Saturday, September 11, 2010

Patch working sucks

And why does it suck? Because instead of twitching sexy birds or working sexy sites I keep spending too much time in my stinking ponds producing nothing, and because you guys get to see the same images of the same, common birds.
Anyway, today I had some time in the morning so had a quick look at 'my' Ashdod ponds. I thought that as it was 9/11 today, it would have been appropriate for me to find an American lost soul or a bombshell from Afghanistan. But again the best I could find were two Broad-billed Sandpipers. None had a ring on, which is a pity as they look so much better with a ring on, ain't they? One of them was quite well-behaved. In addition I had one citrine Wagtail flying around but didn't manage to see it on the deck.

Broad-billed Sandpiper





I had a nice group of four Little Ringed Plovers in the early morning light. They are such delicate and sweet plovers. Pity I had this ugly piece of concrete in the frame.
Little Ringed Plover


As usual I had a few Temminck's Stints:

You can see this adult temmicnk is exactly halfway through its primary moult (PMS = 25).

There is a large increase in snipe numbers. I am working hard on them too... but all of them have such a long tail...
Common Snipe
You can see this bird is a 1cy by the blackish tips to its lesser coverts:


On the way back home I had a quick look at Hulda reservoir, which produced 20 Ferruginous Ducks, an early Black-necked Grebe, 1 Monty's Harrier and 3 White-winged Terns. In the nearby fields there were large numbers of Ortolans and Cretzschchshzhthmar's Buntings in mixed groups.
Cretzschmar's Bunting
Very large numbers of Turtle Doves are going through now:

Apart for that, the fields held the typical selection of Whinchats, Greater Short-toed Larks, Issy Wheatears and Tree Pipits.

4 comments:

  1. I wish I had a few stinking ponds like this.

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  2. I don't mind these images at all. Great to learn about birds and in particular shorebirds in other places.

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  3. What a interesting serie of images! The Little Ringed Plover series is my prefered one, the one where he is all fluffy because of the wind is very cute ;)

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  4. There is patch-working and patch-working, i would swap mine for yours.........any day Yoav!

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