Kingfisher

Today’s blog entry consists of photographs of Common Kingfishers, pictures I took recently in Makadai Bay, Hurghada, Egypt.

Kingfisher

The Common Kingfisher is widespread across Europe, from Britain in the west all the way across to the most eastern part of Russia. Some European birds migrate towards the Mediterranean area in autumn and a small number winter in North Africa. The Kingfishers I saw in Makadi Bay could be wintering birds from central or Eastern Europe, Turkey or Iran because according to my field guide Kingfishers don’t breed along the Red Sea coast. There are scarce breeding records from coastal Morocco and also Tunisia, the latter a holiday destination where a few years ago I also saw Common Kingfishers.

Kingfisher

The Kingfisher(s) always hung about in the early morning where a few boats reached into the shallow, clear waters of the Red Sea, and wherever small fish fed in abundance. In a few of these pictures it is possible to see fish scales stuck to the bird’s bill. Although I waited around a few times I didn’t get to take pictures of a Kingfisher with a fish, my ultimate goal.

Kingfisher
Sunrise, Makadi Bay

Leftovers

Two weeks later I finally finished going through my pictures from Egypt, so picked out a number that as yet have not performed on the blog. Some of the species have appeared before, but in the absence of any birding on a wet and windy Friday and promised same again for Saturday, the bit of blue sky and memory of warm, sunny Egyptian days may cheer everyone up.

There was a particular Western Reef Heron in Hurghada that hung around the main jetty where the local lads fished with hand lines, but to amuse the tourists fed the heron by hand with freshly caught fish. The creature was so used to being fed it would stalk up and down the jetty in the hope of scrounging a meal. The Striated Herons weren’t so obliging and I would have to seek them out in quiet beach or boat spots in the early morning. In the second week of the holiday when most of the tourists went home, the beach camels took a well-deserved rest, the lizards came out to play and early mornings were the best time for Greenshank and Greater Sand Plover.

Western Reef Heron
Striated Heron
Striated Heron
Striated Heron
Sleepy Camel
Egyptian Lizard
Greater Sand Plover
Greenshank

There were a small number of very wary Stonechats about the hotel grounds which kept their distance so well I only bothered to get one photograph. I am pretty sure the ones I saw were all European Stonechats, and none of them Siberian Stonechats, although both occur in Egypt. The common crow of the area is Hooded Crow.

Stonechat
Hooded Crow

I suppose the highlight of my photography time was getting the chance to take pictures of a close Osprey, and on a couple of mornings sitting near a Kingfisher, none of which happens too often here in the UK.

Osprey
Kingfisher

Slender-billed Gull

I am not the greatest gull enthusiast, but I came back from Egypt with a few pictures of Slender-billed Gull Chroicocephalus genei, as attractive as ever a gull can be, but the identity of which initially puzzled me until I consulted Birds of The Middle East back in the hotel room, after I had taken a few pictures of Makadi Bay.

Slender-billed Gull
Makadi Bay

Unlike our everyday UK gulls Slender-billed Gull is not numerous wherever it breeds and in consequence, very uncommon even in its winter quarters which includes Egypt. This is one of the few gulls I saw in the Hurghada area on the recent holiday, the other being Baltic Gull, which I was never able to photograph. The bird is a juvenile/first winter as shown by the black terminal tail band, and dark areas in the wings. Unfortunately my attempts at a BIF were not too good, but captured a few features of the creature.

Slender-billed Gull
Slender-billed Gull

Slender-billed Gulls are a mid-sized gull, slightly larger than a Black-headed Gull, and they breed locally and patchily around the Mediterranean and the north of the western Indian Ocean (e.g. Pakistan) on islands and coastal lagoons and in the Black Sea regions of Russia, Turkey and Iraq. Most of the population is somewhat migratory, wintering further south to North Africa and India, and a few birds have wandered to Western Europe, but with luck it is possible to see them all year round in the Middle East.

Slender-billed Gull

Slender-billed Gulls breed in colonies, nesting on the ground and laying up to three eggs. Like most gulls, they are gregarious in winter, both when feeding or in evening roosts, but It is not a pelagic species, and rarely seen at sea far from coasts. Lets face it, it beats a Herring Gull every time.

Do You Like Kestrels?

Below are photographs of Kestrels I took recently around the area of the Red Sea in Makadi Bay, Hurghada, Egypt. Here in the UK Kestrels are pretty hard to photograph on a casual basis but at our hotel 2 pairs that nest on the tall buildings and hunt in the hotel grounds were very tolerant of my camera. They were indifferent to passers-by probably because they were used to people working in the extensive gardens on a daily basis.

Here are a few Kestrels Will and I ringed at Out Rawcliffe last year.

And a Kestrel at Cockerham, also last year.


Do you like Kestrels?

Shore Thing, Egypt

I sorted through my Egypt photos and came up with a selection of birds I found on walks along Makadi Bay, strolls that included the beach, shore and a couple of spots where there were boats of all shapes and sizes, all of which makes good shorebird habitat.

I had no preconceptions about anything I might see on the holiday, it was after all mainly a winter holiday to warm through our northern bones, with a bit of birding thrown in if time and circumstances allowed.

One morning while carrying my camera with long lens and taking pictures of a lone Greenshank on the beach, a local lad Mimo shouted after me “paparazzi”, maybe thinking I was taking an unhealthy interest in and pictures of the many bikinied Russian girls lounging on sun beds – as if I would!

Mimo surprised me by being fairly clued up about western birding, even though he had never seen the Kingfisher that perched every day above and next to his camel’s shelter, but asked if I had seen the “big white hawk that lives in the sand”. Alarm bells rang as I realised Ospreys frequented the area, and of course in the Middle East Ospreys do indeed nest on the ground, mainly on remote islands owing to the general lack of trees. I looked harder for the next few days and found the Ospreys as they came in and out of the bay to feed in the shallow waters, often resting and drying out from their plunge dives on top of the Princess Deha that seemed to permanently berth alongside the main jetty. Frustratingly the early morning sun was always behind the boat meaning I had to over expose every shot to get a decent picture, hence the white and not blue sky. Mostly the birds would spend several minutes in the area before heading off north, than intermittently return towards dusk.

Osprey
Osprey
Too Close Osprey
Makadi Bay

Most mornings I saw Greenshank, Common Sandpiper and Greater Sand Plover, with an occasional Ringed Plover, but just like the UK, waders here were difficult to approach.

Greenshank
Greater Sand Plover
Greater Sand Plover

The jetty was a good place to find early morning Striated Heron and Western Reef Heron, both species being quite common along the Red Sea coast. A Western Reef Heron is the same size as Little Egret and superficially the two species might be confused, but the Reef Heron has a stouter bill with a slightly curved culmen and as a whole the species is a little less elegant than Little Egret. Striated Heron is a small, rather skulking heron, most active at dawn and dusk, but one or two days I found single birds on the beach or roosting on boats or the jetty.

Western Reef Heron
Striated Heron
Striated Heron
Western Reef Heron

Rather strangely in view of the abundance of fish, literally teeming along the tideline and abundant offshore, gulls and terns were scarce, whereby I saw daily Caspian Terns, several overflying Baltic Gulls, but in two weeks of looking, just a single Slender-billed Gull.

And the shot below is the best I got of a Caspian Tern, all of whom kept their silent distance from me for two weeks.

Caspian Tern
Jellyfish

That’s it for now until I’ve sorted the Kingfisher and Slender-billed Gull pictures, but I also have a series of Chiffchaff pictures plus a spot of some nectarivory, which has absolutely nothing to do with Russian girls.