Doha, Qatar
21 April 2006

View from my hotel room across West Bay towards Doha

A quick day’s birding in Doha, Qatar - another of the Middle East’s new building sites. Like Dubai and Kuwait the skyline here is changing at a remarkable rate: new roads are going nowhere this week but to newly-built housing estates the next, old roads are as grid-locked as any US city, and you do have to wonder how the Hell any wildlife anywhere in the world is supposed to survive the onslaught we continue to wage on the environment.

I’ve been to Doha a couple of times and never got much further than the area around the Sheraton Hotel which is built on the northern side of West Bay. The first few visits I was actually fairly content not to go too far as I often saw Socotra Cormorants and Slender-billed Gulls in the Bay, the hotel has a reasonable garden that attracted a few birds, and there was a large undeveloped area of scrub and sand in front of the hotel where I regularly saw bee-eaters, wheatears and shrikes (and a female Blue Rock Thrush once) - sadly that particular area is now a large car park and few of the local birds have adapted happily to the concrete and its lack of food…Still, thanks to a Canadian ex-pat, Gordon Saunders, who replied to a last-minute email I sent and who’s been teaching out in Doha since last September, I was going to have a chance to get out of the hotel with a birder with (I hoped) some good local knowledge.

Fortunately even though he’d only been in Doha for six months Gordon knew of somewhere decent to go: a surprisingly large (unnamed apparently) wetland area near the main prison (and next to an Army Camp) about 40 minutes away, and it was to there that we headed off for the few hours Gordon had spare.

We got to the wetland by about 08:15 - and the sand was already shimmering under a cloudless sky. Parking by the side of the road, we walked across the rough and stony ground (the desert here is nothing like the golden beaches that I used to imagine the desert would be like!) scattering small groups of Crested Larks as we went towards the water. And what a large amount of water there was…

Somewhat like the well-known Al Ansab Sewage Lagoons in Oman, this wetland area is an incongruous sight to be sure - basically a very large hole in the desert full of water, with some fairly extensive reed beds growing in patches around the “lake”. I’ve not been able to find out much about its origins, but there are some sort of processing plants nearby (and a serious oil-spillage had been bunded in one corner so perhaps it’s part of a refinery), and it looks pretty much like a gravel extraction pit in southern England. (If I do find out more, I’ll update this page.)

Incongruous or not, any wetland in a desert has to be good for birds. Or so you’d think. In fact there were virtually no birds on the main body of water at all - although we did find two Great Crested Grebes (which is an unusual record for Qatar) and two Little Grebes. No ducks though which was surprising - I was expecting Garganey and perhaps Shovelers, but despite a fairly good look we saw none at all.

Red-throated Pipit Anthus cervinus

In fact as there was very little shallow water or exposed mud there were not many birds, except a few locally-breeding Kentish Plover and two rather stunning migrant breeding-plumaged Red-throated Pipits (far easier to identify than an autumn bird of course!). Somewhat surprisingly there were no hirundines or swifts over the water at all either.

However alongside one edge of this water we eventually stumbled upon a series of shallow, muddy creeks several hundred metres long which immediately looked to be much better birding habitat. Evidently the local hunters agreed, as the path was littered with spent shotgun cartridges - which may explain why such a large body of water in a desert was virtually empty of birds of course…

Walking on yet another new stretch of tarmac alongside the “creek area” we were assailed by the song of several enthusiastic Clamorous Reed Warblers, a Common Quail flushed up from amongst some low vegetation, and we disturbed two Little Bitterns and the second of two Purple Gallinules (again, apparently an unusual species in Qatar - though this is probably more because of the lack of suitable habitat and lack of observers than anything else). Larks were everywhere (mainly Crested again, though I did find a small group of Black-crowned Finch-lark), and we got good - if a little distant - views of a superb Rufous(-tailed) Bushchat, which landed in the open for a second or two and looked warily over its shoulder at us as we manoeuvred to get a better look (we didn’t!).

