Where have all the good birds gone?

You might have noticed the sudden disappearence of all the good birds in Israel in the last couple of weeks. Just have a look at the update frequency on my rarity pages - since the end of the festival we haven't had even a semi-decent pseudo-rarity. Hope things change soon.

But by then I have to settle for our common, local birds. Yesterday I had a meeting at home. While discussing standardizing national monitoring methods I noticed a couple of Spectacled Bulbuls preening on a loquat tree in my garden in beautiful soft light. Being one of Israel's commonest birds it's seriously underrated, but in fact they're one of my favorites - charismatic, social and attractive-looking. I grabbed my camera and fired off these shots, while my friends were laughing: "He's created another post for his blog".