Birdlife

 

Aden Gull -  black head, brown back and wings and white ring around the eye. 
Avocet
Bar-tailed Godwit
Black Kite
Black Vulture
Black-winged Stilt
Brown Booby
Bulbul
Caspian Tern
Common Heron
Common Sandpiper
Crested lark
Crested Tern
Curlew
Dove sp.
Dunlin
Egyptian Vulture
Flamingo
Gadwall
Green Sandpiper
Grey Plover
Heron
Herring Gull
Indian Sand-Grouse
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Lesser Crested, or Allied Tern
Little Egret
Little Stint
Osprey
Oyster-Catcher
Persian Shearwater
Pink-backed Pelican
Quail
Red Sea Black-headed Gull
Red-billed Tropic-Bird
Redshank
Reef Heron
Ringed Plover
Sand Martin
Sanderling
Sandwich Tern
Shoveler
Sparrow
Spoonbill
Whimbrel
Yellow-legged Gull

 

Birdlife on the Salt Pans

​

Avocets could be seen in flocks of several hundred, wheeling and piping as they moved from pan to pan, their note not unlike that of the Redshanks, who would be found feeding, noisily and restlessly round the banks. Those on either side of the main road are possibly not quite such good bird resorts as the pans to the south-westward of Sheikh Othman; the road to these leads out between the houses of the main street near its northern end, but does not look like a through road until the houses are left behind, when course can be shaped for the conspicuous high banking of the aqueduct. This carries the sea-water from the pumping-station of the salt works to the most inland pans where the first stage of evaporation is carried out: it is then pumped from one series of pans to another, becoming stronger brine at each stage, until the salt at last crystallizes out in the pans round the works. These are not so picturesque as the older works near the main road, as the pumps are driven by small oil engines in tin sheds instead of by windmills with canvas sails spread on wooden lattice frames.

​

The outstanding birds of the salt-pans are the Flamingos. Rosy-white, in flocks of from five to fifty, they stride slowly through the shallow brine, stepping high and feeding on brine-shrimps and molluscs, or pause meditatively on one pink leg. It is impossible to get within photographic range of them without the most elaborate precautions, for they are as wary as geese. It is worth getting as close as possible to make them rise, and see the sudden change to the black and brilliant scarlet of the under side of

their wings: a Hock flying close overhead, with their long legs stretched as far out behind as their heads are in front, is a sight long to be remembered.

​

It was worth getting as close as possible to make them rise, and see the sudden change to the black and brilliant scarlet of the under side of their wings. A flock flying close overhead, with their long legs stretched as far out behind as their heads were in front, was a sight long to be remembered.