim countries, could satisfy our cravings for pig meat and some alcohol.

While eating a Lammergeier came flying over the lunch restaurant. A bird we have been worrying a bit over.

Finally, at Stepantsminda, we went birding immediately. New WP ticks came flying in directly. The Caucasian Snowcock calling from the mountainside, a few Red-fronted Serins and two Caucasian Black Grouse displaying on the mountainside.

The second day we started birding the bushes along the valley in Stepantsminda. We’d spoken to a few birders we met and apparently both the Great Rosefinch as well as the Güldenstädt’s Redstart had been seen in the valley. Griffon vultures were very common.

Scanning the bushes below the petrol station I (Klacke) see one Güldenstädt’s Redstart flying over, the others were not able to see it though. This would be a horrible species to have on the Difference List . We searched for that bird to no avail.

Close to the village, a sure spot for Wallcreeper was easy. This was a lifer for both Erik and me. One of those birds that stand out like a beacon in the Collins Birdguide.

After lunch we went with the car up to the famous Gergeti Trinity church on the mountain.

No Redstarts and no Rosefinches. A couple of Cinereous Vultures came soaring. Also a difficult WP bird which was very good to get.

Scanning slopes is the birding tactics in Kazbegi

Now the Güldenstädt’s Redstart and the Great Rosefinch both sailed up to an unthreatened position of most wanted bird, thus we decided to hike up the mountain the next day. Both these species are true high altitude species. They winter in the valley, but as spring comes they go high. Unbelievably high, it’s hard to fathom how birds can live during such harsh circumstances. We started early in the morning in light rain. As we came higher the rain just continued to pour. Eventually it became snow which was easier to handle, but cold and windy.

Birding conditions were poor, however the high altitude species were active. The Snowcocks were playing like crazy in the mountains. Once we got up sufficiently high, we were able to relatively easily locate the Great Rosefinch. We saw at least 10 birds.

No Redstarts though and eventually we gave up, cold and wet. One of the most common birds on the mountain was the Ring Ouzel, they were resident at very high altitude as well as way down in the valley.

In the afternoon the skies cleared and Erik and Mårten decided to make yet another attempt climbing the steep hill just below our hotel.

You see them as two small dots in the far. Again, the Snowcocks were displaying and Mårten managed to shoot a video.

Still no Redstart though. Next morning we decided to pursue the tactics of searching bushes in the valley. It had rained all night, and the theory was that with such bad weather, some birds might have decided to fly down to the valley. We went to a new place recommended by Frans De Schamphelaere just north of the village and – dang – we found one Güldenstädt’s redstart after just 5 minutes of scanning. Took the car down to those bushes trying to get better views and maybe a photograph, but we were never able to relocate the Redstart. Did get the best picture of the fast moving Mountain Chiffchaff though.

Also found a group of Rosy Starlings (new WP tick) and the best picture of Common cuckoo.

Birding in Kurdistan

The trip from Georgia to Lake Van, in eastern Turkey was a bit awkward. We flew via Istanbul, an alternative would actually have been a bus trip from Tbilisi to Van. Had a bit of luck with the rental car at Van airport. This is the second time we are sloppy entering the arrival time at the airport, and when we arrive the car is gone. A local company had a car though, which was better than the one we had booked. We want to return the car to Antalya, making car rental a bit more complicated.

Van appears to be a very nice little city, with a friendly atmosphere, restaurants everywhere. It appears as if European visitors are rare here too, wherever we go people gawk curiously, albeit friendly.

First day birding started with pouring rain, thus we got a few well deserved extra hours of sleep. In the late morning, we went to a spot an hour away we received by Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu Turkish top birder who has been very helpful. It is very valuable to have a local birder to talk to when visiting foreign countries, Emin is the guy!

Just after a few kilometres up the mountain side, we connect with the first target bird. We hear it singing, and soon see it.

A very good WP bird, soon after we hear (and see poorly) over flying Crimson-winged finches. Very characteristic flight and call, after a few kilometres more up the mountain we get close.

The prize bird of this mountain though is the Mongolian Finch. This is a bird Mårten has searched for in Armenia on numerous occasions without ever finding the bird. The tactic according to Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu is to just sit and wait at the spot. We do that for a while but soon get restless and spread out. After an hour or so, we find one, and then later two birds.

