Abd al Kuri Sparrow (Passer hemileucus): A Desert Island Castaway
What's the craziest thing you've ever done to see a bird?
While I can't speak for the other participants on Saudi Birding's spring 2026 Socotran Endemics Tour, crossing nearly 100 miles of open water in a wooden skiff en route to a remote desert island just off the Horn of Africa and all for a sparrow tops my list by a long stretch.
And the boat journey was only part of the adventure. Getting permission to visit Abd al Kuri in the first place had seemed almost as improbable as getting there.
An Island Almost Beyond Reach
Abd al Kuri lies at the western extremity of Yemen's Socotra archipelago, much closer to the Horn of Africa than to the Yemeni mainland. Approximately 30 kilometers long and no more than five kilometers wide, it is a rugged, sparsely vegetated island rising to some 570 meters above sea level.
For birders, the island's principal attraction is the Abd al Kuri Sparrow (Passer hemileucus), a species found nowhere else on Earth. With a global population estimated at only a few hundred pairs, it is among the world's most geographically restricted birds. Unlike the other endemic birds of the Socotra archipelago, which can be encountered on the main island, this sparrow requires a separate expedition across a formidable stretch of open water.
For years, Abd al Kuri had been one of those tantalizing destinations that seemed just beyond reach. Previous birding expeditions had managed to visit, but more recently access had reportedly become impossible owing to the ongoing construction of a military installation by the United Arab Emirates.
Unwilling to abandon the prospect, I worked with our Socotri tour operator to explore the possibility of obtaining special permission to visit the island. By December 2025, our efforts appeared to be making headway.
Then the political situation changed dramatically. Escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Yemen culminated in the withdrawal of Emirati forces, including those stationed in the Socotra archipelago. The resulting uncertainty, compounded by fuel shortages and other logistical difficulties, cast further doubt on our plans.
Nevertheless, by early February we had received the authorization we needed.
To the best of my knowledge, ours would be the first organized birding expedition to reach Abd al Kuri in more than three years.
Now we only had to get there.
Nearly Nine Hours at Sea
On the fourth day of our tour, we departed from Qalansiyah, a fishing port on Socotra's northwest shore, bound for Abd al Kuri, some 86 miles (138 kilometers) away as the petrel flies.
Strong currents in the channel between the islands meant that a direct course was not advisable. Instead, our boatmen charted an oblique route southwest toward Samha, one of the two smallest islands in the archipelago, known colloquially with neighboring Darsa as the Brothers (al-Akhawayn), before turning west for Abd al Kuri.
Sensible though the route undoubtedly was, it stretched the crossing to roughly 93 miles (150 kilometers) and nearly nine hours at sea, a far cry from the five to six hours originally promised.
The many hours at sea notwithstanding, the monotony of the crossing was frequently broken by wildlife. Jouanin's Petrels (Bulweria fallax) were abundant for much of the voyage, accompanied by good numbers of Brown Boobies (Sula leucogaster) and Masked Boobies (Sula dactylatra), along with numerous Red-billed Tropicbirds (Phaethon aethereus).
Marine life made an equally good showing. Flying fish frequently skittered off ahead of the bow, lifting off the crest of a swell and sailing away, sometimes more than 50 meters at a stretch. We also encountered a school of cownose rays, several Loggerhead Sea Turtles, and both Spinner and Indian Ocean Bottlenose Dolphins. One member of the group even reported seeing a Great Hammerhead on the return crossing.
Surprisingly, we recorded only a handful of Persian Shearwaters (Puffinus persicus) and just two each of White-cheeked Terns (Sterna repressa) and Bridled Terns (Onychoprion anaethetus)—far fewer than expected.
By the time we finally reached our landing spot on Abd al Kuri's northeast shore in the late afternoon, we were fast losing daylight.
The Search Begins
Our Socotri tour operator had arranged for a local resident with a Toyota Land Cruiser pickup—one of a small fleet donated to the islanders by the UAE government—to take us to a few spots I had pinpointed as potentially good for the sparrow.
