Friday, September 21, 2012

Playing in the mud

Last night I joined the annual shorebird ringing session at Ma'agan Michael. I arrived there yesterday morning with Yosef and we did some scouting around. We found no proper fishponds with the ideal conditions, but still we saw some decent concentrations of shorebirds on the coastal lagoons and in one dug-up pond, in which I waded most of the night. We weren't very optimistic but ended up with quite a good catch - almost 100 shorebirds and a few other bits and bobs. Not as good as last year but still more than I expected based on our scouting results. 
Most birds caught were Little Stint and Dunlin, but apart from them quite a good variety. Hightlight was a 1cy Red Knot caught just before dawn - one of the very few ever ringed in Israel. Good bird.

Red Knot - 1cy



Broad-billed Sands are always nice birds to handle -we ringed three:

Broad-billed Sandpiper - 1cy

Marsh Sandpiper

Kentish Plover

Temmick's Stint


Yosef started a project that involves colour-ringing Ringed Plovers and Ruff. So keep your eyes open for them:

Ringed Plover 

Ruff


One of the non-shorebirds trapped late in the evening and early in the morning - mainly Willow Warblers and Common Kingfishers:

Quail

Many thanks to the co-organizers and leaders - Yosef, Francis, Gidon, Avishai and to the large team that helped us make it such a successfull session.

1 comment:

  1. There you go again photographing birds that I can only dream about.

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