It was a friend of mine's birthday on 9 May and to celebrate we went for a very early desert trip along with her husband and two other friends. We left from my place at 3:45 am (yawn!) and made it into the desert for the 5 am sunrise. As the desert gets cool at night it was still a bit chilly to wear a t-shirt. The sunrise and the fresh air was so worth the early rise:
(5 am and the first signs of sunlight on the sky over the Kuwaiti desert)
(Shortly after 5 am and the sun rising quickly)
(Shortly after 5 am and the sun rising quickly)
With the sun comes the temperature as well but we still had time to have a look around the desert (right after sunrise it was probably high 20s Celsius/80+ F).
A definite highlight of this particular trip was the lizards! I have no idea where these creatures have been hiding the last times we were there or if they somehow migrate into Kuwait in the summer but now they are here!
Although the lizards themselves are quite big (I'd say about 0.5 meter long/2 feet) they can be hard to spot. From a distance they look like a stick in the sand - like this one:
(A lizard sticking its head out of its hole - middle of the picture - look for the small black 'stick' pointing upwards (not the black thing lying on the ground to the right))
It can be quite difficult to get close to them - when they feel movement on the ground they immediately escape into their holes. They are said to be a delicacy so no wonder they are quick to escape to avoid being eaten by campers.
At one point we were really lucky to drive up on one who for some reason did not get scared from the movement of our car. We stopped and took some pictures through the window - it was so close that I could see it swallow (that was the only movement visible):
(Lizard in its hole - Kuwaiti desert)
There was a Kuwaiti with us on this trip and he told us that this type of lizard uses its tail (which looks like a club with spikes) to hit/to fight with. I can imagine that must hurt!
On our way back (in time for breakfast) we almost hit a lizard that was sitting in the middle of the road - I imagine the tarmac was nice and warm. It gave us the "I-was-here-first-look" (good point) and we tried to "push" it off the road (without hitting it of course). It finally ran off the road and into a drain by the road side:
(Lizard running off the highway)
(Lizard by the highway)
This time of year the desert should be dry and with minimal vegetation. The recent rain (Adding 'Sarayat' to My Arabic Vocabulary), however, meant that a lot of things were growing and that flowers had again started blossoming. I even saw some new ones that I had never seen before:
(Small white flowers blossoming)
(A plant with star-shaped green flowers/leaves I had never seen before)
(A purple root-like plant I had also never seen before)
(White flowers blossoming - again)
(An unusual sight - a light green plant in the summer desert)
We went down by the water near Bubiyan Island where we have been before (it's where the mudskippers live Day Out In The Desert) and found that this area was also surprisingly green:
(Grass-like vegetation in the desert casting long morning shadows)
(Grass-like vegetation in the desert casting long morning shadows - and the sand cracking in flakes because it's dry)
(A green plant with yellow banana-shaped 'fruits')
I like being by the water - there is a big difference between high and low tide which means that it can be a completely dry area (as it was on this trip) with ripples in the sand and at other times it's mudflats with mud-skippers like the first time I was there (Day Out In The Desert).
(By the water with Bubiyan bridge in the background - the tide coming in quickly)
The water is salty (it's the mouth of the Arabic Gulf - or Persian Gulf as it is called elsewhere) and leaves white marks on the ripples of sand when the water retracts:
(Salty patterns in the sand at low tide)
(Patterns in the sand)
(A fish out of water - literally)
(A sand colored bug)
(A beautifully white crab shell)
(Dry sand cracking up - with traces of salt from the high tide)
It was also a really good morning for some bird spotting although most of them were impossible to photograph (we saw a sandpiper as well). I have no idea what most of them are - but I see species that I have never seen before:
(Bird in the sand)
(Brown, black and white bird sitting on a bush)
I was told this is a green bee-eater although they are not supposed to live in Kuwait. Actually the Kuwaiti gentleman told me that during the Iraqi invasion a lot of the Kuwaitis who fled their homes set their (pet) birds free because they could not bring them with them. That's apparently why species that shouldn't really be here are now living in the area as wild birds:
(Green bee-eater (?) now in Kuwait)
And last but not least - another thing I had never seen in the desert - a type of desert mushroom:
(Desert mushroom)
We left the desert around 7:15 am when it was getting really warm and we went for breakfast back in Kuwait City. Definitely not a bad way to spend a birthday morning - and a great justification for taking a midday nap :)
