Sunday, March 6, 2011

Cyprus and Caracal

This morning I did another atlas box deep in the desert south of Ezuz. It was actually pretty quiet, which was surprising as I walked through some excellent steppe habitat, that last year was packed with breeding birds. Early morning was pretty cold (not Finland-cold, Negev-cold) and then it got too hot and in between I had few birds. Still some breeders of interest - Bar- tailed Lark, CCC, Desert Wheatears, Spectacled Warblers and many Pin-tailed Sandgrouse. Still very few migrants around. One sweet male Cyprus Warbler was nice though:

After I was done with the atlas work for the morning, I met up with Eyal. We had a quick look at the sewage ponds that were very quiet, but while driving out I saw a cat walking through the bushes 10 meters away... long ears... Caracal! Amazing encounter at 11:00! The animal walked quietly without showing much interest in us and disappeared behind a large bush. I drove around and we intercepted it as it walked out - what a fantastic animal! I was in the wrong side of the car for photography, and Eyal is too old ;-) He got only one blurry record shot... Hope Frederik (Belgium) and his family got to see it - they arrived a few minutes after us.

3 comments:

  1. Shame about not getting a shot of the caracal. That is one cat I would like to see.

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  2. Nice Cyprus pic Yoav....

    We saw Caracals near Nizzana once... back in 1996 mind... beautiful cats!

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  3. Great looking Cyprus Warbler,superb Image.

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