More Eilat birds and butterflies

 The rest of the week in Eilat was enjoyable. I did some scuba diving with my son, and continued to visit North Beach twice a day, dawn and dusk. I must admit that I had expectations for some extra rarities - with such effort (8 sessions in five days) I was hoping for a new rarity to show up (Crab Plover?), but nothing exciting happened. Still, I was pleased with the great action, especially of terns. The Great Crested Tern continued to show well as it flew back and forth across the bay, very close sometimes:

Bridled, Lesser Crested and White-cheeked Terns continued as well. Also the/an Arctic tern flew across a couple of time - still I haven't managed to photograph this species in Israel!

Lesser Crested Tern

White-cheeked Terns

The regular White-eyed Gulls did their thing:

Two Western Reef-Egrets (and three littles) in the adjacent canal:

At 45 degrees daily it's hard to think about butterflies in Eilat, but even in the harshest midday conditions Eilat has some on offer. One day I paid a quick visit to a concentration of a butterfly I haven't had the chance to photograph before - Arabian Sapphire. It's a wonderful little 'blue', mouse-white with two splashes of colour at the rear end. I really enjoyed them, nectaring on flowering acacia and baccatus:

Also Desert Bath White enjoyed the acacia

En route bumped into a lovely herd of Onager while driving through Hameishar, in beautiful golden light:

bergii

I am spending a few days in Eilat now. My elder son is taking an Open Water Diver course. I am escorting him, and between marine activities and work I manage to get some birding done. Main focus in on North Beach, that is in good form - in fact best I have seen it in many years. There's lots of seabird activity, especially in the morning. Biggest star is a Great Crested Tern, it's been here for a few days now. It's a big rarity in Israel, not even annual; a welcome year tick for me, and also a photo tick. As they always appear in Israel, it's a worn non-adult in non-breeding plumage. BTW it most probably belongs to ssp. velox that breeds in the Indian Ocean north into the Red Sea.

This morning when I arrived at dawn, I found Avi already there, and the bird was there too. It was perched near the Jordanian border, at a spot without good access, so views were a bit distant.

Every now and then, it flew out west across the bay, at some distance, for fishing. Then it headed back east to its perch.

It normally U-turned with the city and the mountains as a background - I find these photos more pleasing aesthetically, despite the bird being farther away:

Here it demonstrates why some people still call it Swift Tern - it has such long wings and is extremely aerobatic:

Other cool terns are Bridled, Lesser Crested and quite many White-cheeked.

The famous underwater observatory in the background:

Cory's Shearwaters are present in exceptional numbers. Others reported up to 35 in previous days, I saw max. 18. Still very cool.

eBird checklist from this morning here.

I am here for a few more days - stay posted!

Birds and wildlife of Cape Town

Apart for being one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Cape Town hosts great wildlife. In my previous posts I shared my experiences at sea and in the Boulders penguin colony. In this post I will clear up the rest of the stuff we saw in and around Cape Town. I display here some of the birds I saw and photographed - mostly common stuff but all African birds are delicious IMO.
In my first afternoon we went for a nice walk on the beach at the stunning Hout Bay. Not too many birds but the view there is breathtaking.

Great Crested (Swift) Tern

Sandwich Terns only look somewhat uninspiring, but they are bad-ass migrants!

Cape Fur Seal behaving like a good boy

Hout Bay

In my first morning I woke up early and went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, before the rest of my family got out of bed. It was quite a productive hour. And, again, very beautiful. Despite the drought, the gardens looked good.

Swee Waxbill - Kirstenbosch specialty

Cape Sugarbird - what a bird

Hadada Ibis - common as dirt but super charismatic, and pretty in the golden morning sun

Brimstone Canary

Record shot of the scarcer Forest Canary

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Another early morning my brother and I went with Trevor to Strandfontein WTP, a regional hotspot for birding. It was a superb morning with 90 species, lots of individuals and some cool stuff.

Some of the Hottentot Teal we had among the many Red-billed Teals

Hundreds of Cape Shovelers

Spur-winged Geese

 Black-headed Heron

Fewer Lesser Flamingos among the many greaters.

Three-banded Plovers - check that stunning red eyering

 Fun exercise to search for Grey-hooded Gulls among the many Hartlaub's 

Note the diagnostic dark underwing of the Grey-hooded compared to Hartlaub's

Black-winged Kite 

The impressive White-necked Raven

White-throated Swallow

The stunningly beautiful and distinctive female Cape Weaver

A visit to Cape Point was very powerful, because of the wild wind that day. As a result we saw few birds , but still enjoyed it very much. Cape Buntings are stupidly tame there:

I didn't succeed to photograph the parents of this fresh juv familiar Chat

We failed to find the Cape Mountain Zebras there, but saw some impressive Eland at a distance. The Chacma Baboons certainly found us.

Black-girdled Lizard - mini dragon

Cape Point