Other highlights of what turned out to be a very enjoyable few hours included three Ortolan Buntings (two males pecking at seeds in a very low patch of vegetation and a female which was doing its best to shelter from the heat in the shade of a boulder), a small number of shorebirds (including migrant Wood Sandpipers and Ruff), a phoenicuroides Isabelline Shrike, and Isabelline, Pied, and Desert Wheatears.

I got few photographs unfortunately - I might just be making excuses, but the harsh light and the fact we were on foot in an area that obviously gets hunted over a lot combined with some rather bad jet-lag to make things difficult: however, I’ve posted a selection below…

Male Ortolan Bunting Emberiza hortulana

Female Ortolan Bunting Emberiza hortulana

 

Pied Wheatear Oenanthe pleschanka

 

Isabelline Shrike Lanius isabellinus phoenicuroides

Gordon had a previous booking and we had to get back into town for about lunchtime, so we left the area just after noon. To be honest I could have stayed and found my own way back into town, but the temperature had built steadily and it was getting VERY hot (too much for a northern European to bear ayway). In fact, I was all ready for a quick nap when I got back to my hotel room about 13:00, but instead found that were both Crag Martins and what turned out to be African Rock Martins (for a discussion and more photos please go to Martins, Doha) zipping up and down the exterior of the hotel with a few Pallid Swifts (plus, incidentally, a Peaceful Dove foraging in front of the hotel where Gordon dropped me off). It was far too good a photo-opportunity to miss of course, and I ended up the afternoon a little bit sun-burnt with my arms aching from trying to manually-focus a 400mm lens - but as I haven’t seen Crag Martins for years and never seen a Rock Martin before I’m most definitely not complaining…

Crag Martins Ptyonoprogne rupestris

 

Rock Martins Ptyonoprogne fuligula

All in all then, a good day’s birding - and I’d like to thank Gordon again for picking me up from the hotel and sharing some enjoyable hours with me. It’s great to think that next time I’m in Doha I’ll have a very amiable companion to discuss birds and Oman’s environmental changes with while I’m there…

Day List:
Little Grebe Tachybaptus ruficollis 2; Great Crested Grebe Podoceps cristatus 2; Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo c)10; Socotra Cormorant Phalacrocorax nigrogularis 1; Grey Heron Ardea cinerea 1; Western Reef Egret Egretta gularis 1; Little Bittern Ixobrychus minutus 2; Squacco Heron Ardeola ralloides 1; Western Marsh Harrier Circus aeruginosus 1; Common Quail Coturnix coturnix 1; Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus 10+; Purple Gallinule Porphyrio porphyrio 2; Black-winged Stilt Himantopus himantopus 2; Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula 3-4; Kentish Plover Charadrius alexandrinus 15+; Wood Sandpiper Tringa glareola 3; Little Stint Calidris minuta c)15; Ruff Philomachus pugnax 4; Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus 2; Saunders’ Tern Sterna saundersi 2; Feral Pigeon Columba livia +; Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto 20+; Laughing Dove Streptopelia senegalensis c)10; Peaceful Dove Geopelia striata 1; Pallid Swift Apus pallidus 3-4; Black-crowned Finch-lark Eremopterix nigriceps 5; Crested Lark Galerida cristata c)15; Sand Martin Riparia riparia 1; Rock Martin Ptyonoprogne fuligula 6-8; Crag Martin Ptyonoprogne rupestris 5-6; Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica 2; Tawny Pipit Anthus campestris 2; Red-throated Pipit Anthus cervinus 3; Red-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer 5-6; Clamorous Reed Warbler Acrocephalus stentoreus 3-4; Willow Warbler Phylloscopus trochilus 3; Rufous-tailed Bushchat Cercotrichas galactotes 1-2; Whinchat Saxicola rubetra 1; Pied Wheatear Oenanthe pleschanka 2; Desert Wheatear Oenanthe deserti 1; Isabelline Wheatear Oenanthe isabellina 2; Isabelline Shrike Lanius isabellinus 2; Common Myna Acridotheres tristis 4-5; House Sparrow Passer domesticus c)10; Ortolan Bunting Emberiza hortulana 3

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.