I am a migration junkie

It's this time of year here in Israel, that makes me face the truth: I am a migration junkie. No, it's not peak season for rarities. I don't travel to far flung corners of the country. But I feel very lucky on a daily basis. I can experience high-intensity migration near home, every morning. I am addicted to migration watching, and I must get my daily dose. Thankfully, it's holiday season here now, which makes my mornings a bit more flexible. However, this time of the morning that I need to stop neglecting my normal human obligations, tear myself apart from migration (temporarily), pack up my gear up and head back home is so difficult. Too often I am late being back for breakfast or for errands or for something else, apologising, but actually all I want is to head back out to the field and absorb more migration. More migration. More migration. Up in the sky, down in the bushes, along the muddy banks - migrants are everywhere and I just can't have enough. 

Every morning I am out before dawn, aiming to be 'on site' at the crack of dawn. That's the magic period, when migrants drop out of the sky after a long night of migration; vocal species making themselves apparent - pipits, wagtails, larks, buntings. Beautiful, small dark silhouettes emerging in the half-light, calling 'Tzip' or 'Chup' or 'Trrrr'. I sharpen my ears, try to identify every soft call. This is so cool.

Then I spend the next hour or two of 'standard' birding, checking for migrants in the vegetation, enjoying the awesome variety and numbers. Those migrants that don't call readily on active migration are now in full show. Red-backed Shrikes, Whinchats, Willow Warblers. Swarms of hirundines and bee-eaters swerve as they hawk for flying insects. Early rising harriers, sparrowhawks and falcons are after them.

Then, when the temperatures rise, raptor migration intensifies. These are peak days for Lesser Spotted Eagle and Levant Sparrowhawk; European Honey Buzzard and Black Kite pass through in good numbers too. Migration continues over my house all day long, but I can't spend full days watching the skies anymore. I did that for many years, when I worked for the annual autumn raptor migration count between mid August and mid October in the 2000's. Now I am a responsible adult (am I?), with adult responsibilities, but all I want is to bird and bird and bird, witness this exciting, fascinating, exhilarating miracle of migration. Year after year, season after season. Remind myself that despite all the horrible damage that we cause to our beautiful planet, nature can persist, if just given the chance.

Here are a few photos that aim to demonstrate some of the feelings I expressed above:

Western Yellow Wagtails on the move

European Turtle-Dove on its first migration. Migrate safe young hero

Red-backed Shrike looking very sexy

Gotta love a Whinchat

Early Morning European Honey-Buzzard

Late morning Oriental Honey-Buzzard

Early morning Montagu's Harrier

Part of a flock of 320 Levant Sparrowhawks

Young Lesser Spotted Eagle

The moon photobombed by Lesser Spotted Eagles

Booted Eagle is unique among other migrating raptors, by its habit to hunt during migration. Most other species fly over Israel without looking down. It is not unusual to watch a Booted Eagle migrating with other raptors (here with a Levant Sparrowhawk)

Suddenly it leaves the stream, and stoops down from high altitude at huge speed towards a flock of pigeons in a field below

Flying past the moon

A few days ago I had another adrenalin-packed experience. I was watching a Hobby flying idly over Hulda Reservoir

Suddenly it changed direction and increased speed - obviously it had spotted something in mid air

I stayed focused on the Hobby; only at home on the computer screen I noticed it was after a small passerine presumably on active migration. Unbelievable how the falcon located and locked on that tiny warbler.

This is a tight crop - I assume this incident happened at 70-80 m above ground. Here the Hobby closed in on the poor warbler:

The Hobby made a super-fast maneuver and tried to snatch the warbler - I think this is a Sedge Warbler. This happened so fast; I didn't see the warbler at all; I don't know whether the warbler managed to get away. I couldn't see the falcon flying away with anything, so I think the warbler survived. Wow.

Here are a few representative eBird checklists from recent days 10 minutes from home:

Hulda Reservoir this morning with Piki

Givat Brener on Thursday

Tal Shachar on Wednesday with another Yoav

Birding Tel Aviv

Yesterday was my birthday, and I kept my tradition of not seeing any good birds. Only birding I did was while my son was in a club I checked a nearby park where Monk Parakeets breed - first, stunning photos I take of this recent invasive colonist. If I stayed in the UK I'd have a fantastic day with Brown Shrike and Stejneger's Stonechat, but I'm here in Israel, doing Monk Parakeets.

