Kuwait Birding: Lockdown

12 August 2020

Lockdown - Day 149

Week 32; 07 August 2020 - Sulaibikhat Bay

There was a decent high tide in mid-afternoon, so I headed to Sulaibikhat to be there on the receding tide. I started at KISR Outfall where it was still brutally hot and the sun was not as far behind me as I had hoped it would be.

There were fair number of Waders, Gulls and Terns roosting and foraging on the now exposed inter-tidal zone. There were a number of juvenile White-winged Terns that would have dispersed from Kubbar Island, where they breed in the summer

White-cheeked Tern (Chlidonias leucopterus)

Whilst Gull-billed Terns have dispersed from Boubyan Island, where they also breed in the summer. Here one in flight

Gull-billed Tern (Gelochelidon nilotica)

I then tried to have some fun and get some BIF images of a few Terns. There were some smaller Whiskered amongst the bigger Terns

Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybrida)

But I had the most luck with the White-cheeked who were quite active over the outfall plucking large Crickets from the water. I was pretty pleased with some of these images, considering I was hand-holding the heavy glass from inside the car.

White-cheeked Tern (Chlidonias leucopterus)

I headed a little further up the coast, to where there are thousands of Mudskipper's in the inter-tidal zone and a feast for many of the birds, if they can catch them. This Western Reef Heron was one of the lucky birds and headed to somewhere quieter to eat his meal without having it pirated

Western Reef Heron (Egretta g. schistacea)

There are two species of Mudskipper that call these flats home

Periophthalmus waltoni and Boleophthalmus dussumieri

Mudskipper's as far as the eye can see

This White-throated Kingfisher tried unsuccessfully many times to get a meal before the sunset. This bird had more greenish than typical blue upperparts

It was entertaining to see the Mudskipper's scatter each time it did a low level sortie. Again heat haze played havoc with the focus tracking