2010 - Review January - June

2010 has been an awfully quick year - here are a few of my highlights...

Above - African Penguins at Simonstown, South Africa during out New Year holiday to the Western Cape
Below - A UK tick - black-throated thrush, Newholm, North Yorkshire, January

February saw a visit to Cleveland for a very obliging ring-necked duck ~ the best and most close views I've had of the species in the UK. A great bacon sandwich was has had courtesy of CB afterwards!

March saw the arrival of a common crane at Eshott ~  a vocal bird and not popular with the territorial lapwing!

April was a month of wagtails - the possible black-headed at Cresswell was a stunner... even in the rain!

May was a busy month - the first week was spent abroad, with visits to Dubai and Mauritius.

The red-wattled lapwing was in Safa Park, Dubai - a park that had playing fields covered in hoopoe!

Mauritius was limited species-wise, we saw some really great birds ~ echo parakeet, Mauritius olive white-eye, white-tailed tropicbird.... but the enigmatic pink pigeon will never be forgotten...

May also saw the first of 10 planned annual birding weekends with the birders of my youth - Mark, John and Rob. 2010 saw us on Mull and Iona where corncrake was bird of the trip!

May produced another UK tick for me - oriental pratincole at Frampton Marsh. I saw this delightful bird with Phil on a sunny day-trip.

June was quieter than hoped-for, but a singing marsh warbler was nice...

The rest of 2010 will feature in the next post!

Dubai

Above - Red-wattled Lapwing, Safa Park, Dubai

As previously mentioned I recently returned from a short trip to UAE and Mauritius. Newcastle benefits from scheduled flights to Dubai with Emirates - so Dubai was a logical stop-off on the journey on 26th - 28th April. We stayed three nights south of the main city, although the first night does not really count as you arrive late. Day one was spent acclimatising round the hotel pool- temperatures were climbing to the forties...!

Above - view of the hotel on a day of leisure

Day two was more birdy, with a morning trip to Safa park. On arrival it was apparent that the park was rather vast, but luckily I met an ex-pat birder, so I was pointed in the "right" direction. Migrants were thin on the ground, with spotted flycatcher, redstart, yellow wagtail (5 grey-headed types and one assumed blue-headed) and one red-throated pipit.

The highlight for me was the number of hoopoe - tens! I've never seen so many, all feeding away on the newly cut lawns. frustratingly the only close birds kept to the shaded areas.

Red-vented and white-cheeked bulbul were common throughout the park while the boating pond in the middle held a couple of fine red-wattled lapwing (see top image) - stunners! Also on the boating pond were a single common sandpiper and an immature black-headed gull.

Further in the park is a fenced bird sanctuary area with limited viewing and access. This area was relatively quite, with little grebe, Egyptian goose, black-winged stilt, black-crowned night heron added. Purple sunbird were numerous but remained high in the canopy.

Above - Indian Roller - 3 - 4 present in Safa Park

Round the hotel Mynas' were represented by two species - common and pied - I rather like the pied! (see below). The only issue (for me) was that the security guards at the hotel did not like me wielding a camera around, so photo opportunities were limited - I was accosted as I went to take the image below!

Our room at the hotel was on the 18th floor. Pallid swift skimmed passed the tinted windows throughout the day and some limited sea watching provided two socotra cormorant, saunders tern and a single summer plumaged great black-headed (pallas's) gull. Indian silverbill bathed in the ornamental streams flowing through the gardens and the shrubs and palms were bustling with the tiny graceful prinia (see below).

So, a nice stop-over... on the morning of the 29th April it was back to the airport and onto Mauritius.