Ras al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary, Dubai, UAE, February 16 2020. There really aren’t many birds here. Dubai is legendary as the new and easy-to-reach destination for shopping, beaches and a good time in the sun; it’s all about humankind. It’s easy to see its seduction, it is a futuristic city of fanciful architecture where everything looks new, and roads are wide, smooth, orderly and carrying only new cars to sparkle in the sun. Here is the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, a148 floor-high icon. But if you need relief from the tedium of brand new, you can explore some of the traditional souqs flanking the dhow-choked Dubai Creek. Dubai is the product of free-flowing oil, outsourced professionals and cheap, unskilled labour. Not a place for birds though.
Not quite true, Dubai has flamingos and I went to see them; although not many people do. It was hard explaining to a taxi driver quite where I wanted to go, Ras al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary drew blank expressions but I knew the general directions so we set off speeding along quiet, multi-lane roads. For a while we found ourselves skirting a large construction site where I was told a 200 storey (!) building was coming out of the ground.
Ras al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary is noted in my Lonely Planet Guide as an important stopover for migratory waterbirds and that avid bird watchers can spot more than 170 species in this pastiche of salt flats. Maybe, but this was the wrong time of year and I only saw four species: one Eurasian Curlew, an indeterminate Cormorant, a single Great Egret and thousands of Greater Flamingos. The flamingos hang out obligingly close to a nice shady hide with comfy seats and convenient windows. It also happens to be where they get fed at eleven each morning.
They are a chattering spectacle of pink and white on long red legs and, as a group crowded like this, they smell a bit funny too. But, with perhaps the longest legs of any wading bird and down-drooped bill to sieve mud for invertebrates, they are wonders of adaptation.