The first was a relatively new settlement close to where we landed. Satellite imagery had revealed a cluster of what turned out to be large Cartilage Caper (Capparis cartilaginea) bushes surrounding a couple of water wells—a brilliant roosting spot for Passer sparrows in virtually any other context.
We jumped out of the back of the Land Cruiser and searched around the cluster unsuccessfully before walking over to the settlement.
There were more than two dozen homes scattered across the area, a village I subsequently learned had been established with UAE support. The construction of a military installation on Abd al Kuri, together with settlements intended to accommodate its construction workforce, had brought an unusual degree of recent development to this otherwise sparsely inhabited island.
We weaved our way through the settlement, greeting the many bewildered children who were out playing. I steered us toward the livestock pens, expecting that the sparrows might be attracted to spilled grain or other food scraps, but again we came up empty.
The only passerine we encountered was the Black-crowned Sparrow-Lark (Eremopterix nigriceps), one of only four passerine species known to breed regularly on the island. Seeing a male with its distinctive black underparts drinking from a dripping water line in the center of the village, I approached one of the older boys and asked whether the sparrows with the light-colored bellies also came to drink there.
He nodded affirmatively, only for it to dawn on me that he might be thinking of the female Black-crowned Sparrow-Lark, which is considerably drabber and pale-bellied.
With the sun sinking ever lower and the creeping thought that we might actually miss the sparrow before nightfall, I hurried everyone back to our drop-off point, only to discover that our wheels had absconded to a nearby friend's house for a visit.
One of the ground staff ran off to summon the driver, and after several fretful minutes we were finally back on the track toward Khaisat Saleh, the island's largest settlement. Previous birding parties had encountered Abd al Kuri Sparrows there, including visits in late 2022, so I was optimistic that our luck was about to change.
It didn't.
Despite a hurried search around the settlement, we failed to find a single sparrow before darkness brought our efforts to an end. A local resident assured us that the birds were easier to find in the morning.
After nearly nine hours at sea and an increasingly frantic search across two settlements, we would have to wait until dawn.
An Everyday Bird on an Extraordinary Island
The following morning, we returned to Khaisat Saleh in the Land Cruiser, determined not to leave without seeing the island's most celebrated resident.
This time, the sparrows were there.
Female Abd al Kuri Sparrow (Passer hemileucus) from the Socotra Archipelago; photo by Aidan G. Kelly
And after all the difficulty involved in reaching Abd al Kuri, the circumstances of our eventual encounter were almost comically ordinary. Rather than skulking in some rugged desert ravine, the birds were feeding on the ground inside a local family's tiny courtyard.
What struck me immediately was how comfortable they appeared around people. At one point, the father instructed his young son to scatter more dried rice for the sparrows, which readily took advantage of the offering.
Here was one of the world's most geographically restricted birds, a species whose population is believed to number only a few hundred pairs, being casually fed by a child a meter or so from the family's front door.
The scene was a welcome relief after the previous evening's disappointment, but it also raised questions that would become increasingly interesting as I revisited the scant literature on the species.
For the moment, though, there was work to do.
While the other members of our group concentrated on photographing the sparrows, I devoted much of my time to obtaining video and audio recordings. Later, we encountered singing males away from the settlement, among the island's rocky slopes and ravines, providing opportunities to document their vocalizations in a more natural setting.
These recordings may represent a particularly valuable contribution to our knowledge of the species. The Birds of the World account describes its vocalizations as unknown, while another published account suggests that they are probably similar to those of the closely related Socotra Sparrow (Passer insularis). My recordings, however, reveal distinctly different vocalizations, challenging that assumption.
Despite searching the available archives, I have found no indication of earlier audio or video recordings of the Abd al Kuri Sparrow. To the best of my knowledge, these are the first known recordings of the species' vocalizations, and they are now publicly available through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library.
For a species described more than a century ago, that is a remarkable gap in the available natural-history record.
The photographic record, by contrast, has grown considerably through the efforts of visiting birders and photographers, including Lars Petersen and Robert Hutchinson, whose high-quality images have helped further document the species' appearance.
A Sparrow Apart
The Abd al Kuri Sparrow (Passer hemileucus) is one of the archipelago's most localized endemic birds, occurring exclusively on the island from which it takes its name.
For much of its taxonomic history, it was treated as a subspecies of the Socotra Sparrow (Passer insularis), which is widespread and often abundant on the main island of Socotra. Kirwan (2008) reviewed the taxonomic evidence supporting its recognition as a distinct species, while molecular research by Ryan and colleagues (2010) provided further support for separating the two.
The Abd al Kuri Sparrow is a generally pale, sandy-colored bird, readily distinguishable from the more strongly patterned Socotra Sparrow. Its appearance is well suited to the arid, rocky landscape it inhabits.
Although the two species are closely related, their circumstances could hardly be more different. Socotra Sparrow is common across a relatively large and more ecologically varied island, whereas Abd al Kuri Sparrow is confined to a much smaller and more sparsely vegetated outlier.
The Abd al Kuri Sparrow has been reported from rocky ravines and gullies, sparsely vegetated slopes, and areas around settlements. Earlier accounts describe the species as shy, a characterization that seemed difficult to reconcile with the remarkably approachable birds we encountered in Khaisat Saleh.
That difference need not indicate a change in behavior. Sparrows inhabiting remote slopes may be considerably more wary than individuals accustomed to people around villages. Nevertheless, it illustrates how observations made under different circumstances can produce quite different impressions of the same species.
The birds' association with human habitation is certainly not new. During a March 2007 expedition, researchers observed approximately 100 sparrows scavenging around the main settlement and captured several using rice as bait. Additional pairs were encountered in the island's wadis.
Our observations therefore appear consistent with a longstanding relationship between the sparrows and the island's inhabitants.
Water presents another interesting question. Jennings (2010) reported that the species had not been recorded drinking, while the Birds of the World account suggests that it may obtain sufficient moisture from vegetation.
We did not establish whether the sparrows regularly drink from the water sources available around settlements, although we did observe Black-crowned Sparrow-Larks doing so. A resident subsequently reported that villagers provide the sparrows with water as well as grain.
A male Abd al Kuri sparrow eating dried rice left out by a local family; photo by Aidan G. Kelly A female Abd al Kuri sparrow eating dried rice left out by a local family; photo by Aidan G. Kelly
The availability of food and water around settlements raises the possibility that the sparrows benefit from human habitation, perhaps even more so as villages expand. But whether this relationship has increased the island's overall sparrow population, or simply concentrates birds around reliable resources, remains unknown.
How Many Are There?
The Abd al Kuri Sparrow is currently classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, reflecting its extremely restricted distribution and small estimated population.
The figure most frequently cited is approximately 400 breeding pairs, or fewer than 1,000 individuals.
But where does that number come from?
In their 2013 assessment of the breeding birds of the Socotra archipelago, Richard Porter and Ahmed Saeed Suleiman attributed the estimate of approximately 400 pairs specifically to Suleiman. They noted that most of the birds occurred in and around the island's settlements.
That is an expert estimate, not the result of a published, systematic, island-wide census.
The earlier Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Arabia (Jennings 2010) acknowledged how little was known about the species' population, suggesting that there were probably only a few hundred pairs at most and noting the absence of information about population trends or inherent threats.
Porter and Suleiman subsequently explained that they had provided provisional population estimates for Jennings's atlas and had revised those estimates in their later work. The 2013 figure therefore represents an updated expert assessment rather than independent confirmation of the earlier estimate.
Nevertheless, the approximately 400-pair figure has continued to appear in subsequent conservation accounts.
Nor does the available evidence establish whether the population is increasing, declining, or relatively stable. Without comparable surveys conducted over time, even the direction of population change remains uncertain.
