Decade summary #3 - Best of 2012

The countdown until the special annual summary continues. In this chapter, I will pay homage to the amazing year of 2012. The spring of 2012 will be remembered for years. In this spring, it suddenly felt like we're back in the 1980's again. Numbers of all migrants exploded, and I experienced extreme migration spectacles. On one special day, May 1st, I saw more migrants that I had ever seen before, and likely will never again experience such intensity of migration. I also photographed this flock of exhausted European Bee-eaters that became my most popular photo online.

In 2012 I visited Turkey for the first time, and enjoyed some fantastic birding, including this stonking Western Fish Owl:

2012 wasn't an exceptional year for rarities, yet it produced quality in the form of Basalt Wheatear (6th record), Dusky Warbler (5th) and Pied Bushchat (9th):

However, my personal highlight of the year was a rare resident that gave me a once-in-a-lifetime performance:

Arabian Warbler

Tiger, yawn

You may ask yourself why am I awake at 05:00 updating the blog. Our hotel., The Ranthambhore Bagh, is adjacent to a wedding venue. The f@%&king music is still playing now... Those Indians sure know how to party all night long.  I couldn't sleep all night. Thanks!

Anyway, yesterday was a steady day. The human brain is quite something because we had an amazing encounter with a tiger, but it still felt like a somewhat slower day. Again, we had an unrestricted full-day permit. If you ask me that's the only way to work in Ranthambhore, despite the costs. We failed to find a fresh tiger or anything else of interest. Arrowhead gave the same show as she had the previous day, offering again extreme close-up in bad light mainly. 

Yawn...

If I were a male Tiger I'm sure I'd fall in love with her. She's so beautiful, isn't she?

Nice views when she walked along the lake, in front of Jogi Mahal, the famous Ranthambhore landmark. But my big lens failed to capture the classic scene. Amir did better.

 We added some new birds, and again our daily tally was about 94 species. Some nice stuff.

Stork-billed Kingfisher

River Tern

And some for the birders:

Again, tons of Hume's Warblers and some Greenish Warblers too:

Greenish Warbler

Oriental Honey Buzzard - 2cy (female?)

 We had several White-capped (Chestnut-breasted) Buntings, including this male:

We found one day-roosting Indian Scops Owl, and ended the day nicely with this fine Brown Fish Owl:

Heading out soon for a final half-day safari drive, so wish us luck.

Turkish delight 2 - Brown Fish Owls @ Oymapinar Reservoir

The main motivation for this Turkey trip was Brown Fish Owl. Until the 1970's Brown Fish Owl bred in riverine forest in northern Israel, but they were shot till the last one in 1975 and became extinct. I started birding just a few years later, so this is quite a mythical bird for me to see. I saw plenty in SE Asia but to see it here in the WP, and so close to Israel, is very exciting.

We took a boat tour with Ozcan Kilic of Vigotours - he certainly did the job, the boat was comfortable and suitable for this trip. Level of guiding (info treasmitted by the guide) was rather minimal though. Ozcan picked us up from our hotel at Yesil Vadi early in the morning. We drove to Oymapinar Reservoir, and sailed a boat to Grand Canyon (I think it's grand and not green but not sure...). No California Condors were seen. There is another pair of owls that bred in Little Canyon but apparenly their chicks had already fledged and we went for the Grand Canyon family.

The owls were found exactly where they were supposed to be. We were all very thrilled to see them - dream bird. So powerful and so beautiful. We had both adults (female huge! Like a bloody Steller's Sea Eagle) and one juvenile. The juv was in full size and already flying but apparently still attached to its parents.

At first light they were still moving around quite a bit, including flights accross the gorge, but light was too bad for my camera. Some nice poses on an exposed rock:

Brown Fish Owl - adult female

Later on they all settled down to roost - one adult out of sight, the second on an exposed branch, and the juvenile inside a Nerium oleander bush.

Brown Fish Owl - adult male

Brown Fish Owl - juvenile

We stayed there for about half an hour. The light did not improve much and all images were taken in very difficult condition, hence the mediocre results.

There were lots of other birds seen and heard during the trip. There's a nice colony of Yellow-legged Gull on an island at the entrance to the canyon, with one Baltic Gull among them. On the gorge wall we saw and heard Western Rock and Krueper's Nuthatches, Rock Buntings, Crag Martins etc. Rony enriched the aquatic fauna by dropping his flash into the water.

Grand Canyon

We had a good time on the boat. We were joined by some British celebrities - Lee Evans, Garry Bagnell and Keith Vinicombe (the latter identified only retrospectively from photographs).

So with Brown Fish Owl in the bag our trip was already a great success, and from here it could only improve. And it improved indeed...