On the birdwalk

Forget Ascot, for the ultimate in stylish headgear there is only one place a bird can go. To the Nad Al Sheba veterinary boutique, where tiny, exquisite helmets featuring ornate plumes and hand-crafted leatherwork sell for hundreds of dirhams.

Go online and the designs become even more elaborate, as prices rocket into hundreds of dollars. Does a falcon know if its hood isn't the latest, most expensive model? Can it sense the scorn from other other birds, and be distracted from catching its prey?

Sadly, these beautiful avian hoods only fit larger birds. The thimble-sized head of Pippin-the-tiny-green parrot remains bare and unadorned.

Demons of the desert

Lock your windows and leave a light on, the ghosts of the sandlands are moving in...

At least according to this spooky discussion. One allegedly haunted place is the now-demolished Al Khan area of Sharjah, where it was "normal to see things climbing the trees":

"[My brother-in-law] told me that his mother was sleeping and she heard a heavy knock on the door and she thought it was his father, he usually would come in late but when she opened the door, he saw a dark tall thing with no teeth, red eyes looking down, she fell sick for 3 months."

Another creepy tale takes place on Ajman beach:

"They were chilling near the beachside and that is when they noticed someone walking towards them in black from far. When this figure walked towards them and came closer they realised it was a ‘lady’. She was covered from head to toe, only showing off her eyes. My friends felt weird for she didn’t look like a nasty one and they got curious why she was all alone at ‘Ajman beach’ that late.

"Suddenly they felt her pace had increased and that she was walking faster and 3 of them noticed at the same time that her hands were extraordinarily longer! Until when they saw her hands were growing and they were as long till her knees is when they realised that they should simply ‘RUN’!"

There's plenty of eeriness in Dubai too:

"There has always been this small enclosure of trees in Nad al Sheba with a fence around it, like a thick group of them, no more than I'd say 10 square metres. And every blue moon or whatever there is like a candle sitting on the floor."