Spring catch-up

It's been a very strange spring for me. On the one hand, how can one enjoy the beauty and thrill of bird migration spectacles when all of *this* is going on in my country. On the other hand, what else can I do other than go out birding, enjoy the healing power of nature, appreciate every little bird hero that makes it despite all the troubles. As I have been doing for over five years now, I am out birding every day. During migration seasons this habit offers me even more thrill and excitement, to detect the seasonal changes in the sites I visit often, and enjoy impressive migrations. In recent weeks I have been all over, but often my motivation to photograph and to write is low. This damn war.

In any case, I am still trying to bird hard and see as many birds as possible, without doing a Big Year. This is quite enjoyable actually, and liberating, seeing news of rarities show up in far-flung corners of the country and not going for them! Still, I am doing OK, I think. Here are some of the birds I saw and the few photos I took:

Luckily, fieldwork and site visits take me to places with loads of good birds. While monitoring our restoration site in Maagan Michael I was dazzled by the variation in Western Yellow Wagtails - in this composite are (I think) dombrowskii, superciliaris, feldegg, thunbergi, flava and a hybrid Citrine X Yellow, all in one small flock.

superciliaris

Striated Heron in Tel Aviv

A work visit to Eilat Birding center rewarded me with this gorgeous, deadly Painted Saw-scaled Viper:

Our restoration sites in Kfar Ruppin are exploding with birds now, so much quality too:

When a flock of tired White Storks drops out of the sky after a day of migration and rests on a wetland you've recently restored, you guess you did something right pic.twitter.com/LMfaiiEGg4

— Yoav Perlman (@yoavperlman) April 20, 2024

Clamorous Reed Warbler

Not only birds enjoy our restoration project - also invertebrates. Here are Black Percher and Ivory Featherlegs.

In May, when much of the country clears out of migrant passerines, the relatively cool and lush Jerusalem Mts. still host large numbers of migrants. Mulberry trees are especially attractive to Sylvias, also favoured by Golden Orioles. This photo was taken out of my friend Rami's window:

The Jerusalem Bird Observatory is at its best in early May, with huge numbers of common migrants using the habitat to refuel. Among the common warblers also good numbers of Olive-tree and Barred are seen; I have seen also River, Marsh, Icterine and Upcher's there in recent dats. Also plenty of European Nightjars this year.

One of the Eurasian Sparrowhawks that visit the JBO regularly

Break the silence

Suddenly I noticed that it's been a month since I last posted here. Not that I haven't been birding, I certainly have. I felt like there weren't any blog-worthy highlights to report. I don't have very exciting stuff to share here, only some OK-minus photos from yesterday. I had work at Ma'ayan Zvi, just north of Ma'agan Michael. We are joining a large restoration project there, so I wanted to get to know better some spots . It was a great morning with enjoyable activity of migrants, winter visitors and resident birds. Breeding season is upon us! Clamorous Reed Warblers were very vocal, some males singing from tops of reeds:

Moustached Warbler is a winter visitor and migrant, not scarce but not common either. It is a very rare and sporadic breeder too. I had a singing male, that behaved very territorial. I will follow up to check if breeding takes place there.

In this sound recording a Clamorous Reed Warbler is audible in the background:

Reed Bunting is another scarce winter visitor, soon leaving Israel. At one spot I had a small group of six, very shy and mobile. The flock included a stonking male, even prettier than the one I managed to photograph:

All in all I had 92 species in a short session, including several new-for-year (no, I'm not doing another Big Year). eBird checklist here.

After birding I went to marvel at some wild flowers nearby, ahead of a meeting conveniently timed to start at 11:30... March is the wonderfulest month of the year, I must make the most out of it. 

My Eilat fix

In most springs I spend a considerable amount of time in Eilat, around COTF - Eilat Bird festival, and other opportunities to bird in this incredible migration hotspot. This year, as soon as COVID-19 pandemic broke, COTF and festival were cancelled, and Eilat was sealed off completely to outsiders. Only on Thursday lockdown was lifted, and I took the opportunity to spend some time there with Jonathan. In the morning we actually did a ringing session at Ashalim Reservoir, in the southern dead Sea.

This site experienced a severe contamination event a couple of years ago. We're participating in a research that checks the presence of pollutants in feather of local birds. Ringing was somewhat slow, but this stunning male Collared Flycatcher certainly brightened our morning!

After we were done we headed south towards Eilat. We were left heartbroken after finding this beautiful young female Striped Hyena roadkilled. So sad.

A quick stop at Yotvata produced many Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters:

Down at Eilat, we birded the traditional sites - it was so good to be back. Passerine migration was a bit slow, bar Blackcaps that were everywhere. However, KM20 saltpans were exploding with shorebirds (eBird checklist here). There were lots of good species there too, including incredible numbers of Broad-billed Sands, Red-necked Phalaropes, and the star was a Terek Sandpiper found by Shachar:

Jonathan and I did a live birding session for Swarvoski Optik. We had found the perfect spot, tons of close shorebirds, and just as we started the live session a Peregrine decided to land exactly there and flushed everything - frustrating! Still it was good fun.

Namaqua Doves - just for fun

In the late afternoon there was a terrific descent of raptors to roost down in the valley, mainly on Aqaba side. Thousands and thousands of Euro Honey-Buzzards and Levants drifted low, in golden evening light - fantastic. One of the local Oriental Honeys was seen too. At dusk, seven Lichtenstein's Sandgrouse flew over IBRCE to drink in Aqaba, excellent end to the looooong day.

Next morning (Friday) we started off at IBRCE, where Levants were darting between the trees, leaving the small passerines startled.

Quite many Honey Buzzards had roosted in the park too.

A surprising dark morph Clamorous Reed Warbler showed very well at Lake Anita:

Rufous-tailed Scrub-Robin is such a cool bird

Back at KM20, the terek was still around, but despite trying really hard, we failed to pull some real quality out of the hundreds of Little Stints. Here are seven (out of 26) Broad-billed Sands, with some friends:

Again, excellent raptor migration developed overhead.

The raptors drifted north, and we followed them, leaving back home too early due to domestic commitments. Till next time...

And meanwhile in the mud...

Nice ringing at Ashdod this morning - late summer / early autumn means most summer visitors departed and few migrants. But despite the high water level, stinking mud, mosquitoes, sauna-like weather etc. it was an OK morning. Nice selection of resident species, plus few typically early migrants - two Kingfishers, Savi's Warbler and Great Reed Warbler.

Savi's Warbler

Great Reed (left) and Clamorous Reed (right) Warblers

Thanks to my helpers Arad, Lior, Liad, Miriam and Oren.

First, almost

Yesterday I did some work on Yellow-legged Gulls with Amir at the Zoological Gardens of the Tel Aviv University. After the gull stuff we went to have a quick look at the skin collection there. I had a very quick browse over some of the mounted skins, and was amazed to find this vittata Pied Wheatear - it's never been recorded in Israel yet! We were excited for a few minutes but then were disappointed to hear from Daniel, the collection manager, that this bird was taken in Ethiopia...  Forgive amir - the image was taken with his iPhone. Image courtesy of the Zoological Museum, Tel Aviv University.

Later on in the evening I met up with Santtu and his team from Finland at Neot Hakikar. We had a nice afternoon's birding with Clamorous Reed Warbler, Little Crake, Penduline Tit and lots of migrants around. After dusk we had cracking views of four Nubian Nightjars. The Finns were happy of course.