Beach clean-up Sulaibikhat, July 23rd 2011

Again another successful beach clean-up at Sulaibikhat, for the third time at that long stretch of beach. One group of people (official trash picker – uppers?) must have been there the day before. There were about 18 plastic bags along the fence line.
But no worries, there was still enough left for all of us. We had 4 new Volunteers, one even from Saudi Arabia 
We collected around 16 bags and approx. 200kg of mainly plastic bottles.

It seems that the numbers of birds are picking up already. I don’t know if this is a sign of migration, or just summer visitors.

Birdcount:

Reef Egret 28 (24 dark form & 4 white form), White-cheeked Tern 2, Caspian Tern 1, Little Tern 2

Cream-coloured Courser 2, Slender-billed Gull 3, Sanderling 5, Barn Swallow 3

Terek Sandpiper 4, Curlew Sandpiper 35, Greater Sand Plover 5 (1 oiled)

Kentish Plover 3, Ruddy Turnstone 2, Curlew 1, White-eared Bulbul 2, Gull-billed Tern 1

Flamingos 310

Species Total: 17

Beach clean-up Maternity Hospital, July 8th 2011

We collected around 60kg of waste (which will be recycled) at the clean-up yesterday.

We only had a few Volunteers, but we can call it a successful day.

There’s still more rubbish around, mainly small bottle caps and such – I call this beach now bottle-cap beach.

There were still some birds around. Some are 1st year birds which come for the summer and some are breeding here in Kuwait. Greater Flamingos among them.

 The guy in the last few pics was an official trash picker-upper that came along to do his morning chores (I suppose) and who was obviously flustered at what happened.
The family in one of the shots thanked us whole heartedly and seemed a little embarrassed that we were doing this.

 

 Bird count: White-cheeked Tern (1st summer) – 5 House Sparrow – 26 Common Myna – 2 Greater Sand Plover (1st summer) – 4 Slender-billed Gull (1st summer) – 1 (Eastern) Reef Egret (dark form) – 3 Greater Flamingo – 29 Bar-tailed Godwit – 1 Kentish Plover – 3 Species Total: 9