Nostalgic photo-dump

 Once upon a time, when I was a young blogger, my blogposts typically went something like this: 'Today I went birding here and I saw this and that'. Then I matured and developed and started writing about deeper stuff like feelings and sociological observations. Today, before a meeting at Ma'agan Michael, I made time for my monthly point-count session at our evolving bird park there. It was a busy morning of point-counts, and the conditions were horrific with gale-force easterlies (listen to the background noise in the videos below), yet somehow photography went ok and I felt a need to share my photos with you, the world. Nothing to write home about, no special reason, just a representation of common and less common birds I saw today, like back in the days; some photos are decent, others less so... my eBird checklist for the morning is here.

Great White Pelicans

Pygmy Cormorant

Egyptian Geese looking very wild (they're not)

Late Squacco Heron

Ruddy Turnstone on the rock

Eurasian Curlew shared the rocks

Temminck's Stints

Avocets looking smart as always

Pallas's Gulls on the beach

Wait for it! Not easy to be a gull on Ma'agan Michael beach - constant disturbance

Check the wind blowing the sand in the video above - Google Photos stabilizer did a good job.

Different Armenian Gulls

Little gullfest

Since the start of the year, a series of storms have been hitting our shores, bringing some good seawatching opportunities. Only today I managed to free some time for seawatching, and went over to Palmakhim, south of Rishon Letzion,  where I joined several others. The wind was blowing hard, but the direction was not ideal - too much southerly element to it. There were few true pelagic species - six Yelkouan Shearwaters and an Arctic Skua. Main interest was in gulls, specifically small ones: There was a lovely concentration of Little Gulls, fishing in the sheltered bay with Sandwich Terns. They are rather scarce in Israel, so their numbers were pleasing: At most we had 13 together, in total about 17. Beautifully-patterned, elegant - I love Little Gulls, especially when they're young (there was only one adult).

M or W?

There was also varied large gull action:

Proper cachinnans, near adult- very pale mantle, lots of white, little black

heuglini - adult

armenicus - 1st cycle

armenicus - adult

I think this is barabensis - tricky gull

Dark underwing secondaries indicate this is a fuscus-thingy

eBird checklist here.

South coast

Today I worked with NPA marine rangers on seabird identification near Ashkelon. There were no proper seabirds around, so we made do with gull identification. Can't get any better than that. We spent a bit of time inside Ashkelon NP, then checked for some gull rafts inside the coal depot. At one secluded spot a nice mixed group contained, among the striking Pallas's Gulls, a few other taxa, especially fuscus and heuglini. A metal-ringed cachinnans, metal ringed Pallas's and two darvic ringed fuscus were out there, but frustratingly too distant to read.

Armenian Gull is less frequent down the southern coast compared to the northern coast and northern valleys where it is the 'default' large gull. As spring comes, adults like this gradually lose the diagnostic black bill band. I have seen individuals with a more convincing P3 pattern, but the overall solid black wingtip (very limited grey tongues on P7/8) and deeply hooked bill leave no doubt that it's armenicus:

Large numbers of Loggerhead Sea Turtles were washed up dead or dying on the coast over the last few weeks. This one was washed up on the beach this morning.

Some of the few remaining Mountain Gazelles still roam on the vegetated coastal dunes. Sad to see numbers of this globally Endangered mammal dwindling.

Thanks to Guy (NPA) and his team for a great day out.

Ma'agan Michael gulls

Today I had some time in Ma'agan Michael before a meeting (it often works out like that...). A serious storm developed overnight so I had some expectations for a short but productive seawatching session. I arrived at Crocodilopolis, an ancient mound just south of MM to discover that the gale-force wind was blowing from the wrong direction, SSE. What time I spent scanning the sea was fruitless - I did not see a single seabird. Therefore I focused on gulls and shorebirds on the beach. Nadav joined me. Several gull species were moving up and down the beach - Armenian, Yellow-legged, Caspian, Pallas's, Siberian, Slender-billed and Black-headed. Shorebirds sheltered on the beach behind the mound, including 11 Greater Sand-plovers and fair numbers of Kentish. Check my eBird checklist here. Light conditions were surprisingly good for a storm, so I enjoyed some relaxed photography.

Pallas's Gulls - have I mentioned before that they are the best gulls?

Yellow-legged Gull

I found this colour-ringed Armenian Gull roosting on the beach. In fact it is a bird I ringed back in April 2014 and released at ashdod (thanks Yosef & Amir for reminding me). It was rehabilitated at the Israeli Wildlife Hospital after a case of Botulism, and seen several times since at Ashdod and MM. I wrote an article after its release for the Israel Birding Portal; it includes a video of the release, featuring my son Noam, then 4.5 years old...

Sandwich Terns

Slender-billed and Black-headed Gulls

Slender-billed Gull

Grey Plovers

Huge numbers of Great Cormorants

Fishing shoals stranded in the rockpools

Ashdod ringing

On Friday I had a productive ringing session at Ashdod, with many migrants around. Newcomers to my site were several Sprossers:

These are not Levant Sparrowhawks on migration - this is a small part of a swarm of mosquitoes that escorted us most of the morning:

After ringing we had a quick look at the gull ponds. There were only 100 gulls left - fuscus, heuglini, cachinnans and armenicus. Among them three birds with rings - two from Finland and one from Norway, all long-staying birds that do not want to leave. Other than that several hundred Yellow Wagtail (incl. supecilliaris and beema), and a single Citrine Wagtail was a good local bird.

Ashdod gulls with KMO

Today I had the pleasure to spend a day gulling at Ashdod with Klaus Malling Olsen. He arrived a couple of days before the festival to join the Ashdod gull team (Amir, Ehud and myself) for some hardcore drop-dead gulling.
It was a terrific gull day, with peak fuscus migration. We had something like 3000 gulls, about 80% of them were fuscus. The light was excellent so we had good photographic opportunities.
It was a very educational day for me. Even after watching gulls for so many days at Ashdod, I learned so much from Klaus today. Eventually we agreed on most gulls, which was a good sign for me...

Most barabensis have left already by now, but we had a few birds, including this beautiful couple. Look at this amazing yellow tongue!

This image shows the wing pattern quite nicely, especially the black tongues all the way to P4, with strong black 'streaks' penetrating the grey.

It was another big day for rings (Ehud has the figures, possibly 50 or so), including this Swedish ring.

There were other birds too. We had two late Greater Spotted Eagles. This bird confused us a bit because of its long gape, but it is identified by the unbarred remiges and characteristic pale comma on outer primaries.

Another nice bird we had was a male Desert Wheatear. One late Pallas's Gull was nice too.

The rubbish dump was very attractive today. It was very impressive to see all of those fuscus.

This is a nice trio - fuscus, armenicus (2nd winter) and heuglini (3rd winter):

And a close up on the heuglini admiring the Israeli scenery. Note the still growing P10 - typically late moult of this species:

we had very large numbers of cachinnans, almost all 1st-winters.

Ashdod gulls

So, I have some birds of my own too...

Continued yesterday's trend of wasting my time, and had a useless day attempting to catch gulls. They were so nervous today - two kites hung around the rubbish dump the whole day and prevented the gulls from feeding and us from catching gulls.

During the day I had some Finnish clolur rings on fuscus, including this 2cy seen for the first time in Israel.

The gulls against the dark sky provided some photographic opportunities.

This is an adult cachinnans:

And a mixed flock spooked by a kite - fuscus, heuglini, cachinnans and armenicus: