A Socotran birdwatcher

Hello! I am Ruslan Amin Gumaan, from Socotra Island, Yemen. I am 37 years old. I was born and grew up and live in Socotra. When I was 15 years old my dream was to become an English teacher, so I went on to study English in the Faculty of Education, Socotra. In 2010, I had another dream to also become a tour guide, but the difficulty was that there was no chance then, because there were so few tourism companies and each one of them only employed their relatives and close friends. So, I had to wait until 3 October 2019 to guide my first group, a fishing group, under the guidance of one of my colleagues. Two weeks later, I started my job as an official guide.

In mid-November, 2019, I guided Chris Miller and Miranda Lindsay, who stayed on Socotra for 2 weeks and wanted to write a guide book about Socotra. As we worked on it, I learned how to be a local birder and identify birds because they brought “Birds of the Middle East” (Richard Porter & Simon Aspinall). When they left Socotra, the book was given to me as a parting gift. Since then, I have been working hard with it and learned a lot about birds.

On Friday, 23 February, 2024, Chris Miller and Miranda Lindsay visited Socotra again for the purpose of updating the Second Edition of their book, the Bradt Guide to Socotra. At that time I was their tour operator and friend, who arranged their trip and helped them discover new places and experiences. In no small feat, I also managed to find for them all of Socotra’s endemic birds, and helped provide and verify plenty of information updates for their second edition. In their second visit to the island of Socotra, they brought me an excellent pair of binoculars and a special torch for spotting night birds.

My first birdwatching group was in December, 2021 with Michael Mills, of Birding Africa. We saw about 104 species of birds, including the 12 endemic ones, plus some other resident and migrant species as well, such as the Nubian Nightjar, Cream-coloured Courser, African Sacred Ibis, Pacific Golden Plover, Yellow Bittern, White-browed Coucal, White-faced Whistling Duck, Socotra Cormorant, Indian Pond Heron, and Amur Falcon.

My second birdwatching group was in October, 2023, this time with Mark Beaman of BirdQuest. We went to Abdulkuri Island by boat to spot the Abdulkuri Sparrow and we also hiked to Jabal Saleh to see the Abdulkuri Euphorbia, a rare endemic plant. We spent two days on Abdulkuri and on the way back we visited Ka’ul Phara’oun, where we saw a lot of sea birds. Then we continued on to Qalansiya Bay. Again, we saw all the endemic birds, some resident and migrant species.

Since then I have led other groups, and we always find all the endemic species, but in addition we have also seen some rarely seen species such as the Crab-plover.

We also saw a frigatebird which was later identified by an expert as a Christmas Island Frigatebird, the first record for the Middle East.

By myself, or with local friends I often go birdwatching, and we have seen a number of other rare visitors to the island, such as the Eurasian Coot, Golden Oriole and Jouanin’s Petrel. My dream now is to get a good camera so I can collect evidence of our sightings!

Recently I was told about a strange bird that had been found exhausted. It was a Eurasian Bittern – the first record for Socotra.

Besides guiding, I have also had the privilege to help Richard Porter with monitoring the Egyptian Vulture roosts. Socotra is very special for this Endangered bird.

Also, over the summer of 2025 I have been running a Tour Guide training course at the Socotra International Language and Computer Institute, to teach the next generation of new guides about the birds, plants and fish of my beautiful island, and how they can respect and share it with tourists too. I was able to bring those students on a field trip for Birds of Prey Day to observe and learn about the Socotra Buzzard and Egyptian Vulture.

I enjoy sharing my knowledge of the island with both visitors and residents, and I feel my skills as a teacher first, and then as a tour guide have uniquely equipped me to do so.