This morning I left early and birded Hatzuk beach, at the northern edge of Tel Aviv. It's a rather large patch of scrub-covered coastal sand-dunes. At the moment it's still attractive as a migrant hotspot; sadly in the future it will all get built up. In the early morning nice numbers of pipits and wagtails headed south, and few finches, including one Siskin. Huge numbers of Spanish Sparrows were moving through:

And large numbers were on the ground too, here with a Palestine Sunbird:

Some quality came in the form of 3 Richard's Pipits and a Citrine Wagtail moving south. A surprise Namaqua Dove headed south too, though it seems that recently they have started to colonise the greater Tel Aviv region too.

The most prominent migrants on the ground were Stonechats - I estimated 110 during my walk this morning. They were everywhere! Fighting on every thistle, chasing each other - quite lovely.

Among them there were a few Sibe Stonechats - 3 males that were Caspian, and a rather rich-toned female. Tried to turn it into a Stejneger's, without success.

Caspian Stonechat

Female Siberian Stonechat of some sort

I tried hard also to turn one of the Red-backed Shrikes into a brown, no luck there either.

There was a steady trickle of Eurasian Sparrowhawks heading south, I counted 12.

A Peregrine and a young Hobby were knocking about over the area.

Eurasian Hobby, 1cy

All in all it was an enjoyable morning. No rarities, and finch numbers need to increase towards November, but it was good to see so many birds in an urban setting. My full eBird checklist is here. This is my walking route, as recorded by eBird app:

On the way back home I checked Ayalon sewage treatment plant, which was packed with Shoveler and Teal, 42 Fudge Ducks and 2 White-headed Ducks. eBird checklist here.

Hobby

This morning had some time to check the Ashdod ponds. There was an increase in sandpipers since my last visit: 10 Redshank, 13 Green, 4 Wood, 1 Marsh and 1 Common Sandpipers. This adult Hobby flew in and spooked everything. It was distant (across the pond - about 100 m away) so these are large crops.

PGP at Ashdod

This is going to be long - beware!

Yesterday Amir Ben Don and Ehud Dovrat found a Pacific Golden Plover at Yavne 4 ponds north of Ashdod. I had a couple of free hours in the morning, so gave it a try. The weather was OK - no rain and sunny, but very windy which made photography a bit shaky.

The ponds were shorebirdless, just a few Temminck's Stints. I had a quick look at the gull flock nearby. One of the first birds I saw was this colour-ringed Baltic Gull. I was very happy to see this bird as I had ringed and released it in September. It was rehabilitated at the NPA wildlife hospital after being found exhausted.




There were fewer Baltic Gulls compared to what Amir had yesterday. There were only 10 or so adult baltics. But nevertheless they are such beautiful birds, and I can never resist getting more images of them in good light:


Numbers of Caspian Gulls are starting to build up:

There were about 20 adult Siberian Gulls. Look at this impressive male:

Note the big mirror on P10:

After I had enough with the gulls, I drove down to the beach. I started to scan through the hundreds of roosting shorebirds on the beach, and quite quickly relocated yesterday's Pacific Golden Plover. At first I had crap distant views, but later the bird moved in quite close. I got decent images, though I didn't manage to get the wanted underwing shot. At one moment a late Hobby made all the shorebirds take off, but I missed the photo-opp. Oz Horine got a great flight shot - see here: http://www.israbirding.com/israelbirdsforum/forum_entry.php?id=1173.

I really enjoyed watching this elegant plover for a long time. I have seen quite a few in Israel, but it is always a cool bird to see. It was especially interesting to compare it to Israel's first American Golden Plover I saw last November at Ma'agan Michael. Note especially the short primary projection of this bird - not even three primaries exposed beyond the tertials.

It was nice to see so many shorebirds on the pretty beach and not in a stinking fishpond or sewage pond. There were about 10 Greater Sand Plovers, all more or less in full winter plumage already.

Among the commoner species were Ringed Plovers, Little Stints and Dunlin.

I dipped on the Cyprus Wheatear Amir had yesterday; it was really too windy for passerines. There were several Northern Wheatears though: