The island of Socotra, 100km east of the horn of Africa, is sometimes referred to as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean because of the high degree of endemism that exists on the island: some 37% of all plants found the island are endemic (including the island’s most famous residents, the Dragon Blood Trees), 95% of insects and 90% of reptiles. There are also 11 endemic bird species. You can probably guess where this blog is going…
Although owned by Yemen, where a civil war has raged for more than 7 years, the war has not come to Socotra which is peaceful and currently controlled by UAE. Consequently Abu Dhabi is one of only two places in the world from which you can fly direct to Socotra (the other being Sana’a, the capital of Yemen). There is a weekly charter flight from 10 min down the road from my apartment at Zayed International, bookable through one of the many small tourist agencies on Socotra.
I toyed with the idea of travelling with the Dubai Natural History Society in 2023, when they advertised a week-long trip in December. I’d only just arrived in the region, and barely heard of Socotra, but it looked like a very cool destination, and their trip would coincide with a week when I had to vacate my Yas hotel room for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Was this fate saying, “Go!”? Well, no, as it turned out, it wasn’t. The trip was fully booked, and although the organiser offered to put me on a wait-list, the trip dates had shifted by a week from the ones advertised. Fate had given a duff hint. I went to India instead (blog here). But chatting about it afterwards, Ted Burkett and I agreed that Socotra had to be elevated to the bucket list; we needed to find a window to go some time.
This opportunity arrived sooner than expected, just a year later, when we realised that the UAE National Day long weekend in 2024 would be 4 days, instead of 3, and that for a short period Air Arabia had increased the frequency of their trips to twice weekly, flying not just on Fridays but also Tuesdays. With the National Day celebrations taking place on Monday and Tuesday, we could travel, therefore on Friday, returning Tuesday, and miss only 1/2 a day of work. This surely was Fate, this time, telling us to grasp the moment!
Ted was in touch with a tour company, who were initially a bit vague, but after a bit of back and forth were able to confirm that our strict dates would work, getting us the last couple of seats on the planes, and they sorted out our visas, booked accommodation and designed an itinerary for us. They were knowledgeable about nature in general but not birders themselves. They were used to more general natural history buffs and hikers, but Ted and I discussed and agreed that it probably didn’t matter too much — we just needed them to get us into the right places for the best chances of all the endemics, a small but quality list. In the end, it almost worked out like this, but there was one hurtful dip, a combination of our compressed long-weekend itinerary, not ordering/prioritising the itinerary as birders would, and some issues that were ultimately the fault of the company and should not have happened. More on this later.
We seemed to be the only birders on the flight, but the anticipation and excitement was palpable among all 150 or so tourists on our plane, bonded by a common sense of going off the beaten track to an exotic location that few others have had the chance to visit, or even heard of. After photos by the mini-garden of endemic bottle trees next to the runway, and noting our first Egyptian Vultures and my first lifer, Somali Starling, we filed into the terminal where we were all processed pretty efficiently, despite the contrast between state-of-the-art Zayed International that we had left barely two hours ago, and the tiny, fully manual immigration hall at SCT. I opted to not have my passport stamped — who knows what future doors might be closed by a Yemeni stamp in my passport.
Our guides were waiting for us in the baggage hall: Arabian Eisa, small and wiry and speaking decent English, and our driver Abdul Aziz, a darker African Arab, twice Eisa’s size with an ample round belly and gruffer demeanour. I couldn’t tell if Abdul Aziz spoke little English or was just a man of few words, but came to realise it was both. Both sported fowat, traditional Yemeni skirts for men, and shemagh, worn variously as a scarf or turban. There appeared to be a clear division between brains and brawn, and I hoped that the Laurel-and-Hardie vibe I was getting from their respective appearances would not extend to our logistics. After a short walk across the terminal car park, Abdul Aziz loaded our bags into his tired-looking Land Cruiser for the short journey to Hadiboh, the capital and only large(ish) town on the island. We were off on our adventure.
Of course we stopped for birding during the 15km drive along the coast, finding a few waders and other waterbirds, improved views of Somali Starling, next lifers in the form of Red-knobbed Coot and our first endemics, a flock of smart Socotra Sparrows. Other notable birds included Black-crowned Sparrow-lark, Greater Flamingo, and Common Snipe as well as dozens of Egyptians Vultures. Although globally endangered, Gypos are common on Socotra — we saw them everywhere in good numbers, often picking their way over scattered rubbish in the company of goats.
Just in these few stops we were already experiencing some of the best and worst of Socotra. The friendly locals are justly proud of their unique flora and fauna and lifestyle, and the beauty of their island home, and beaches and lagoons we passed were lovely, but this pride does not, apparently, extend to keeping it “clean”. We were immediately struck by the sight of trash, especially (and alarmingly) single-use plastics, almost everywhere within coo-ee of human habitation blighting the scenery. Lines of litter along roadsides are picked over by goats, dogs and vultures and every lowland wetland and most beaches we visited were surrounded by empty bottles, cans, discarded junk and floating plastic bags. I guess that municipal services are not high on the list of priorities in a poor, war-torn country, but if tourism is to continue to flourish (it is already the island’s biggest export) they really should invest some of those tourist dollars back into a cleanup, and not just to appeal to western aesthetics, but to protect their unique ecosystem. Anyway, enough soapbox…
After checking into our basic but comfortable accommodation, the Summerland Hotel, Eisa took us back through the dusty, dirty, ramshackle streets of the township to a decent local open-air restaurant where fresh grilled fish was excellent. The large, freshly made Arabian flatbreads were particularly good and authentic.
Following lunch we birded a few sites along the coast east of Hadiboh. A lone Black-tailed Godwit was a good find for Socotra, and we also had excellent views of more Black-crowned Sparrow-lark and the local race of Long-billed Pipit. A late afternoon walk along an estuary 20km east of Hadiboh produced a Kestrel, more Socotra Sparrows and pair of Cinnamon-breasted Bunting.
But the undoubted highlight was earlier, mid-afternoon, as we jumped off the road into a dry streambed and wandered up to a dense palm plantation. Eisa had procured gen from a “proper bird guide” and here we were able to track down a fantastic, very cute Socotra Scops-owl, perhaps a little grumpy to be disturbed mid-afternoon.
Back in Hadiboh after sunset, we returned to the same restaurant, apparently the only place in town worth frequenting by locals and tourists alike. A few western women were dining with their tour groups, even daring to show their shoulders 😮, but these were the only women in sight. Yemen is ultra-conservative Muslim and all the local women were at home, while their husbands and fathers and brothers gathered to dine and smoke shisha. Earlier in the day we had seen a few women out and about in their full burkahs, but they were nowhere to be seen after dark. Two other aspects to this conservatism had a more direct impact on us: the first, a lack of beer (sad face); the second, from 4am onwards, regular calls to prayer from a loud, loudspeaker atop a mosque just 50m from our hotel room. Just as well, as birders, we are used to getting up super early.
Day 2 did not start auspiciously. We were ready at the agreed time, but, presumably not used to birders’ rhythms, requirements and impatience, and probably living further from the mosque than us, Abdul Aziz had slept in and arrived 15 minutes late. Ted admonished both guides and fortunately it did not happen again.
Our first destination today was the impressive gorge leading up Wadi Ayhaft, a few km west of Hadiboh. Although on paper (well, ebird really) this gorge holds all of the Socotra endemics, some of them are very rare here, and this excursion was not as bird-filled as we had been hoping. It did not help that we didn’t really know how to bird the area, and we began to get a first inkling that a clean-up job in just a few days was not going to be as easy as we had thought, especially without a dedicated bird guide. The slow drive up on a rough 4wd track was very scenic, as we moved from the relatively barren coastal plain up into much greener terrain filled with exotic-looking plants.
Our only avian additions during the ascent were Socotra White-eye and poor but tickable views and pics of an elusive Socotra Sunbird. At the top of the gorge where the terrain flattens we stopped and walked, finding more Socotra Sparrows, Bruce’s Green-pigeon, the Socotra form of Great Grey Shrike, and Socotra Buzzard and some very high flying Forbes-Watson Swifts. So in the end, not as rich as we’d hoped, but still a decent haul.
Late morning, now out of the gorge near the coast, Eisa directed the driver to head down an unpromising looking track towards the beach, hoping to find some scrub holding Socotra Cisticola. We noted Long-billed Pipit and Desert Wheatear as we drove in, both turning out to be fairly common in the larger flatter areas. We stopped short of the dunes contemplating a fork in the track, and thinking we had heard something promising for the cisticola. Suddenly a Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse burst from the edge of the track! We located another on the deck next to the car, but it too flushed as we tried to manoeuvre for better views. With careful stalking and scanning we were able to find several more, in two groups of 4-6 birds. This was not a lifer, since I had previously seen some after dark at a small waterhole in the mountains of UAE in 2013, but I was able to get my first decent photos of this beautiful taxon. And as well as the bonus Sandgrouse, we were able to track down a few Socotra Cisticola. The endemics were gradually falling. As we trundled back out, feeling more kindly disposed to the guides, a Cream-coloured Courser ran across the track in front of us.