This is not to suggest that the sparrow's conservation status is unwarranted. A species confined to a single small island is inherently susceptible to localized disturbances, particularly when its population may number fewer than a thousand birds.
But understanding the species' actual conservation needs requires more than repeating a population estimate. It requires knowing where the birds occur, how many there are, whether their numbers are changing, and what factors might be affecting their survival and reproduction.
Are the Sparrows Being Hunted?
One of the more troubling claims in the conservation literature concerns the hunting of Abd al Kuri Sparrows by children for food.
The claim appears in the Birds of the World account, while BirdLife International's species assessment goes further, suggesting that hunting, particularly in autumn, may constitute a serious threat because of the species' small population and restricted range.
The latter assessment attributes the information to a 2020 personal communication from Ahmed Saeed Suleiman.
Yet those published accounts provide remarkably little detail about the practice itself. How many birds are caught, and how frequently? Is hunting widespread or confined to particular settlements? Are Abd al Kuri Sparrows specifically targeted, or are they caught incidentally? And what explains the unusually specific claim that hunting occurs especially in autumn?
The reported seasonality is particularly puzzling. Autumn marks the end of the southwest monsoon, when calmer seas allow fishing to resume after months of dangerous conditions. Fisheries studies elsewhere in the Socotra archipelago indicate that October through December is among the most productive periods for fishing. If sparrows are being caught to supplement the islanders' food supply, why would hunting increase just as fishing conditions improve, rather than before the onset of the monsoon?
One possibility is that the reported timing coincides with autumn migration. Opportunistic harvesting of migratory passerines occurs elsewhere in the Middle East and need not be driven by food scarcity. Autumn passage has indeed been documented on Abd al Kuri: a visiting birding group in October 2022 encountered a notable influx of migrant turtle doves, warblers, shrikes, and other passerines. Could resident sparrows occasionally be caught alongside such migrants? While these observations establish that autumn migration occurs on the island, we know little about its regularity or scale, whether migrant birds are harvested there, or even whether the reported autumn increase in hunting was based on repeated observations rather than a general impression.
The reported involvement of children raises further questions. If this is part of an established seasonal harvest of songbirds, why is the practice attributed specifically to children? Capturing small, free-flying birds generally requires some combination of equipment, technique, and opportunity, although the sparrows' apparent tolerance of people around settlements might make them easier targets. Occasional bird-catching by individual youngsters, however, is quite different from an established practice capable of affecting the species' population.
At the same time, the potential consequences should not be dismissed. We encountered numerous children in the settlements, and if even a fraction of the island's younger residents regularly caught sparrows, the cumulative mortality could be consequential for a population estimated at only a few hundred pairs. That possibility cannot be quantified without knowing how many children participate, how frequently birds are captured, and whether the sparrows are specifically targeted or merely caught incidentally. It does, however, underscore why evidence of the practice's prevalence matters.
Interestingly, earlier ornithological assessments do not identify hunting as a threat to the species. Jennings (2010) reported that threats were unknown, while Porter and Suleiman's 2013 species account and their 2016 assessment of the archipelago's Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas made no mention of hunting Abd al Kuri Sparrows.
Another conservation assessment published in 2020 acknowledged that catching birds for food might represent a threat on the archipelago's outer islands, but stated that there was no evidence, even anecdotal, of the practice occurring in recent years.
The contrast between that assessment and BirdLife's contemporaneous warning about autumn hunting is difficult to overlook. It is possible that the two drew upon different information, or that new reports emerged during the intervening period. Without access to the underlying observations, however, the discrepancy remains unresolved.
Our own experience on Abd al Kuri presented a rather different picture from that suggested by the hunting claim.
We had watched a father encourage his son to feed the sparrows in the family courtyard. The birds were remarkably approachable, showing little apparent concern about the people around them.
