During Covid times just leaving your house can become a treat, and fun (wildlife seeking) travel beyond the ecologically-devoid British Isles certainly has become a bit of a distant memory. But as luck would have it, a work opportunity came up in late-winter 2021 to explore a new frontier for me, the Middle East. In the past this region has just been a stopping point on the way to the Far East and its tropical treasures, but this area has some incredible biodiversity and landscapes of its own. As this trip was for work, the hope was to fit in as much as possible around this, and to get to see at least some of the herps, birds, and other creatures to make up for the lack of new species and proper exploring during the past year......
How about starting with some geckos… Often the adorably cute “bycatch” of nocturnal snake hunting, geckos have still always been a huge favourite of mine. How can they not be. They’re always photogenic, even for a below-average camerasmith like me, and it was great to see a few real desert dwellers out there in their element. Frequently encountered species included fan-fingered (Ptyodactylus hasselquistii), Doria’s comb-footed (Stenodactylus doriae), Arabian desert (Bunopus tuberculatus), and Natterer’s (Tropiocolotes nattereri) geckos.
And the main course…. As ever, it took a lot longer to turn up any of the region’s “common” snake species than it did to start getting the lizard species count up. But once the late spring heat really kicked in, the warm nights started to provide more sightings. The two species involved were the beautiful diadem snake (Spalerosophis diadema), and the Arabian horned viper (Cerastes gasperettii).
Following tracks in the sand was usually a great way to spend the evening, but tended not to actually provide the snakes that had made them... The vipers view the whole desert as their duvet, but when you do see one tucked into its sandy hideaway it is an amazing sight.
For me, raptors are to birding what snakes are to herping. And early spring in the Middle East is migration time. On some evenings when the prevailing winds and the thermals were right, it was amazing to watch kettles of steppe buzzards making their way north through the mountains, frequently joined by other species including long-legged buzzards, black kites, marsh harriers, and bigger game like steppe, short-toed and booted eagles.
The lizard day-shift of non-geckos had some variety too. The most frequently seen species were spiny-tailed lizards (Uromastyx aegyptia), and fringe-fingered lizards (Acanthodactylus sp). Sinai (Pseudotrapelus sinaitus) and toad-headed (Phrynocephalus arabicus) agamas were less common, with the latter seemingly restricted to the sandiest areas due to their use of the “desert duvet”.
Back to looking up again, and for me one of the most amazing spring raptor sights in this part of the world is the mass migration of European honey buzzards (Pernis apivorus) north to their forest breeding grounds in Europe. One of my favourite moments from this trip was getting to watch hundreds of them kettling overhead in the space of only about 30 minutes one hot afternoon in late April. They may look like just dots in the sky (and to be totally fair, which I am, on my photos that's what they are), but for me this was an incredible thing to witness.
Another of the things that could be seen in the air, and a lot more frequently than honey buzzards too, was dust and sand. The amount of it greatly influenced how atmospheric the sunset would look, and some of the landscapes here almost look otherworldly at the best of times....
The deserts at night come alive with inverts and mammals, and probably the cutest (to me) of the mammals is the amazing jerboa. A fairytail creature, with it's cartoon eyes and enormous legs, seeing these things bound off into the darkness is an amazing (and comical) sight. Think this one is a lesser Egyptian jerboa, but I'm no mammalologist so feel free to shoot down that ID. What a tail too. An unreal creature, and an absolute pleasure to see.
Steppe eagles were a new raptor for me, and they're a beautiful sight thermalling over the desert and mountains on their way north to Russia and the far north-east.
Now, you may be wondering if any of the birds I saw were less than a couple of kilometers away? Mostly no, but here's one that sat so close even I could manage to get something other than a dark shape, the ever-present great grey shrike.
And straight back to the distant ones again. If anyone has ever wondered what the distant silhouette of a Verreaux's eagle interacting with a golden eagle and a brown-necked raven looks like, then this is your lucky day. For my memories mostly, awesome birds, no matter how far off they may be...
Sunsets over the mountains never get old. Which is lucky, because I have taken a lot of documentary evidence of these events..
The Making Of....Middle Eastern Diaries
Due to the incredible popularity of this sort of segment on popular recent documentaries, here is what I can only assume will be an equally popular segment showing how a lot of the above brilliance was achieved.
And because I took way too many shots of those desert/mountain sunsets to waste, here are more.......
