Global Big Day May 2025

On Saturday May 10th it was Global Big Day, organized by eBird, happening alongside World Migratory Bird Day. Our core team, Jonathan Meyrav, Re'a Shaish and me have been doing these Big Days since 2018. This time, sadly, Jonathan couldn't join us for personal reasons. So we sought for an alternative Jonathan, and came up with the young gun Yonatan Gordon, one of Israel's finest young birders. At the tender age of 16, Yonatan is already proving to be one of the best rarity finders in Israel and is a great guy.

Traditionally, we do the same Big Day route in northern Israel almost every year, with some variations. Overall, it was a great day of birding, though the weather wasn't on our side - it was terribly hot and quite unpleasant around midday.

I picked up Re'a at 03:30 where we had a singing Thrush Nightingale by the bus stop. Our first proper birding stop was at the entrance to the Hula Reserve, where Tawny Owls threw a party.

Driving around pre dawn in the Hula Valley fields produced several Eurasian Nightjars. Early morning birding around Agamon Hula wasn't too busy but actually really enjoyable. Jonathan wasn't there to do the traditional 'early morning wake-up coffee' story, but the photo had to be taken.

The lake itself held stuff including Marbled Ducks. Early on we started seeing small groups of Rosy Starlings flying around. Eventually we located one group on nearby trees - such wonderful birds. 

There were several Golden Orioles around - this is how we typically see them in Israel, flying away.

While taking in all the pinks and yellows, we noticed several large acros in a Mulberry tree. Great Reed, Clamorous, but hey what's this one? It's medium sized, it has a long, slender bill (not great reed), long primary projections and short tail (not clamorous), it's olive-grey above with a fine supercilium - Basra Reed Warbler!!! We watched the bird for about a minute jumping in a tree, trying to pick up all the key ID features. We tried to obtain photos but it was very active in the tree and then flew out and away before we succeeded. We searched for it for some time, without seeing it again. We were in Big Day mode so we didn't stay for very long and had to leave. It was seen again in the afternoon at the same spot by others. We left Agamon Hula quite elated with the Basra find - it's a good rarity in Israel, just about annual. It was probably our best ever find on a Big Day.

Fields north of the Agamon held a healthy population of Calandra Larks. It seems that feldegg Western Yellow Wagtails also breed in these fields.

We then climbed up the Golan Heights and birded the excellent habitat along the Petroleum Road. Despite the intensifying heat and wind, there were so many birds around and so much quality. Highlight was of course the now-regular Yellow-throated Sparrows, now back for their fourth breeding season. We had two pairs in breeding action, but they didn't pose for photos. Shrikes were plentiful, we found two pairs of Upcher's Warblers, and Rufous-tailed Scrub Robins are never boring.

Good job to the branch in perfect focus

Distant photo of Red-backed Shrike and Upcher's Warbler - typical Big Day (awful) photo quality

Then we climbed up Mt. Hermon. In 2024, because of the war, Mt. Hermon was closed off and we couldn't visit it. Now it's reopened , and we enjoyed birding there very much, as you can judge by our stupid smiles in this photo: 

We 'cleaned up' all expected Hermon specialties rather quickly, and really appreciated the relatively cool weather at 1500 m asl. Syrian Serin, Western Rock Nuthatch, Sombre Tit, Eastern Bonelli's Warbler, Rock Bunting, Rock Sparrow, Eastern Black Redstart were some of the great birds we saw up there and made our time on Mt. Hermon extremely worth our while.

From Mt. Hermon we descended back to the Golan Heights. In the Valley of Tears, Black-headed Buntings were singing in force despite the heat.

We picked up a few more species driving south across the Golan Heights, and arrived at Kfar Ruppin when the heat peaked.

Luckily, shorebirds aren't as affected by the heat as passerines (and humans), so we added an important number of species at the fishponds, in fact at our restoration site: Broad-billed and Curlew Sandpipers, Collared Pratincoles and more. Our final birding stop was in our restored Amud Reservoir near Kfar Ruppin. It was sooooo hot that the local Common Nightingales did not sing.

I had some commitments in the evening so we ended our Big Day in Kfar Ruppin and headed back, adding a couple more species along the way. 

Wow, that was intensive and fun. 143 species in total (eBird trip report here), which isn't an enormous list but certainly represents an enjoyable day out. We saw good stuff (Basra Reed Warbler, Rosy Starling), braved the heat, and had a great time. Thanks to Re'a and Yonatan for their partnership - you guys rock. Thanks to Nadav for gen in the Hula Valley. Thanks to Swarovski Optik for their ongoing support.