Birding at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt
by Arthur
Posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 11:24 pm CET
On 13 October 2007, our 7th wedding anniversary, we visited St. Catherine’s Monastery during our holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is at the foot of Mount Sinai and is one of the oldest continuously functioning Christian monasteries in the world.
We had rented a taxi from our hotel to take us on the 3-hour drive to the monastery. We arrived at about 9:00am, and many pilgrims were just coming back from their hike up Mt. Sinai. It is common practice to leave in the middle of the night and make the long walk up the mountain to watch the sun come up and then descend before the heat of the day. We didn’t do the hike because we dived the day before.
We spent only a short time inside the monastery. It was SO crowded we only had a quick peek inside and saw the burning bush and shuffled through the overcrowded church. We really came here to look for birds, and in particular to find some Sinai Rosefinches.
Unfortunately we didn’t see any Rosefinches, but we did see some great other birds, including:
Yellow-vented Bullbul
Tristram’s Starling
Spotted Flycatcher
Laughing Dove
White-tailed Wheatear
Red-backed Shrike
On 13 October 2007, our 7th wedding anniversary, we visited St. Catherine’s Monastery during our holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is at the foot of Mount Sinai and is one of the oldest continuously functioning Christian monasteries in the world.
We had rented a taxi from our hotel to take us on the 3-hour drive to the monastery. We arrived at about 9:00am, and many pilgrims were just coming back from their hike up Mt. Sinai. It is common practice to leave in the middle of the night and make the long walk up the mountain to watch the sun come up and then descend before the heat of the day. We didn’t do the hike because we dived the day before.
We spent only a short time inside the monastery. It was SO crowded we only had a quick peek inside and saw the burning bush and shuffled through the overcrowded church. We really came here to look for birds, and in particular to find some Sinai Rosefinches.
Unfortunately we didn’t see any Rosefinches, but we did see some great other birds, including: