Arabia: Long-eared owl discovery

Update from our wildlife conservation volunteering holiday in Dubai (UAE) working on oryx, wildcat and desert species

First, some exciting news from the desert expedition front: Group 1 discovered a new bird species in the DDCR, a long-eared owl. They spotted the animal on a final morning stroll around camp in a ghaf tree. Matthias and Pete came sprinting back to camp getting their cameras and managed to get good pictures. Only at the computer screen it later became obvious that it wasn’t the expected pharao eagle owl, but a long-eared owl, a species that has never before been recorded in the DDCR. The identification was confirmed by specialists a couple of days ago and will soon be added to the official DDCR bird inventory list. Congratulations for this discovery.

After two intensive training days group 2 is in now full survey mode. We are ticking off remaining quadrant surveys and have extended the pharao eagle owl surveys in order to find actual nesting sites. Scientist Maria received a tip indeed found a nest with chicks in it. If we continue to bring in neatly filled in data sheets and good results, she promised she’d take us to see them! 😉

At camp we had a midnight encounter with an Arabian red fox. The tiny beast somehow managed to push over a big rubbish bin, 10 times bigger than itself, and rummaged through the contents. The rubbish bin has now a heavy log on top and the sighting was added to the random encounter data sheet.

The days are getting hotter and it doesn’t cool down dramatically at night. For the last few days it’s been a little foggy in the morning and we enjoyed amazing desert views on the way to our early morning surveys. We had the camp fire going once in the evening, but from day two on everyone was quite happy to hit their tent straight after returning from dinner… there seems to be a pattern. 😉

Update from our Arabia expedition in Dubai, UAE working as an oryx volunteer in the desert of the UAE