Tunis, Tunisia
There’s much birdlife to discover in and around the bustling city of Tunis
David Lindo glances skywards in this bustling city
Long known as being a favoured haunt for winter sun worshippers, Tunisia’s tourism industry has recently taken a battering due to terrorist activity. The country has since bounced back and it is now relatively safe, although the southern border with Libya is still a no-go zone. But this is fine, because this potential urban birding adventure is based in the capital Tunis, situated on the northern Mediterranean coast.
Dating back to the 4th Century BC, Tunis is a bustling city filled with countless coffee bars, markets and traffic. Given its age, there is also a wealth of history including many Roman and Greek ruins: Carthage is high on many bucket lists. The typical birds that you will immediately encounter include vociferous Common Bubuls. The mechanical warble of these dark, long-tailed passerines will definitely form a major part of the soundtrack of any visit to Tunis.
Inhabiting every street corner are gangs of sparrows. But instead of the expected House Sparrows (that are decidedly scarce here), the ubiquitous little brown job award goes to the Spanish Sparrow. More normally associated with rural localities in Europe, these sparrows will give you a great opportunity, at very close range, to study their plumage differences from both our familiar Tree and House Sparrows.
The male’s chestnut crown and heavily black streaked flanks and mantle are diagnostic and streaks can be faintly discernible on the flanks of some females. They also appear to have slightly more bulbous bills than our sparrows, although that may be a trick of the light. The other urban speciality is the House Bunting. Vaguely reminiscent of a poorly-marked Rock Bunting, males can be found singing on top of TV aerials or from the buttresses of some of the more ancient buildings.
Glance skyward during the summer and you should see the welcome shapes of swifts wafting around – if you had not heard them before, over the din of city life. It is possible to see four species including Swift, Pallid Swift and the small and white-rumped Little Swifts being most likely, with an outside chance of rampaging parties of Alpine Swifts.
Tunis is also a good place to be wandering around during spring and autumn migration as many species use the area as a staging post. Spotted Flycatchers proliferate and can often be found flycatching from the sparsest of cover. Warblers can also be very obvious. All of the trio of Subalpine Warbler species can be
encountered, especially during the autumn, with the emphasis being on Moltoni’s Warblers, whose trilling Wren-like contact call immediately separates a hidden bird from its tricky to identify congeners. Its pinkish flush on the flanks is also surprisingly distinctive.
Migrating raptors should be expected, with the vast majority being Honey Buzzards and Black Kites. If you wish to visit an urban park then you can do no better than to visit Belvédère Park. The largest green space within the city, it is a perfect place to look for some of the birds previously mentioned.
Just south of the city lies Tunis’s go-to urban birding site, Sejoumi Lac. It is a large expanse of coastal lake and estuary habitat most of which is unprotected and, sadly, sometimes quite badly littered.
Despite that, the area hosts phenomenal numbers of wintering ducks. Thousands of Shoveler gather en masse, forming some of the greatest concentrations of this species in the country.
Mallard and Teal are also not uncommon, while there can also be good numbers of Garganey. Diving ducks like Pochard mingle within the throngs, and careful examination of the flocks could reveal a far scarcer Marbled Duck – a species that is more easily found further south.
The shallow waters are usually festooned with thousands of long-legged and gorgeously elegant Greater Flamingos that can sometimes look a little incongruous against the urban backdrop.
Interspersed with them are Great White and Little Egrets along with Grey Herons. Sejoumi Lac is also a fantastic place for waders, particularly when they are on the move. Black-winged Stilts are a given, while their cousins, the Avocets, can also be present. Expect to see both ringed plover species, plus Kentish and Grey Plovers. Tringas like Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, Marsh, Wood and Green Sandpipers are also usual.
In fact, expect to find almost any of Europe’s regular wader species and be sure, during the autumn and winter, to check the rough fields that fringe the waters edge for flocks of stationary Stone-curlews.
As you approach the sea, thousands of Slender-billed Gulls are present along with good numbers of Black-headed, Audouin’s and Yellow-legged Gulls and during the winter there are plenty of Lesser Blackbacked Gulls. There can be many terns to feast your eyes upon during the appropriate seasons, including Black, Little, Sandwich, Caspian and Lesser Crested Terns.
Thanks to: Mohamed Ali Dakhli for the invitation to visit Tunisia and for guiding me. mslbooking.tn