Making our way further west, we stopped for a picnic lunch at Ghoba Beach and Lagoon where a short walk was quite birdy, including excellent views of Broad-billed Sandpiper and Crab Plover, the latter a vagrant and quite rare in Socotra.
Then after lunch we had a long and fairly bird-free drive across the island to the west coast and the only other sizeable town on the island, Qalasiyah. This quaint fishing village nestles by a palm-lined estuary, colourful boats dotted along the beach. On the estuary we added Garganey, a few waders and gulls (including Sooty Gull) then wended our way through the higgedly-piggedly lanes of the town, past the bizarre sight of some old Russian tanks, then up and over a headland to an extensive beach where our team pitched tents and bought local crabs to cook on the campfire.
The following morning we made our way down to the picturesque harbour. In keeping with our underwhelming land transport, here we boarded one of the least seaworthy-looking of these craft and headed out across the bay, passing Caspian Terns, Lesser-crested Terns, 100s of Brown Boobies (which breed on the cliffs here), and 100s of Socotra Cormorants. Despite the name, this cormorant is not endemic to Socotra and we see them often in UAE, but since I like to see the eponymous feature of a bird, perhaps I should extend that to seeing a bird in its eponymous location, as I was doing with these cormorants. Might be a problem for Kentish Plover, mind you.
Around the point we hugged the cliffs along the coast rocky coast until we reached At Shuaab Beach. We had the exquisite stretch of sand and crystal clear water to ourselves for about an hour before some more tourists arrived by boat for swimming and kite surfing.
Before they showed up we had scoped the sea to the west, picking up some distant Masked Boobies and at least a couple of Jouanin’s Petrel. Although all Jouanin’s breed on Socotra, they are also regularly seen on pelagics off UAE and Oman (and much better and closer than our beach views), so this was a lifer for me but not Ted. In the scrub and swamp behind the beach we found several Socotra Cisticola, though no Socotra Warbler, which we had been told to look out for. We even indulged a swim ourselves before the ride back, the highlight of which was a large pod of 30-40 dolphins that tracked our course across the bay. For most tourists this trip would be a major highlight, and yes, it was even for us. But birders are not “most tourists” and we were both starting to wonder if we should have insisted on going straight up to the Diksem Plateau yesterday afternoon for the remaining 4 (probably tougher) endemics instead of using one of our first two precious dawns for a tourist trip.
Twitching a tree…
Late morning on our third day of four we finally wound our way up the steep road to the Diksem Plateau, 700m above sea level. The plateau is the best place to see all of the endemic bird species and probably where we should have come straight away, given our restricted half-week schedule. But hindsight is 20-20. This area is most famous as the stronghold of Socotra’s iconic endemic, the unique Dragon Blood Tree, named for its blood red sap. The oldest oldest specimens are thought to be over 600 years old, but even the youngest forest has an average age of 200. There are barely any young trees at all on the island, all young saplings are eaten by the goats, kept by the locals as a traditional status symbol. It may take another 300 years, but as the population ages without replacement the Dragon Blood Tree slips very slowly but inexorably towards extinction.
We stopped for a photo at the first tree we encountered, then a short while later we came to halt again; an unplanned, enforced stop. I had been dreading this scenario ever since setting eyes on our old and poorly maintained vehicle. The tyres looked shot from the start of the trip, especially the right rear — worn down to zero tread — and now the inevitable had happened: we had a puncture. Amazingly (and worryingly), it was the left rear that had gone, so not even the one in the worst condition.
While Abdul Aziz enlisted the help of some locals and changed the tyres over, Ted and I birded, noting our first unequivocal Socotra Starlings. These birds are incredibly similar to male Somali Starlings, which we had seen in most places, and the Somali Starlings also occur up on the plateau. There are minor differences, however, with the main ones being a shorter tail and longer, subtly decurved bill. As we waited for the vehicle to be roadworthy again we were able to study a flock of 8 all-dark birds and note these differences. The structural differences, and the absence of any pale-headed females in the group (in Somali Starling the female looks quite different), gave us confidence that another endemic was now on our lists and saved to our memory cards. Ted’s longer reach (R5+800mm vs my R6+500mm) and better photographic skills landed us the best images, pictured below (with kind permission).
Once underway again we headed higher onto the plateau. One scenic spot turned up a another obliging Great Grey Shrike in a Dragon Blood Tree.
Otherwise we saw little of note before arriving at Wadi Zelig, the spot on ebird that seemed to give our best chances for the remaining endemics. Arriving at 1pm, though, our timing was off. While the guides prepared a picnic lunch, Ted and I walked up and down the scenic wadi, finding few birds and none of our targets. Egyptian Vultures were plentiful, including one that took a bath near our picnic, and we also picked up more Socotra White-eye and another Socotra Sunbird, but otherwise it was very quiet.
After lunch and a snooze, we walked downstream towards the road. Avian activity seemed to be picking up again after the dead hours in the early afternoon heat, and a few times I heard some chatter that seemed good for Socotra Warbler, though we had trouble pinning anything down. After one such call from higher up the valley slope, I decided a more proactive approach was necessary and clambered up the slope to some denser scrub. Here I was finally able to lay bins on one for a Socotra Warbler tick. They were not especially shy, but were very active and flighty, feeding and chasing each other through the scrub, so it took some time before we acquired any passable images at all. Still, one more down, just two to go.
Just 1.5km km along the road from Wadi Zelig we pulled onto a track leading upwards past a school to a compound where, as it turned out, we would be camping. Before unloading the vehicle we carried on past the compound to a viewpoint with a panorama over a magnificent, steep gorge with a forest of Dragon Blood Trees stretched out before us, where a Socotra Buzzard soared.
Ted, Eisa and I left the driver setting tents and cooking dinner and walked back the to Wadi Zelig for late afternoon. We birded here for for another hour or so, adding Green Sandpiper to the trip list and better views and pics of Socotra Warbler. Eisa kept assuring us this was the best place for Socotra Bunting, but we had now been birding in Wadi Zelig for several hours with zero sign. Then, from nowhere, a bunting appeared silhouetted on a rock above our heads. As I went to land bins on it, it flew up behind some even higher large rocks and out of sight. Eisa confidently claimed Socotra Bunting, but neither Ted nor I had enough on the bird, and we were sceptical about his confidence and his id abilities anyway. He could not possibly have eliminated Cinnamon-breasted Bunting on those views.
I clambered up the steep rocky gully side hoping it had landed just beyond the boulders at the top of the slope, but my search was unsuccessful. After a few minutes with no further sign I started to descend to join the others, some 10-15m below me. A Socotra Warbler gave nice views, and then, as I stepped forward from a few metres above the others, a rock slid out from under my foot and I crashed to the ground, my back, my right arm and my camera taking the brunt of the fall. I cried out in pain and shock. Was the camera ok? Had I hurt myself badly? I took a look at the lens, and saw that the hood was dented, but closer inspection showed the objective lens completely unscathed. Phew. Now the real pain in my back hit home, but though it hurt like hell, and there was blood coming from my arm, I seemed to be able to move all my bits so I probably had not broken anything. Shaking from shock, I gingerly tried to get to my feet, but as soon as I rose unsteadily, I felt dizzy and had to sit back down again for fear of fainting and doing even more damage.
There were two ways out: along the wadi, the whole distance we had just covered back to the road, or a short-cut up the slope to a farm, pretty-much where I had been chasing the bunting. We decided to risk going up to get out, steeper but shorter. I followed Ted, but then felt myself getting faint again. I sat down, head between my legs until I felt ok, then repeated the process: a few metres, then sit. By thetime I reached the farm Eisa, Ted and a local farmer were able to pull me up the last bit. As we crossed over the barren field to get back to the road, Eisa broke off a leaf of Aloe (growing wild here) and applied the sap to my wounded arm.
Over dinner I managed to get some mobile signal and double-checked ebird. Was Wadi Zelig really our best bet for Socotra Bunting? There were only two recent pins on ebird from anywhere near our camp — a single bird from Wadi Zelig, and most recent report, a “Bedouin Hut” a few km away which looked on the satellite picture to be quite remote. This tallied with some vague directions Ted had obtained, and when we pointed to the map and described it to Eisa, he told us he knew the place (hmmm! 🤔). We resolved to take control and insisted that we go there first thing tomorrow. Needing a dawn start, Eisa agreed to drive, the other half of the double-act wanting his beauty sleep til much later.
I, myself, slept very badly on the hard ground in my tent. Evidently there was more than just a nasty bruise, probably some muscle damage in my lower back. The feeling was not unlike the couple of occasions when I have pulled my back — I could not sit up or roll over, and it felt like the smallest movement would cause even more damage. By the time my alarm went at 5am I had barely rested.
Eisa had persuaded us that below the spot we’d seen a bunting was pool where the buntings came to drink first thing in the morning. Naively trusting this gen, we returned to Wadi Zelig for dawn and walked down the wadi, finding a spot that gave views from above a few pools and puddles. With my back hampering movement I was grateful to find a rock on which I could perch. Meanwhile Ted walked further downstream to check out the area that my untimely injury meant we’d not covered the night before.
A colony of Socotra Sparrows were most vocal and obvious and it was these that we watched for about 20 minutes coming down to drink. Then I saw a single bird, a bit smaller than the sparrows and knew this was something different. As I landed bins on the bird I could see the stripey head and called out to Ted: “Bunting!!!”. He came rushing back but almost immediately I realised that this was Cinnamon-breasted. By the time Ted arrived the bird had moved further away, but was still in view. We waited for some time in case there were others around, but none appeared. Re-winding the clock 12 hours we were now convinced that the silhouette form yesterday was not our quarry, Socotra Bunting, but was also Cinnamon-breasted, maybe even the same bird.
Having satisfied ourselves that we’d given Wadi Zelig (and Eisa) enough chances to produce the goods we now insisted on heading to the spot that that we had identified as the place Ted’s contact had seen several — a remote bedouin hut, high up adjacent to the gorge we’d viewed yesterday. A couple of kms back along the sealed road we turned off down a rocky, steep path towards a large, apparently abandoned building. But on reaching the building Eisa stopped. Another puncture. And this time no spare. Oh fuck! Double fuck! Fuckety-fuck, etc.
Eisa limped the car back up to the road, the only place we could sensibly expect any help, and Ted and I got out and birded the area around the buildings, finding a few birds (Desert Wheatear, Long-billed Pipit, Socotra Warbler, Socotra White-eye) but no buntings. As we scoured the area, gradually curious primary-aged kids began to appear, and as they converged on the large structure we realised it was a school, unoccupied when we arrived because of the time of day. The array of different responses to our presence was diverse. Some of the more confident boys wanted to try our their broken English on us, though the conversation always stopped at “What is your name?” and “Where are you from?”. Others went out of their way to avoid these strange-looking westerners, especially the older girls who gave us a wide berth while giggling amongst themselves and giving sideways glances.
Convinced there were no buntings here either, we walked up to the road where Eisa was still waiting for help, having called Abdul Aziz to arrange a “rescue party”. Finally at 10am, another tourist vehicle arrived and we fitted their spare to our vehicle (this is the advantage of all the tourist transport being same make and model!) I noted how much better condition this tourist land-cruiser was in compared to ours, and I hoped for their sake that they did not now get a flat themselves. I rued that Abdul Aziz’s poor maintenance had cost us our only morning birding on the plateau.
Finally we could return to camp where we had a quick late breakfast, cleaned up, loaded the dodgy land-cruiser and got underway 5 hours late. We had to give the bedouin hut a try as our last chance for Socotra Bunting, despite missing the best hours of the day, so we headed back to the school and now slowly beyond, on a bumpy, steep, unmaintained track for 5-6km, every bump jarring my back. I will give Abdul Aziz his due, his vehicle may have been shite, but he knew how to handle it, and got us past some spots that I thought would be impassable (and I doubt Eisa could have managed).
Looking down to a bedouin farm — but still a couple km short of the ebird gps pin that was our destination — we stopped to walk a loop around an open meadow towards the farm. When a stripey-headed passerine flew down to a boulder 20m in front of us, once again the pulses and hopes were raised until, once again, we realised this was another Cinnamon-breasted Bunting. Desert Wheatears and Long-billed Pipits were prominent on the exposed granite and small bushes. Then after another km or two, around midday, we had reached a point where the track had further deteriorated and our progress in the vehicle was barely above walking pace.
Ted and I got out leaving the guides to twiddle their thumbs while we sought the now-mythical “Bedouin Hut”. I left my camera in the car — it was painful to walk anyway, without the added pressure and discomfort of a few kg dangling from my shoulder and knocking against the bruise. The track continued still higher with amazing views to our right over the steep gorge, and we checked the meadows and gullies, hopeful but not expectant. Then, after some 800m walking we came across a stone-walled enclosure, perched on the edge of the gorge, nestled into a small hollow in the granite, with a meagre hut in one corner, a long, unkempt curtain draped across the only opening serving as the door. A fuel can and a few other bits and pieces showed it was inhabited, but there was no-one here that we could see.
Several Socotra Sparrows were foraging the grassy verges by the stone walls for seeds so at last this felt promising. Then a pair of buntings appeared on the granite — had our luck turned? No! 😒. Yet again these were not the species we wanted. Over the period we were here, covering the whole area meticulously, we found several more Cinnamon-breasted Buntings. Each one was grilled carefully for the rufous flanks of the Socotran cousin, but each time the breast and flanks were a uniform buffy cinnamon. Eventually we ran out of ideas and time. We had come close, finally getting ourselves into the right place, but at the wrong time of day and without luck on our side. With an early morning flight tomorrow, we had no buffer to return, so we resigned ourselves to leaving Socotra without the eponymous bunting on our lists. A big disappointment.
Although technically we could have stayed on the plateau for the whole afternoon to maximise the small chances of the bunting, we were actually also missing another endemic, Socotra Grosbeak, and staying up here would likely cost us our chances of this. So, contemplating an embarrassing double-dip, we made the call to leave the plateau and return to Wadi Ayhfat, the steep gorge near Hadiboh that we had birded on our first morning. Our experience here that day had not been especially birdy, but this site seemed to be our best chance for the Grosbeak, and the only good birding site we realistically had time to get to. Adding to our concern was that there are very few recordings of Socotra Grosbeak on the web. I could only find two background recordings on xeno-canto, one calling behind a Socotra Sparrow, and one with a Socotra Starling. We listened to both if these, so at least we knew roughly what the call sounded like, but they would have been useless for playback if we’d needed to resort to that.
Unlike on Saturday morning, we didn’t immediately walk down to the stream, dithering a bit near the car, contemplating our next action. Above the car, on a gentle slope before the steep cliff-face of the gorge I heard some twittering and decided check it out for want of a more definite plan. The rocky ground was dotted with 2-3m junipers and now as I approached the sounds I grew in confidence that I was hearing something in addition to the constant chirps of Socotra Sparrows and twitters of Somali Starlings — an unobtrusive, sweet, high-pitched call. We scanned the trees below the cliff, then some movement in the crown caught my eye. I raised bins expecting another Socotra Sparrow but landed my gaze on a flash of gold and black, a Socotra Golden-winged Grosbeak! These are striking-looking, large finches, arguably the best-and-most-distinctive looking of the endemics. Over the course of half an hour we found 3-4, feeding on young, green juniper berries and flowers, calling softly but almost constantly to one another. Ted had time to return to the land-cruiser, set up his audio gear and capture a lovely sequence of calling and display flight. The feeling of relief that we would avoid the ignominy of leaving with two gaping holes on our lists added to the joy of the experience, knowing we were ending the trip on a high, not a low.
In Hadiboh we checked back into the Summerland Hotel then trundled back to “our” restaurant for a meal of lobster (a local specialty), grilled chicken and lots of sweet spiced tea. I slept a little better in a proper bed, but still had trouble rolling over and getting up. In fact the discomfort in my back would last weeks, being exacerbated by travelling on planes and in cars; my doctor was good enough to prescribe some neurofen-based patches which helped make the long, economy flight from Dubai to Adelaide at Christmas somewhat tolerable.
Our final morning we did not have time to go anywhere in particular, least of all back to the plateau, so we birded the lagoons around Hadiboh, finding many of the same waders and waterbirds we’d seen before, upgrading our pics of Red-knobbed Coot and trying hard to get an atmospheric photo of a Whiskered Tern into the sunrise. Pretty low-key, and soon enough we were back at the hotel for breakfast, then to the airport for 9am check-in.
Some months later as I write this blog it still grates that we missed the bunting. I would love to go back for the unfinished business, and also just to have a more relaxed ordinary tourist experience instead of (self-induced) 3 days chasing endemics — but it’s expensive to get to and whenever I have the time available there are always so many competing interests, I wonder if Socotra will ever make it back to the top of the stack again.
