Away from the holy Saudi town of Makkah, where nearly 2.7 million Muslim pilgrims have just ended their annual Haj gathering, new visitors are flocking to another city not for pilgrimage but warmth—birds.
Pinched by the cold weather in the northern hemisphere, thousands of birds have started to travel across the globe in search for warmth, which they have found in the massive Saudi oasis of Ihsaa across the western part of the Gulf.
“The birds have started to arrive in the Kingdom for the warm weather….they are targeting Ihsaa province and most of them are coming from Canada, France, Turkey, Russia and other countries,” Alyoum newspaper said on Tuesday.
“They seem to prefer Ihsaa because of its massive palm date farms and the twin Alasfar and Almasab lakes, which have become a major bird concentration.”
The paper quoted experts as saying the flamingoes and other birds would continue to fly into Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Gulf because of the cold weather in the northern hemisphere and the end of the heat wave in the Gulf, where temperatures normally climb above 40 Celsius during summer.
“Ishaa and other areas constitute a good habitat for these birds…they usually stay here for around three months before they fly back home,” one expert said.