 |
| Magnet for migrants - the Khawr al Amaya oil terminal (photo: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons) |
HOW valuable are oil rigs in Middle East countries as refuges for birds on migration?
Considerably so - at least based on the experience of Rolf Williams, formerly a communications officer with the Royal Naval Reserve, whose varied career included a fascinating spell in the Middle East between March and July 2008.
Particularly rewarding was his time on the offshore Khawr al Amaya oil terminal which is located ten miles due south of the Shatt al Arab waterway in the North Arabian Gulf.
 |
| Lieut Rolf Williams - officer and birder |
Here, many of his free moments were spent deploying his point-and-shoot Canon Ixus 75 camera to photographing avian visitors of many species.
The platform is plant-free but a magnet for long-distance migrants because it provides a plentiful supply of many kinds of insects as food, fresh water from air conditioning units as drink and safe nooks and crannies as places in which to roost
As such, the oil terminal acts probably as a kind of stepping stone to the many other onshore installations dotted in the vast expanses of desert that lie in Iran, Kuwait and Iraq.
Rolf's tally of sightings included such mouth-watering exotics as:
* Rufous Bush Robin
* Roller
* Hoopoe
* Ortolan Bunting
* Lesser Kestrel
* Wheatears of several species
* Barred Warbler
* Nightjar
* Shrikes of several species
* Little Stint
* Curlew-sandpiper
* Squacco Heron
In a presentation to a meeting in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, of the Grimsby RSPB Group, Rolf described how species such as Blue-headed and Black-headed Wagtails adapted their insect-hunting techniques to unfamiliar flat-deck terrain and how Bluethroats always seemed to be attracted to places where there were blodges of blue paint.
What Rolf found particularly rewarding was that his colleagues, including counterparts from the US and Australian Navies, increasingly started to share his delight at the avian arrivals.
Inevitably, some of the birds that arrived were very weak and succumbed to starvation or dehydration before they could resucitate themselves.
Particularly sad was the case of a Spotted Eagle which was in such a stricken state that Rolf saw no option but to put it out of its misery - watched, bizarrly, by a Services chaplain.
It was a horrible moment for Rolf who found himself having to destroy a magnificent raptor that he had only just encountered for the first time in his life.
What it made it worse was that, as he wrung its neck, the bird's head came off.
For much of Rolf's four month in the Gulf, home was on a frigate, HMS Chatham, where he was summoned to re-identify as a Bee-eater what his superior officer had at first believed to a 'parrot'. The colourful bird was perched on one of the guns.
It was on board the HMS Chatham, too, that, on May 12, 2008, he identified and photographed (with his Ixus camera and x10 pocket binoculars) a Long-tailed Skua - later confirmed as first record of the species for Iraq.
 |
| Rolf illustrated his talk with some photographs including this study of a long-tailed Skua. It was taken in poor light but the long tail is visible. |
His account of the sighting was subsequently published in Sandgrouse, publication of the Ornithological Society of the Middle East.
Rolf has pursued many careers in parallel and is definitely not one to let the grass grow under his feet.
It could be next stop Thailand in 2006 for him and his partner who are considering taking up positions, teaching English.
But, at some times in the future, he hopes to return to the Khawr al Amaya terminal, perhaps to carry out ringing work and to monitor more rigorously the migrants and the dates of their arrivals
And, he can persuade BBC to accompany him for a TV documentary, so much the better.
* Rolf will be giving an illustrated talk on his time as RSPB warden on the North Kent marshes at a meeting of the Grimsby and Cleethorpes branch of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust at Grimsby Town Hall at 7.30pm on Monday October 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment