Every keen birder-lister-twitcher has a bogey bird. This bird that keeps evading, missing it by minutes, dipping on it multiple times, the one that everyone else saw and celebrate. Mine is Great Shearwater. I have seen it outside of Israel, but in Israel not yet. It is not that rare, with 11 records to date. Until this summer, all records came from the Mediterranean coast, typically during January and February. Almost all records came during rough seawatches, often without documentation. Previously, only one hag around for a bit. In 2015, Shahar Alterman found one off Jaffa, that circled in the area for an hour and allowed a handful of local birders to twitch it, and it even got photographed (see photo here). I was living in the UK back then. In January 2026, a moribund individual was picked up north of Tel Aviv (images here). It was taken into care and subsequently died. A couple of twitchers headed to the INPA wildlife hospital to see it before it passed away... That's not my style. For years, I have been going seawatching during westerly storms in January and February with one species on my mind: Great Shearwater. No luck yet, made even more painful by missing it several times by minutes.
Fast forward to Saturday, June 20th. Like almost every Saturday early morning, I circled around Hulda Reservoir, birding peacefully, as appropriate during the cucumber season. I enjoyed a handful of early migrant shorebirds (eBird checklist here). Then at 07:13 my phone starts beeping and my calm birding is disrupted. Shahar Shalev had just found a Great Shearwater in Eilat, showing well, sitting on the water. However, Eilat is about 3.5 hrs drive... I sped back to the car, dropped my dog off at home, picked Rony up and soon we headed down to Eilat. We were on the phone with Shahar and others on the beach. The bird was showing well until 09:30 when the local birders left home. We arrived to North Beach at 11:52 and started scanning like crazy. The weather was awful (42 degrees, horrible wind and dust storm), so conditions weren't great. We scanned and scanned until the evening and couldn't find the bloody bird, despite our best efforts. We did see a couple of OK birds (eBird checklist here) but that didn't make the dip any easier.
I had to head back home that evening, driving through the dark desert in agony. Rony stayed over with Rami, and next morning (Sunday) they enjoyed fantastic views of the Great Shearwater. Arrrghhh but congratulations to Rami who's the first person to reach 500 species in Israel. I had work I couldn't miss on Sunday and Monday and decided to try again on Tuesday, following a boat-load of happy birders that had an amazing experience with the bird on Monday (see Oz's checklist here for example). I left home with Gal at 02:30 to arrive in Eilat at dawn. We headed out into the bay on a boat of a friend, Itzik. Several birders were scanning from shore. The bird couldn't be located from the boat nor from shore. I was gone. Not see again since Monday. Second dip. Again, good birds were seen from the boat (eBird checklist here), only not the one that I wanted so much. I was a very enjoyable boat trip, thanks Itzik!
