Two days too late

I arrived for a short family visit in Israel yesterday afternoon. This morning, completely knackered after yesterday exhausting day of travel, I did the obvious thing - I went in the early morning to Ma'agan Michael to see the putative Asian House Martin - potentially the first for WP. Since it was found by Barak, it remained extremely faithful to a very small area. I met up there with some friends and together we spent several hours searching for the martin amongst the thousand or so Barn Swallows. The only white-rumped birds we saw were two Little Swifts. The martin must have made a move - it was not seen yesterday either; last seen on December 27th.
Luckily for me, I enjoyed birding so much this morning. It is so great to be in Israel. Sooooooooo many birds. And the weather was lovely. I shot today using 3-digit ISO today! I have almost forgotten how to shoot in sunlight. And company was great too. I birded in a small area for about 2.5 hours, not really hard - we were mainly looking at hirundines, so all other stuff was picked up randomly. I had 82 species (and 1 additional taxa...). Highlights were 8 Ruddy Shelducks, some Citrine Wagtails, what I think is possibly a Steppe Gull (need to do some more homework on it) and some Pallas's Gulls, and on the way back home had two Black-winged Kites along route 6. How I missed this kind of birding.

Black Storks - just because they're so pretty

Super-tame Black-necked Grebe

This is the possible Steppe Gull. Almost cachinnans-like in structure. This neck streaking is typical. Dark bluish mantle. Medium sized bill with good gonys.

This flight shot is overexposed. P10 and P9 black all the way to PC. Black on P4, but pattern on P5 excludes YLG.

6 Pallas's Gulls and one Armenian

Marsh Sandpipers and Spotted Redshank

Thistle Mantis (Blepharopsis mendica) 

This is probably my last post of 2016. I had hoped to end the year with a bang, but hey - all part of the game. If the martin reappears while I'm here in the next week I will give it another try.

Patch working sucks

And why does it suck? Because instead of twitching sexy birds or working sexy sites I keep spending too much time in my stinking ponds producing nothing, and because you guys get to see the same images of the same, common birds.
Anyway, today I had some time in the morning so had a quick look at 'my' Ashdod ponds. I thought that as it was 9/11 today, it would have been appropriate for me to find an American lost soul or a bombshell from Afghanistan. But again the best I could find were two Broad-billed Sandpipers. None had a ring on, which is a pity as they look so much better with a ring on, ain't they? One of them was quite well-behaved. In addition I had one citrine Wagtail flying around but didn't manage to see it on the deck.

Broad-billed Sandpiper

I had a nice group of four Little Ringed Plovers in the early morning light. They are such delicate and sweet plovers. Pity I had this ugly piece of concrete in the frame.

Little Ringed Plover

As usual I had a few Temminck's Stints:

You can see this adult temmicnk is exactly halfway through its primary moult (PMS = 25).

There is a large increase in snipe numbers. I am working hard on them too... but all of them have such a long tail...

Common Snipe

You can see this bird is a 1cy by the blackish tips to its lesser coverts:

On the way back home I had a quick look at Hulda reservoir, which produced 20 Ferruginous Ducks, an early Black-necked Grebe, 1 Monty's Harrier and 3 White-winged Terns. In the nearby fields there were large numbers of Ortolans and Cretzschchshzhthmar's Buntings in mixed groups.

Cretzschmar's Bunting

Very large numbers of Turtle Doves are going through now:

Apart for that, the fields held the typical selection of Whinchats, Greater Short-toed Larks, Issy Wheatears and Tree Pipits.

Eagles & poisoning!

This morning I took my time to avoid rush-hour into Tel Aviv, so I went for a quick look near Hulda, not far away from my house. Many eagles were seen there yesterday, so I hoped to get some images of them before the big weather system that should hit us during the next few days (first thunderstorms at the moment!).

As I got to the specific field, I noticed several raptors feeding on the ground in different parts of the field. Immediately I saw 2 Greater Spotted Eagles, 1 Steppe Eagle, 1 Imperial Eagle, several buzzards, many kestrels, and a juv. Peregrine, all feeding intensively on skylarks.

As I drove around the field, I noticed a few skylarks that showed signs of poisining - they didn't fly properly, stumbled and fell when walking, dropped their heads etc.

I met the local farmer who told me that he used Alpha-Chlorlose - a nerve poison against skylarks causing damages to his chickpea field. He used the poison according to his permit. This is another example how the laws for use of poisons in Israel are twisted and out-of-date.

I called the local NPA warden; together we patrolled the field, chased raptors away and collected dead or dying skylarks. I had to leave before noon but the ranger stayed there to complete the job. Hopefully the rain that is pouring at the moment will wash the poison away. At the moment no raptors with secondary poisoning were found, and I hope it stays like that. Anyway we will patrol the area to search for poisoned raptors tomorrow.

The total number of eagles for the morning was 4 greater spots, 2 imps and 1 steppe, which is a good winter bird for this region. Two Hen harriers are worth mentioning too. A brief scan across the adjacent reservoir produced about 60 white-headed Ducks, 10 Ferruginous Ducks and 50 Black-necked Grebes.

This is one of the poisoned skylarks. I took it home and later it came back to life. I released it in the afternoon.

This is one of the Greater Spotted Eagles eating skylark-popcorn:

And this is how skylarks should look like:

Oxyuras and gulls

This morning I began with checking a couple of reservoirs not too far away from my house, despite the weather - cold, windy and rainy (in Israeli standards; I guess that in European standards this was a perfect day). I began with Latrun reservoir. The light was still OK at that time. I had 182 White-headed Ducks - which is a good number for this small reservoir. Also 10 Black-necked Grebes were present. This is part of the WHD group:

And a male agreed to approach a bit:

At Ayalon sewage farm the light disappeared and rain began. This female White-head wasn't shy enough. Even though after years of campaigning to prevent shooting in these reservoirs (led by SPNI and NPA), which are so important globally for this endangered species, the threat of poaching is still there. But it's better to have shy birds than dead birds. At Ayalon I had 145 WHD's, 8 Ferruginous Ducks and 5 Black-necked Grebes.

This Kestrel was pretty against the dark sky:

Then I continued to Ashdod for some gulling. I had about 1500 large gulls, out of them (among the adults) about 300 fuscus, 100 cachinnans, 80 heuglini, 50 barabensis (!), 6-7 intermedius, and 5 armenicus. Note that all gull images from today are very dark due to the bad light.

During the short time I had there, I saw 9 colour rings, at least two out of them new for Israel. Later Ehud Dovrat continued with the gulls and had at least 11 more rings! well done Ehud, it was a mega-productive days for the both of us.

This one is a tribute to the Copenhagen conference that began today:

This intermedius-type was ringed in N Norway in 2007, and seen today for the first time in Israel:

This barabensis had an exceptionally pale eye:

And this heuglini was impressive as always. I really like this form.