Thursday, March 24, 2011

Eilat festival update - day 5

Just got back from another rambo tour, but before hitting the bed I will share my adventures for today. Started off early with Zev, we headed to the Uvda Vally for some quality larking. And indeed quality was to be seen with mixed flocks containing some great species feeding and flying around the dry wadi. Highlights were 7 flyover Dunn's Larks, hundreds of Thick-bills, tens of Bimacs, 1 Temminck's and 1 Lesser Short-toed. A few bar-tails were singing with all their hearts, but all other larks didn't look as if they're interested in breeding. One Asian Desert Warbler was a good addition to my festival list. This fly-by Hen Harrier was nice:

One of our group was having a great time with the larks:

In the afternoon I led the rambo tour. We headed first to Shezaf NR. It was bloody windy there, and birds were very difficult to find. We did not manage to find Arabian Warbler, but part of our group had a Cyprus Wheatear. 3 flyover Desert Finches were nice too.
By the time we got to Neot Hakikar it started raining, and conditions weren't looking too good for night animals. However driving in we almost hit a Nubian Nightjar sat on the main road, and in the fields we had good views of two more individuals.
In the Judean Desert we had a great show by a pair of Hume's Owls in an impressive canyon. It was actually quite dramatic with a thunderstorm but it only added to the magical atmosphere.

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