Last night I met up with Eyal, Ron, MeiDarren and some others for a shorebird ringing session at the Nizzana sewage ponds. These small and smelly sewage ponds in the middle of the desert are very attractive and hold large numbers of birds during migration. We arrived there and found the ponds packed with birds. While setting the nets up in broad daylight we started catching very well - mainly Littler Stints but also a couple of Curlew Sands and a LRP. We were very optimistic before doing the first net round after dusk and took lots of bird bags. However, the birds simply vanished from the ponds after dusk and we caught nothing at all for the rest of the evening. Where the birds went is a mystery (no other muddy options within a radius of 30 km). But that was it for the night.
While setting the nets up we had some good birds - Citrine Wagtail, Gull-billed Tern, Broad-billed Sandpiper among the commoner species.
Curlew Sandpiper - adult
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