Following our expedition, I asked the Socotri tour operator about the reported hunting. He recalled that boys on Socotra had occasionally caught birds in the past, primarily doves, but said that the practice had largely disappeared. His account concerned Socotra proper, however, and shed no light on whether the practice occurred on Abd al Kuri.
More revealing was a response he obtained from an Abd al Kuri resident, who insisted that nobody caught the sparrows and described villagers providing them with barley, rice, and water.
This testimony is consistent with what we witnessed firsthand, although neither a brief visit nor the account of a single resident can establish that hunting never occurs, particularly if the alleged practice is seasonal.
Still, the contrast is striking.
I contacted Suleiman in the hope of learning more about the observations or reports underlying the assessment, but have not yet received a response.
The distinction I would emphasize is between a potential threat and a documented ongoing threat. Hunting could undoubtedly affect a population as small and geographically restricted as that of the Abd al Kuri Sparrow. Whether it currently does so, and to what extent, remains an open question.
Storms, Isolation, and Other Potential Threats
The sparrow's extraordinary geographical isolation is itself a source of vulnerability. Unlike a widespread species whose populations may be distributed across hundreds or thousands of kilometers, the Abd al Kuri Sparrow has nowhere else to retreat should conditions on its island deteriorate.
Severe tropical cyclones provide an obvious example. In November 2015, Cyclones Chapala and Megh struck the Socotra archipelago, causing extensive damage to vegetation and infrastructure. Porter and Suleiman (2016) documented destruction of mature trees on Socotra. Such storms can affect island birds through direct mortality, destruction of nesting habitat, and the loss of food resources.
The Bahama Nuthatch (Sitta insularis) offers a sobering illustration. Restricted to the pine forests of Grand Bahama, the species had already declined to just a handful of individuals when Hurricane Dorian devastated the island in September 2019. The nuthatch has not been recorded since and is feared extinct, although its disappearance cannot be attributed to that single storm with certainty.
There are, however, important differences between the two islands. Grand Bahama is exceptionally low-lying, leaving its forests vulnerable to destructive winds, storm surges, and saltwater intrusion. Abd al Kuri, by contrast, is rugged and mountainous, rising to approximately 570 meters. Its mountains and sheltered ravines may offer the sparrows some protection from the strongest winds, although torrential rainfall could also produce dangerous flash floods in those same ravines.
For a species whose entire global population is confined to an island approximately 30 kilometers long, a sufficiently destructive storm could nevertheless have consequences extending far beyond a single breeding season. Yet the published evidence does not establish that the 2015 cyclones, or any subsequent storm, caused a decline in Abd al Kuri Sparrows. The species' restricted range makes it susceptible to catastrophic events, but a plausible threat is not the same as a demonstrated impact.
Climate change introduces further uncertainties. Changes in rainfall, prolonged drought, or the frequency and intensity of severe storms could alter the island's vegetation and the resources available to its birds. However, without species-specific monitoring, such possibilities remain projections rather than documented impacts on the sparrow.
Other potential threats are similarly difficult to assess.
During our visit to Khaisat Saleh, I noticed a free-ranging cat. Introduced mammalian predators have had devastating effects on island bird populations around the world, and the presence of even a small number of cats on Abd al Kuri is cause for concern. Given the sparrow's small population and its habit of foraging on the ground, predation by cats represents a potentially significant threat. Although I observed only one individual, there is no reason to assume it was the only cat on the island. What remains unknown is how numerous cats are, whether they are breeding on the island, and the extent to which they prey on the sparrows.
Porter and Suleiman (2016) had previously identified rats and possibly cats as potential threats to the island's nesting seabirds, although they acknowledged that their effects had not been assessed. The possible impact of these introduced predators on the Abd al Kuri Sparrow likewise warrants investigation.
More immediately apparent during our visit was the physical disturbance caused by quarrying. While exploring the island, we encountered a quarry cut into a rocky slope near stands of the endemic succulent Euphorbia abdelkuri. Singing Abd al Kuri Sparrows occupied the surrounding landscape.
