I sure my friend George will remind me, we both went last year as he's a bit more mobile now.

Ah well Adrian as least we are not forbidden from taking photos- not yet anyway- perhaps they are planning to tax us on hobbies, seeing as they put the fuel tax on hold for a little while. If you do come back get in touch and hopefully we may go to the birdfair again this year.

Ivan Ellison wrote:

---

Stay where you are Adrian, I would rather get beheaded on Al jezeera tv than put up with this crap weather , over taxation, scrotes and nerdowells.

---

Beheaded Ivan? That's taking it a bit far. Last week I dug out a pond outside our section at work. We had one that we could no longer get water to so I decided to move it to nearer our supply. In the first week it has proved to be a big success and as it's easier to fill now I've got one of the Saudis interested in it. This week we've have stacks of birds using it including, pale rock finch, bee-eaters, swallows, redstarts, pied wheatears, hoopoes, Isabelline and southern grey shrikes, namaqua doves and all our usual residents. As the migration looks to be in full swing now, hopefully we'll get many more. The bigest drawback is photography is forbidden, which is a great frustration.

Stay where you are Adrian, I would rather get beheaded on Al jezeera tv than put up with this crap weather , over taxation, scrotes and nerdowells.

Adrian Dancy wrote:

---

Well, thought about you a lot recently ...over your safety.

Your experience here will be invaluable. However, can I just recommend you rainproof your photography gear , get used to ISO1600 and shutter speeds of 1/30 second. Also get used to the colour grey, there's a lot of it about!

---

Thanks Adrian, no more trips to Bahrain, we've been forbidden to travel by our company. Might be the right time to come home.

Well, thought about you a lot recently ...over your safety.

Your experience here will be invaluable. However, can I just recommend you rainproof your photography gear , get used to ISO1600 and shutter speeds of 1/30 second. Also get used to the colour grey, there's a lot of it about!

John it's funny how a sighting of a lesser kestrel or a bee-eater would seem not to be out of the ordinary yet when I see a bullfinch or nuthatch at home they seem unusual to me. If you ever see a guy getting all excited over lapwings at Pennington Flash, it will be me.

Hi Adrian,

You will certainly miss that sort of morning's birding but with your experience of House Sparrows and Collared Doves you probably won't need much local patch re-training at all. It's about all I'm getting round mine

Cheers, John

It's on the cards that my time in Saudi Arabia may soon be over, no complaints really, I've had a good 38 year run. What prompted me to write this was the birds around our building this morning. We are situated about half way down a military runway and the surrounding area is brush. Basically it's short vegetation in what would have been desert at one time. The spring migration has just kicked in and this is a list of my sightings today. Migratory birds 2 kestrel M&F 1 Pallid harrier (over flying) 5 Isabelline/Turkestan shrike 3 Hoopoe 2 Pied wheatear 2 Isabelline wheatear 1 Northern wheatear 1 Redstart (F) Residents House sparrows Spanish sparrows White cheeked bulbuls Common mynahs Crested lark Laughing dove Collared dove I'm going to miss these when I get back home and will probably need retraining on the local patch. I just thought I'd share this with you.