Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary

Pink against glass: hundreds of greater flamingos sift the brine with curved bills while the Burj Khalifa wavers in the heat haze behind them. Inside the wooden hide the only sound is wet beaks working the mud, fifteen minutes from Downtown.

Ras Al Khor means head of the creek, and that is exactly what it is: roughly 1,300 hectares of lagoon, mudflat and mangrove where Dubai Creek runs out of city. It became the UAE's first wetland recognised under the Ramsar Convention in 2007, and the numbers justify the title: around 470 animal species use the sanctuary, more than 3,000 greater flamingos have been counted on the flats, and in winter over 20,000 waterbirds of 67 species stage here on the flyway between East Africa and West Asia. Wooden hides on the sanctuary's fenced edge hold telescopes and no more than fifteen visitors at a time, which keeps even a busy morning quiet. The spectacle is the collision of contexts, wild birds in their thousands feeding against the tallest skyline on Earth, and the cooler months deliver it at full strength.