Introduction

Kuwait is a very interesting birding country, especially for birdwatchers who are interested in Western Palearctic (WP) species. Many rare WP-species were found in Kuwait in December 2006 and in January 2007. These wintering records inspired five Finnish WP-birders to arrange a common birding trip to Kuwait. Keijo and Ilkka visited Kuwait already in April 2006. For the other members this was their first visit to Kuwait. We managed to have the same flight, but different hotels. We decided to rent two cars to make more efforts for finding the target species of birds.

Our trip succeeded perfectly, both technically and regarding to the amount of rare birds seen. The total number of observed species was 113 and the first-visitors got to 13 new WP-species. The resident birders gave again excellent support and the general hospitality can nowhere be better than in Kuwait.

This trip report includes daily itinerary and a review of most important records. All daily records are in an appendix. The descriptions of birding areas are already in the earlier trip report.

All daily records are in the appendix.We failed to find two target species, eversmann’s redstart (Phoenicurus erythronotus) and indian roller (Coracius benghalensis). The former had left Sabriya Farm and Failaka Island before we visited. We and the resident birdwatchers tried to find the latter every day. Afterwards at home, we read that two birds were found after our visit.

Photos Brian Foster, Jukka Ihanus, Ilkka Sahi, Markku Santamaa and Keijo Wahlroos.

THANKS
Khalid, George and Brian served us many accesses to the closed and fenced areas, for example to the Nature Reserves. We thank you for this and the excellent guidance. As well, we thank all you and Pekka for the pleasant birding company. Thanks Pekka for good information beforehand. Thanks all residents for the great hospitality, especially Khalid for our first lunch after the long flight.