Friday, February 19, 2010

Who's There?

I've said it before, I'm sure I'll say it again: it is a tragedy that Mohammad, peace be upon him, wasn't a natural historian. If he had been, there's no doubt that the Saudis would be more interested in the world around them. Since they aren't, it's up to westerners to write the natural history books. And from what I can tell, most of us westerners are working our asses off to keep this country running, thus limiting our leisure time to write books on plants and animals of the Arabian peninsula. But that's a soapbox for another time.

Information on the flora and fauna of the Eastern Province is spotty at best. Even so, I've become very interested in the subject since the dogs and I have been frequenting the jebels.

The wind "renews" the loose sand surfaces every day so even though the jebels get a lot of traffic--human, dog, car, bike--if you get out there very early in the morning, there are tracks, trails, and pawprints in every square meter of sand.

Who is making these tracks? Without a good reference book, I can only point my finger at the usual suspects: arthropods, reptiles, and small mammals. Oh, and a few birds for good measure. The vast majority of these creatures are nocturnal. I'd have to set up an overnight stakeout to see them.

The sandy areas are peppered with small plants and I believe there is a direct relationship between the winter rains we had, the number of plants green and growing now, and the number of tracks that I've been seeing.

Here are some photos.

I think these tracks are made by a creature that burrows just under the sand surface. It may be looking for minute bits of organic material to eat. Fossilized tracks that look just like this can be found in marine deposits. In that setting they are made by worms. There are no worms in the dry sand but something is behaving like those marine worms. The track is only 3-4 millimeters wide.


Having seen the small red foxes that live on camp a couple of times now, I am pretty sure these are fox tracks. Each pawprint is about 2.0-2.5cm wide; the prints spread a bit in the soft sand (I've compared these to the prints the terriers make). This was a veritable interstate highway of fox activity the night before. We also find quite a bit of what I think is fox poop.


I think these are made by one of the three varieties of dove that live in the Eastern Province. White-cheeked bulbuls are common in the jebel area but their feet are too small to make these tracks.

Each of these tracks is smaller than a US dime. I think they are jerboa tracks. Sometimes they walk on all fours and sometimes they hop.

These are definitely lizard tracks. I've seen lizards making them. What's interesting is that the lizards will run along a vehicle rut in the sand for many yards before veering up and off. There are two different sizes of tracks here. The larger one is about 2cm across.

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