10th – 20th March 2025

Swallows run through in loose flocks overland, stopping briefly in the early morning to forage in vegetated wadis; small parties of green sandpipers huddle on the coast; and garganey flocks move north low over the sea. The coast is quiet and migration is just commencing; this is time when species turn up in odd places like a short eared owl on a bare sandy peninsula. Sanders’s terns are now settled in pairs on long sandy spits; they hurl around the sky in their twisting display flights giving their far-carrying, screeching call. Greater sand and Kentish plovers are developing their beautiful summer plumages. And in a few places within wide, stony wadis, there are pairs of Temminck’s larks, with their distinctive black masks and long ear tufts.