A tree full of Wagtails

First day, early start 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 to bird an area north of the city, called Jahra.

Several nice birding spots there with best 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 gratiously 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 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. All ticks of today can be seen at our iGoTerra Page. Several good ones not mentioned here.