Kuwait day three- what a day!

We started the day at Al-Shaheed Park in Kuwait City where we dipped Purple Sunbird and stringed a Brown Shrike (turned out to be a Red-backed Shrike) and found a Hume's Warbler in the flowering tree that the Sunbird was supposed to be in. Brown Shrike is a vagrant here so a bit embarrasing but it was a messy bird which gave Vince and I the brain scrambles.

We then started heading towards Abdali Farm and found a Crested Honey Buzzard from the car. 

We then successfully scored our target of Afghan Babbler at the Farm before heading to an escarpment area to look for Wheatears. When we arrived there was an off road vehicle event occurring at the site but miracously we managed to the find the main target, Persian Wheatear amongst the noise and chaos.

We then headed back to Kuwait City Bay and in the very last minutes of daylight managed to re-find the Lesser Flamingo within 3000+ Greater Flamingo.

With Greater Spotted Eagles, Black-winged Kite and Isabelline Shrikes thrown into the bag along the way today was quite simply epic.

8 WP ticks and 2 world ticks so far and more to target tomorrow. Live trip report HERE. 

Dark phase adult male Crested Honey Buzzard (above and below). The six primaries, large white sub-terminal tail band and secondary barring reaching the body are all diagnostic features. 

Afghan Babbler (above and below) . Interestingly Shirihai and Svennson did not follow the split of Common Babbler and Afghan Babbler so this appears as Common Babbler in HWPB. I've now seen all the WP Babblers- Fulvous in Morrocco, Iraq in Turkey and Syria, Arabian in Israel and now Afghan/Common. 

Persian Wheatear

Brown Shrike ? (above and below) -pics by Vince. Five primaries projecting beyond the tertials, a graduated tail and the overall uniform brown on the back and head should be diagnostic features. 180125 update . Some doubts on the identification of this raised by Pierre . Despite the pro brown features there are some anomalies like the primary spacing and the overall structure . More on this when it comes in . Update 200125- more likely an adult female Red-backed Shrike with an odd primary projection and something strange going on witht he tail. Will do a seperate post on this bird as interesting.  

Isabelline Shrike 

Hume's Warbler- nice to find one of these too

Lesser Flamingo, front row centre with Greater Flamingos (above)