Clean-up

I haven't posted here for a while, so this is a good opportunity to dump here some photos I took in recent weeks. I didn't post for lack of birding, just couldn't motivate myself to post after each single event described here. With this accumulation I think there's enough material for a decent blogpost.

On February 12th I headed over to Kfar Ruppin for a meeting. En route I received a message that my meeting starts an hour late. I was at the junction turning off towards Hazore'a fishponds, where a Three-banded Plover had been found by Ran Nathan the previous day. It would have been rude not to pay it a visit.

As can be heard by the soundtrack of the video, Hazorea fishponds and in general Jizreel Valley hold high densities of Black Francolin. Heading out, I was fortunate to bump into two males doing their territorial stuff, paying little attention to me or to a passing Egyptian Mongoose. Exquisite birds. The stand-off between them was very amusing, with funny calls and leaps in the air.

On Friday 24th news broke of Israel's second Black-faced Bunting at Maayan Zvi. I headed over there quickly, failing to relocate it for several hours. Late in the afternoon I heard it only. That wasn't satisfying, so next morning I headed back and finally got views of it soon after first light. Nice bimbo! No photos sadly, so I will try again if it stays a bit longer (it wasn't seen today). Israel's fourth Masked Wagtail, a stunning male, was nearby and showed very well.

Yesterday I went ringing with Yosef et al. near Kalya in the northern Dead Sea region. It's peak migration for Cyprus Warbler, indeed we had five birds. They favour desert wadis with Taily-Weed bushes.

Cyprus Warbler, 2cy female

Cyprus Warbler, 3cy+ male

This morning I did fieldwork with Meidad in Hameishar Plains. It's very dry there now after very little winter rainfall, so in most point counts bird density was low. Some sections were birdier and we had a fun morning altogether.

Egyptian Henbane, I think, huge bush

Dorcas Gazelle - one of many

Nice numbers of Onager too

Desert species were busy breeding already, including the wonderful Temminck's Larks

Great Gray Shrike, but which?

 

General Franco

Have been very busy lately with little time to bird or blog, so my day out today was much appreciated. Left home early and met up with my boss (who has started reading my blog lately... errrr.... hi Dan...). We drove to the Hula Lake (Agamon) where we had a couple of hours for birding with Nadav before meeting our guests - Dr. Caren Cooper from Cornell Lab, and Yossi & Naama from Hamaarag (a national wildlife monitoring scheme). I had two personal missions - to photograph a singing male Black Francolin nicely perched on top of a mound, and to properly photograph a Black-winged Kite. I succeeded only partially in both missions. I heard lots of singing francolins, but they were all very shy and didn't show at all; got only this half-decent shot of this male hurrying through the vegetation.

Black Francolin - super chicken!

Did get this short sound recording:

I drove around trying to find something interesting but it was very quiet, perhaps because of the cold and wet weather. So at first I settled for photographing common birds like Avocet:

 Coot

Marsh Harrier

Pygmy Cormorants

Wigeons - they are such lovely ducks though. I bet the males are realy tasty - they look so sweet:

This guy might have some American Wigeon genes thrown into it (or Mallard / Shoveler / Teal):

Lots of Glossy Ibises around:

Then at last I had some action - I found a dead crane in a Humus field with six eagles feeding on the carcass - 5 greater spots and an imperial (that took off before I got any closer).

Greater Spotted Eagles

I saw two pairs of Black-winged Kite (there are now three breeding pairs in the Agamon!) but none performed better than this:

Peregrine feeding on a pigeon - very large and pallid - maybe calidus

Then before lunch our guests finally arrived. We first took the mobile hide tour that was fantastic as always, amongst the 32,630 cranes (according to this morning's count by the Agamon team), and then drove around a bit more with a clubcar.

Eurasian Cranes

These screwed-up jumpshots became good mystery photographs - species and age please:

 Thanks to Dan, Nadav, Caren, Yossi and Naama for a great day.

Northern tour

Two days of tour leading up in the North produced some good birds but no images as I was too busy.
On October 3rd at Ma'agan Michael we had two Bar-tailed Godwits (one of them was ringed), two Citrine Wagtails, one Gull-billed Tern and many other birds. A sunset visit to the Agmon was stunning as always - 1200 pelicans came in to roost together with a few hundred cranes, and many thousands of Barn Swallows and Yellow Wagtails roosted together in a nearby reedbed.
October 4th: we started off early at the Agmon again for some pleasent pre-breakfast birding. Highlights were flyover Richard's Pipit and Black-winged Pratincole; other good birds were two Greater Spotted Eagles and a few Penduline Tits. Local specialities seen well were Black Francolins and Clamorous Reed Warbler. We had a light raptor take-off, with a few Short-toed, Lesser Spotted and Booted Eagles.
An afternoon visit to the Bet She'an Valley was very birdy with lots of stuff around. Highlights were about 100 Tawny Pipits in one field, among them were another two Richard's Pipits, and another Greater Spotted Eagle.