401

Yesterday I combined a family visit in Jerusalem with another step up in my Big Year, involving the Black-throated Thrush that had been found the previous day by Yakov Salaviz (when I couldn't go) on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. Mt. Herzl was one of my childhood stomping grounds, where I learned birding. The place has changed much since the 1980's, there are fewer birds overall and the habitat is not that good as it used to. Yet, on a cold and bright winter morning like yesterday the atmosphere there was almost European, complete with multiple Dunnocks, singing Wren etc. (check the eBird checklist here), and birding was enjoyable.

A number of us assembled in the early morning, at first not finding the thrush, then it was spotted. I headed over to where the others were watching it when it shot off, towards me. I fired off a few random shots and amazingly, my camera got several in focus, rather OK I think. Boom, lovely. 401.

It disappeared, then spotted again and moved around. It took us a while to figure out its routine - every 20-30 minutes it returned to a small olive grove, dropped down to the ground, fed on an olive or two and flew off somewhere. 

The views of it feeding on the ground were great, the photos - well, not so great. The excuses: A bit too distant, bad light conditions under the trees, and un-aesthetic background. Guess I can't complain though - my best views in Israel of this rarity (this is my 3rd in Israel - previously in Feb 2020 and Jan 2011, both gave only brief views). I watched it do its thing several times until I had to leave. 

Drop to the ground

Look right

Look left

Grab that olive

This is almost the end of my Big Year marathon. Will I add another species or two? I have an option for a bit of travelling this week, so fingers crossed. Stay tuned!

Wild thrush chase

On January 14th, Tzoor Magen found a lovely male Black-throated Thrush near his home in Tzur Hadassa:



I have seen only one Black-throated Thrush in Israel before, in January 2011:

Therefore, I was keen to see this beauty, so I headed there next morning, zilch. Later on that day, of course, it was refound. I returned a second time, the bird was refound while I was a kilometer away, I missed it.
The bird continues to show, some even got great pics of it. My motivation only increases. Why?
Last week I returned with Jonathan. Finally, we had brief views, twice, in flight; enough for a year-tick, but no photos. Still hungry.

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A post shared by Yoav Perlman (@yoavperlman) on Feb 7, 2020 at 4:45am PST

Yesterday I went back with an old friend, Uri. Again, the briefest of views, no chance for a photo. It is a great area to bird in the winter - lots of finches, thrushes, warblers - pretty birdy up there. Makes missing the thrush, or at least not photographing it, a bit easier. And the valley is very beautiful now, wildflowers and all.
Will I try again? Most probably.

Black-throated Thrush in the Upper Galilee

This morning I was finally able to twitch the Black-throated Thrush that had been found by Rei Segali and Sachi Luria on Wednesday (well done guys!). Made an early start and we got to the orchards of Kerem Ben Zimra in the Upper Galilee when first light was supposed to be, but the weather was so bad - cold, wet and windy. Luckily the weather improved during the morning and was actually not too bad.
The potential habitat for the thrush is huge, and we walked around quite a bit until we got the first glimpse of the bird. He was very mobile and jumpy; during the whole morning we had only four very brief views. Luckily I was in the right place when he showed himself for 20 full seconds! Just enough for me to get four frames. Two identical shots of him perched at about 50 m away. I pushed the ISO up to 1600, and thanks to Canon engineers noise is really bad; hope to edit the images better tomorrow and I will replace them.

Immediately he took off and I got these two lucky flight shots:

This is the first decent bird I see in 2011, and an Israeli tick for me! There has not been a good record of it since 1997, it's about the 8th for Israel if I'm not mistaken.

It's a fantastic region seldom birded. Compared to the rest of the country, this region has tons of winter birds this year. We had several Redwings, 1 Mistle Thrush, 1 Fieldfare, five Yellowhammers, several Dunnocks, many Bramblings and lots of other stuff.

Waiting for the miracle to come:

As I've said before, Israeli birders are very cool!

Rony Livne