MKinHK
Mike Kilburn
Another red-eye flight from Hong Kong for a two-day conference allowed me an exciting few hours of birding – this time in Dubai - at the height of the autumn migration. A review of the excellent UAE birding website threw up Al Mamzar Park as a site that I could access via a 15 minute taxi ride from my hotel on the northern edge of Dubai Creek.
The park does not open until 0800 (and closes to men on Wednesdays) so I had time to revive myself at the hotel’s splendid breakfast buffet before making a start. There were four Cattle Egrets on the roadside verges on the approach to the park and having paid the 5 Dirhams entry fee I started heading up the eastern side and immediately picked up a Hoopoe, a couple of Indian Silverbills, the first of many Purple Sunbirds and a cracking Spotted Flycatcher – my first since a previous work trip to Abu Dhabi for a similar conference in 2014 – hawking from a perch above a dripping hose.
This area turned out to be very good producing a long-billed, tail dipping Eastern Olivaceous Warbler, a hulking yellow-eyed female Barred Warbler and the first of several Lesser Whitethroats. I was also pleased to nail down my first Ménétrie’s Warbler, a rather brown and bulky sylvia with a white throat. The bill was distinctive – a mostly pale lower mandible with a pale patch bleeding up onto the centre of the upper mandible, and a dark culmen and tip giving a hooked, somewhat “gonzo-like” profile. There was also a juvenile shrike sp. that I started out thinking was Red-backed, but the jury is very much still out, and any thoughts would be most welcome.
Common birds here included House Sparrows and House Crows, Common Myna, Asian Pied Starling, Collared and Palm Doves, White-eared and Red-vented Bulbuls and a few Ring-necked Parakeets. Out on the sea, well over a thousand Socotra Cormorants were foraging in a big rolling pack.
Just in front of the restaurant is a sunken amphitheatre with broad grassy steps and a long almost shockingly green lawn running northwards down the centre of the park. This held the first Whimbrel of the day, more Hoopoes and a magnificent pair of Indian Rollers flashing brilliant blue wings as they hunted from the arms of the streetlights.
More to come . . .
Cheers
Mike
The park does not open until 0800 (and closes to men on Wednesdays) so I had time to revive myself at the hotel’s splendid breakfast buffet before making a start. There were four Cattle Egrets on the roadside verges on the approach to the park and having paid the 5 Dirhams entry fee I started heading up the eastern side and immediately picked up a Hoopoe, a couple of Indian Silverbills, the first of many Purple Sunbirds and a cracking Spotted Flycatcher – my first since a previous work trip to Abu Dhabi for a similar conference in 2014 – hawking from a perch above a dripping hose.
This area turned out to be very good producing a long-billed, tail dipping Eastern Olivaceous Warbler, a hulking yellow-eyed female Barred Warbler and the first of several Lesser Whitethroats. I was also pleased to nail down my first Ménétrie’s Warbler, a rather brown and bulky sylvia with a white throat. The bill was distinctive – a mostly pale lower mandible with a pale patch bleeding up onto the centre of the upper mandible, and a dark culmen and tip giving a hooked, somewhat “gonzo-like” profile. There was also a juvenile shrike sp. that I started out thinking was Red-backed, but the jury is very much still out, and any thoughts would be most welcome.
Common birds here included House Sparrows and House Crows, Common Myna, Asian Pied Starling, Collared and Palm Doves, White-eared and Red-vented Bulbuls and a few Ring-necked Parakeets. Out on the sea, well over a thousand Socotra Cormorants were foraging in a big rolling pack.
Just in front of the restaurant is a sunken amphitheatre with broad grassy steps and a long almost shockingly green lawn running northwards down the centre of the park. This held the first Whimbrel of the day, more Hoopoes and a magnificent pair of Indian Rollers flashing brilliant blue wings as they hunted from the arms of the streetlights.
More to come . . .
Cheers
Mike