What we thought was going to be one of the hardest birds to locate in Turkey bagged on the first day.

Down by the car again, we see a couple of Black-headed Buntings. We’ll probably see lots of those as we travel Turkey. And finally, driving down the mountain we’re talking about Bimaculated Lark, and Mårten reads from the Collins Guide – They like high elevation areas, just where agriculture is almost no longer possible. We all look out and say, well that’s here then and stop the car. First thing we hear is a singing Bimaculated Lark high in the sky.

Six new ticks in a day, we’ll probably never do that again during the year. Or maybe on Madeira in August!!

Roadtrippin’ Turkey

The plan was to go by car from Van all the way to tourist resort Antalya on the Mediterranean coast. Long drive, but for reasons unknown to me Turkey has better roads than countries like Sweden and England. Actually, this is a mystery, how come countries like Morocco, Egypt and Turkey have better roads than what we have.

First stop was a quarry, close to Van where Eastern Rock Nuthatch had been reported. Western was common there, but no Eastern (string?)

The ubiquitous Rock Sparrow was everywhere in the quarry.

Anna Bohlin joined up on our Turkey leg.

Slightly surprising was the amount of Rooks at this site. This is barren high elevation, and we think about the Rook as a typical bird of agricultural landscape.

After dipping the Eastern Rock Nuthatch it was high time for breakfast. We drove down to a lake with reeds close to Van. Again, same as camping, having breakfast at the birding site is very nice. In the reeds Reed Warbler and also Great Reed-warbler were common. Great Reed-warbler was earlier on the difference list, Erik saw one at Muttla Ranch in Kuwait.

Soon we also found a few Paddyfield warblers, a good WP bird.

The lake also hosted a few White-headed Ducks. When we were planning our WP year we never thought that we would just see White-headed Duck as a regular species several times over the year. We thought it would have to be specifically targeted at a known site.

Driving west, around the large Lake Van we made a short stop to have a good look at the common Armenian Gulls. Fully adult birds are easy to distinguish from other Gulls due to their stocky four-coloured bills.

Arrived at the famous site of Nemrut Dagi in the afternoon. At the foot of the mountain we tried a spot recommended by Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu. We almost immediately found a few Cinereous Buntings at the spot.

According to Emin also Eastern Rock-nuthatch and Pale Rock-sparrow was a possibility at that spot but we couldn’t find any. Nemrut Dagi is a major tourist attraction with large stone statues from 30-60 BC, i.e more than 2000 years old statues.

The tourist business in Turkey has apparently collapsed in the last couple of years. Since (for completely strange reasons) Booking.com is blocked in Turkey. We just drove there and picked a hotel at random. Driving up on the cosy hotel driveway, the owner simply cries out in joy – Tourists !!. We spoke to them and they had seen very few tourist the last few years and we also saw quite a few shut down places on the mountain.

After checking in, in the afternoon as well as the entire following day, we drove slowly up and down the mountain birding with many short stops. Below the tree-line quite a few high quality birds were common.

There are many reports of Finch’s Wheatear on the Nemrut Dagi mountain, however we couldn’t find any. The odd looking pale Black-eared Wheatears are quite similar though. This is one of the drawbacks of systems like eBird and Observado, there is never any checks for correctness, but then again, how could there be. The whole point is that everybody reports what they see which is exactly what makes these system so powerful and useful.

Below the tree-line we also found a couple of Eastern Rock-nuthatches. The nest is especially strange, a hole right into a vertical cliff.

Above the tree-line we soon found the price bird at Nemrut Dagi, the Kurdish Wheatear.

The Wheatear as well as Cinereous Bunting were very easy on the mountain. What was not easy though was Pale Rock-sparrow, the Rock-sparrow should apparently be common on the Nemrut Dagi mountain. We searched and listened for hours for the sparrow. This is a nomadic species, and some years they are abundant at a site whereas the next they can be missing. Other common species on the mountain were Rock Sparrow and surprisingly enough Wood Lark.

as well as Horned Lark.

Climbing all the way to the top –

we get to see the strange statues. Among the statues, Snowfinches nest. Strange and nice.