East Hills

Nice day on East Hills today - another one of those sites I had heard so much about. Low tide was at midday so we were forced to a late start, which was a good excuse for us lazy and mildly hung-over birders not to make an early start. The weather was brilliant, too brilliant in fact - pretty strong easterly but sunny and warm, but no rain. We parked at Warham Green and had a look around - some migrants there, including 2 Pied Flys, Spotted Fly, Redstart and I also heard a Yellow-browed Warbler. Two Spoonbills were on the saltmarsh. We headed off towards East Hills and the walk was rather quiet, a few Wheatears and a Whinchat, and some Greenshanks in the creeks. East Hills themselves felt rather quiet, but eventually we picked up some migrants in OK numbers. Some of my UK friends called it a fall but it certainly didn't feel like one, birds were quite few and far between. Total migrant numbers were 10-12 Pied Flys, 20 Wheatear, 5 Redstart, 2 Spotted Flys, 1 Reed Warbler (sadly just an out-of-place Reed Warbler), which is alright I guess but not more than that. One Hobby flew over and on the way back I flushed two Short-eared Owls - they flew off with the wind directly into the sun, and all I managed was some distant record shots, but they were the highlight of the day.

Pied Flycatcher

Wheatear

 Common Redstart

Short-eared Owl

Many thanks to Keith, Reg and Dougal for the great company.

Nitzanim birding

Today I checked Nitzanim coastal reserve (south of Ashdod) together with Jonathan Meyrav. It was hot and sunny again, and we made a late start, so probably missed many sibes by the time we got there. While waiting for Jonathan I watched this White Stork preening. This bird was ringed by Yosef Kiat in September.

When we reached Nitzanim, we drove past an open field packed with pipits, wagtails and skylarks. There was one Richard's Pipit that got us alerted as it was a rather small and delicate individual, until we heard its 'chirp!' flight call. It was very shy and didn't allow even a record shot. The main pipit was Red-throated Pipit - about 100 birds.

Red-throated Pipit (adult)

Red-throated Pipit (1cy)

We birded the coastal sand dunes and scrub. Didn't see too much. There were hundreds of Chiffchaffs - an impressive wave is passing through Israel these days, but no wingbars at all... Other than that several Northern Wheatears and two Desert Wheatears - quite a few of this scarce migrant were seen along the Med coast during the last week or two.

Desert Wheatear

In a coastal lagoon there were many plovers - 100 Ringed Plovers, 50 Kentish Plovers, 2 Greater Sand Plovers and a single Sanderling.

Kentish Plovers

Greater Sand Plover (1cy)

Ringed Plover

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:

Sde Boker

This morning (6/10/09) I had a few meetings at Sde Boker, so I decided to make an early start and spent the early morning birding at the Ben Gurion campus, Sde Boker.
Driving south from my house, I hit some serious weather - quite exceptional at this time of the year. This weather must have knocked down loads of birds in the center of the country, but the south was rather quiet.

The first bird I saw as I walked into the park was a Red-breasted Flycatcher, chased by a Redstart. I lost touch with the bird for a while, but eventually refound it in a distant part of the park. Even though it is not a true rarity in Israel, this is still one of my favorite birds. I was surprised though to find only one - I was hoping for more. Yesterday Barak Granit had seven at Yeroham :-( Checked this bird very hard but no, it wasn't a Taiga...

Red-breasted Flycatcher

In the park, birds were rather few. However there were some nice birds around. This Wryneck was very obliging, feeding on ants intensively. I crawled on the wet lawn on my belly and got quite good shots:

There were quite many Redstarts and Spotted Flys between the trees. Also Willow Warblers and Blackcaps were rather common in the canopies. Some Tree Pipits were flying around.

Redstart

This exhausted Sedge Warbler jumped around in an olive tree.

Many Nubian Ibex were feeding in the park, mainly juveniles and females. These funny animals are so tame, and it was nice to watch the interaction between the animals, including males having some sexual adventures with each other... However they were quite worried each time I got my 'big-daddy' camera out of the bag and fled for two meters.

Later I drove through the irrigated fields. There were some Red-throated Pipits and Short-toed Larks feeding. I saw one distant buzzing Oriental Skylark but didn't get any decent views of it.

Northern Wheatear