Red, White, and Blue

Red for Red-throated Pipit, White for White Wagtail and Blue for Bluethroat, a trio from the Egypt holiday. If I had to say which was the most abundant in the area of Makadi Bay, Hurghada it would be a close run thing between White Wagtail and Bluethroat whereby on a walk of a couple of hours I could tot up 40 of each, but maybe only ten or so red-throats. Whilst I took lots of pictures of Bluethroat and Red-throated Pipit, the much more familiar to me White Wagtail obviously induced a touch of commonbirditis, an affliction I criticise in others.

Red-throated Pipit
White Wagtail
White Wagtail
Bluethroat

If we were to believe some field guides Red-throated Pipit is potentially difficult to separate from Meadow Pipit, but the jizz of the birds is completely different. In 2 weeks of watching Red-throated Pipits I hardly saw one lift its searching, feeding, crouching, slightly tail wagging body a few centimetres above the grassy spots they always fed on. Never did one perch at anything above a blade of grass height and the only sound emitted was a single or double short, thin note as they flew quickly away from whatever disturbed them. But of course the “tramline” plumage of red-throats gives them away every time.

Red-throated Pipit
Red-throated Pipit
Red-throated Pipit
Red-throated Pipit

There are possibly 4 races of Bluethroat that occur in the Middle East, suffice to say I was happy to see and photograph plenty of them without worrying too much about their origins. Of course any birds that lack colour on the throat and chest are more likely to be juveniles and females. I witnessed a few territorial squabbles when birds made lots of threatening noises to each other and also employed their colourful tails in both sideways and upwards movements.

Bluethroat
Bluethroat
Bluethroat
Bluethroat
Bluethroat

As we’re doing a walk around Makadi Bay I might as well chuck in a couple more common birds of the area, Laughing Dove which really does have a laughing call, and Kestrel, a species that blends in so easily with the local palm trees where they sit waiting for innocents below.

Kestrel
Laughing Dove

A good place to find Bluethroats was the grounds of a hotel half a mile from our own. The Head Gardener there described himself in broken English as a “Garden Chef”, and his creations were superb garden artistry where Bluethroats made full use of his designs. The gardens held lots of Sardinian Warblers and Lesser Whitethroats, both very unaccommodating to photographers, with my one photo of Sardinian Warbler a not very good one.

Scary Topiary
Funny Topiary
Bluethroat
Sardinian Warbler

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?

Hints Of Spring

While others sunned themselves in Egypt Will kept up the good work by feeding his garden finches and fitting in a few ringing sessions which yielded more than 25 Siskin and another 15 winter Blackbirds. Having post-holiday withdrawal symptoms from ringing I was keen to get out as soon as the weather allowed, and last night’s forecast appeared almost perfect for this morning with a promised easing wind and a touch of sun.

The morning was indeed fine so we set nets at 0730 and caught steadily until 1030 with 49 birds in total, 40 new and 9 recaptures. New birds, 24 Siskin, 5 Tree Sparrow, 5 Chaffinch, 3 Lesser Redpoll, 2 Blackbird and 1 Brambling. Recaptures were 6 Siskin, all from recent weeks and days, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Dunnock and 1 Greenfinch.

There was just a hint of spring today whereby the 3 Lesser Redpoll were not only the first in garden for some weeks but were also brightly coloured spring males. Tree Sparrows are fairly uncommon in Will’s garden, so to catch 5 in spring is both unprecedented and unexpected. Although we caught 24 Siskin, the numbers moving through continue to build with a minimum of 70/80 individuals today, and we await details from the BTO of 2 Siskins caught in late January, X343298 and T879956.

A sure sign of early spring is when the titmice move out of Will’s garden and take up residence in nearby woods, so with very few sightings near the nets of the three main culprits, Blue, Great and Coal, we breathed a sigh of relief and concentrated on catching finches.

Lesser Redpoll
Lesser Redpoll
Brambling
Siskin
Siskin - female
Tree Sparrow

Other birds seen this morning, Grey Wagtail, Kestrel, Nuthatch, and several Greenfinch and Chaffinch in song all around us.

It’s not a good weather synopsis for a good few days so it may be back to Egypt for blog readers in the next day or two and a bird that is a little like a Robin.

Bluethroat

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.