The quarry was one visible example of the environmental changes accompanying development on the island. The construction of a UAE military installation and settlements to accommodate its workers appears to have represented the largest construction effort in Abd al Kuri's history. Further expansion of settlements and infrastructure could place additional pressure on the island's limited natural habitats, particularly if quarrying extends into previously undisturbed areas.
The relationship between the sparrows and human habitation is not necessarily straightforward. The birds readily exploit food available around settlements, and residents sometimes provision them deliberately. Yet the same settlements can bring habitat disturbance, introduced predators, and other environmental pressures. The extent to which these competing influences affect the sparrow population remains unknown.
Ultimately, the greatest obstacle to assessing the Abd al Kuri Sparrow's conservation prospects is the scarcity of reliable information. We lack a comprehensive population census, a well-established population trend, detailed studies of its breeding ecology, and quantitative assessments of the threats it may face. These are not reasons for complacency. They are reasons for further research.
The Rough Crossing Home
On our way back to camp, we took a shortcut along the recently abandoned military airstrip built by the UAE, which also happened to be the only paved road on the island. Elsewhere, rusted Soviet tanks stood along the coast, remnants of the Cold War era when the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen)—the only openly Marxist state in the Arab world—controlled Abd al Kuri under Soviet patronage.
Eventually, it was time to return to Socotra.
The homeward crossing took roughly six hours, considerably less than the nearly nine hours we'd spent getting to Abd al Kuri. But what we gained in time we paid for in comfort. The winds had picked up considerably since the previous day, whipping up swells that subjected our little wooden skiff to a near-unrelenting succession of jolts as we made our way across the open water.
Once again, seabirds and other marine life provided occasional distractions, though the rough conditions made it considerably harder to appreciate them.
By the time we finally reached Socotra, battered and weary, we had completed an expedition that only a few months earlier had seemed unlikely to happen at all.
And as for the craziest thing I've ever done to see a bird?
Without question, this was it.
Selected References
Apel, M., Krupp, F. & Hariri, K. I. (eds.) (2002). Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity of Socotra Archipelago: Marine Habitat, Biodiversity and Fisheries Surveys and Management. Final Report of Phase III. Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Beaman, M. (2022). Socotra & Abd al-Kuri Tour Report 2022. BirdQuest.
BirdLife International. Species factsheet: Abd al Kuri Sparrow (Passer hemileucus).
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N. & Kirwan, G. M. (2020). Abd al Kuri Sparrow (Passer hemileucus). Birds of the World. Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Gardner, M. A., Pereira, D. J., Geary, M., Collar, N. J. & Bell, D. J. (2024). Gone with the wind: the proximate and ultimate causes of the decline and extinction of the Bahama Nuthatch Sitta insularis. Bird Conservation International 34: e28.
IUCN (2016). Photo gallery: Cyclones hit Yemen's remote Socotra Archipelago.
IUCN (2020). Socotra Archipelago: 2020 Conservation Outlook Assessment. IUCN World Heritage Outlook.
Jennings, M. C. (2010). Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Arabia. Fauna of Arabia 25.
Kirwan, G. M. (2008). Studies of Socotran birds III. Morphological and mensural evidence for a ‘new’ species in the Rufous Sparrow Passer motitensis complex endemic to the island of Abd ‘Al-Kuri, with the validation of Passer insularis Sclater & Hartlaub, 1881. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 128(2): 83–93.
Porter, R. F. & Suleiman, A. S. (2013). The populations and distribution of the breeding birds of the Socotra archipelago, Yemen: 1. Sandgrouse to Buntings. Sandgrouse 35: 43–81.
Porter, R. F. & Suleiman, A. S. (2016). The Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas of the Socotra archipelago, Yemen. Sandgrouse 38: 169–191.
Ryan, P. G., Nupen, L., Rose, B. & Suleiman, A. S. (2010). Geographic variation in Socotra Sparrows Passer insularis. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 130(2): 75–82.
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