Sodom and Gomorrah

This morning I went with Piki to Ma'agan Michael. Over the last few days an accumulation of some quality shorebirds on the beach developed there, which required my attention. I don't know why, but there are no empty fishponds this year. As a result, all shorebirds are concentrated on the few beach lagoons. It's Jewish New Year holiday now, which means that the always busy beach is extra busy now. When we arrived early, there were already tens of people, dogs, cyclists, powered parachutes, boats - complete mayhem. Unfortunately, also a few photographers and birders were a bit too assertive approaching the shorebirds. And some beach-goers seemed to enjoy deliberately flushing the birds. The poor birds were up in the air constantly, first fleeing from lagoon to lagoon, then they gave up on foraging and went to rest on offshore rocks. Until they were flushed from there by fishermen too.

Typical scenes on the beach today - image courtesy of Piki Ish Shalom

It was a real pity because that fair concentration of shorebirds contained good species (locally): 3 Bar-tailed Godwits, Red Knot, Broad-billed Sandpiper, 6 Citrine Wagtails and a good potential to host a vagrant among the hundreds of calidrids and plovers. But viewing them was difficult because all birds took off repeatedly, offering mainly flight views.

Bar-tailed Godwits

Red Knot, Dunlin, Ringed Plover and Little Stints

Citrine Wagtail

Just as we decided to leave this hopeless scene, I spotted at a distance a young gull that looked promising for Audouin's Gull. Just too distant. Frustratingly, when we approached but it was still too far away, it disappeared before the ID was clinched. Hope it reappears.

It is a shame that this globally important bird area suffers from such disturbance. Personally, I can't roll my eyes and say passively 'something needs to be done'. That's my job; I need to do that something myself, with my colleagues. Fingers crossed some ideas there will work out in the future. At the moment, the birds and birders need to wait until the Jewish festival season is over, for some relief on the beach.

eBird checklist here. Thanks to Piki for the company.

Not so red knot

This morning I birded with Barak in Ma'agan Michael - my first visit this autumn. It was alright, though we couldn't find a drained fishponds, so shorebird numbers and diversity were relatively low. Early on Barak spotted this wacky Armenian Gull flying around - at first when we saw it from a distance our hearts skipped a beat, until we figured out it's not a glauc.

On the beach there were some fine shorebirds, typical of the season. This 1cy Red Knot has been there for a few days now -  love this plumage though it has no red colour. Red Knot is quite rare in Israel (few birds a annually), typically showing up at MM in late August and early September.

Ma'agan Michael beach suffers from ongoing disturbance of joggers and walkers. This Red Knot was spooked by a passing jogger:

As was a huge-billed (male?) orientalis Eurasian Curlew:

Curlew Sandpiper - so pretty in 1cy plumage

With three adult Little Stints

Greater Sand-plover on the rocks, typically early moult into winter plumage

Adult Ruddy Turnstone

White-winged Tern demonstrating why it's called that way

Passerine numbers were actually rather low, with few shrikes and some Willow Warblers. Several Citrine Wagtails and some Penduline Tits added quality. As did this Lesser Grey Shrike.

Despite being a slow morning for both shorebirds and passerines, eventually we ended up with 87 species. Thanks to Barak and Bamba for the company. Full eBird checklist here.

Swintail or Pinhoe's?

On Thursday October 10th Eyal Shochat and Yaron Charka found a 'Pin-tailed' Snipe and a Black-throated Loon at Ma'agan Michael - what a fantastic day they had! Of course the snipe is more interesting in a WP context; however both birds are mega-rare in Israel. The diver is the earliest ever in Israel - they are typically recorded in December.

I was not able to go on Friday or Saturday, but today I had the chance to catch up with these birds. Arrived at MM at first light. Took me some time until I got on the snipe - quite a skulker. It behaves more like a crake than a snipe - feeds in the reeds, occasionally forages out in the open and runs back into the reeds when it feels danger.

Separating it from a Common Snipe is quite easy - note the chunky, full-bodied structure (almost like a small Woodcock or Great Snipe), rounded head, 'open' head pattern (very thin loral stripe), heavily barred underparts, and most important - the pattern of mantle, scapulars and tertials: faint central mantle stripes, with no lateral mantle stripes. Scaps have a symetric anchor pattern, compared to common that has much more white or buff on the outer webs. This individual has a longish tail, on the long end of the spectrum for pin-tailed. Normally they have a very stubby tail, hardly protruding beyond the tertial tips.

Separating Pin-tailed Snipe from Swinhoe's Snipe is practically impossible in the field (i.e. the excellent article by Leader and Carey (2003) British Birds 96: 178-198). This bird is rather large and heavy, but this means nothing apparently. The bird was silent. Several guys tried to get a shot of the open tail when it was preening but impossible to see the shape of theunique outer tail feathers. There are three positive records of Pin-tailed Snipe in Israel - all three ringed - the first in 1984 by Hadoram et al. at Eilat, the second was found by Barak Granit and Rami Lindroos in 1998 at Kfar Ruppin and I ringed it a couple of days later, and the last one was ringed by Yosef Kiat in 2011 in Tsor'a. Apart for these records, another 6-7 birds were seen in the field (mainly in the Bet Shean Valley) but swinhoe's could not be safely excluded, though by default I'd guess they were all pintails. Yosef will try to catch this bird tomorrow night - hopefully it sticks around till then.

The tiny, reedy pond the snipe was in was just superb. I had there 3 Spotted Crakes, 5 Water Rails, 8 Citrine Wagtails, Moustached and Savi's Warblers and tons of other birds (Sedge Warblers, Bluethroats etc.). A juvenile Eurasian Sparrowhawk missed a taste of exotic Asia and took a Common Snipe that was feeding just few meters away from the pintailed...

Spotted Crake

Citrine Wagtail

Bluethroat

I stayed with the snipe for some time but it was feeding in the reeds most of the time so left in alone and went to have a look at the loon. Loons are rare in Israel - Black-throated being the most recorded species with about 15 records. This young bird was very very tame - pretty exhausted I suppose. It was feeding well in a small fishpond - what an amazing and bizzare bird!

Black-throated Loon - 1cy

FF

Before leaving had a quick look at one drained fishponds that is packed full with shorebirds. Had four Knots and two Bar-tailed Godwits (both species are good birds in Israel; these individuals have been around for a couple of weeks now).

Red Knot 1cy

Playing in the mud

Last night I joined the annual shorebird ringing session at Ma'agan Michael. I arrived there yesterday morning with Yosef and we did some scouting around. We found no proper fishponds with the ideal conditions, but still we saw some decent concentrations of shorebirds on the coastal lagoons and in one dug-up pond, in which I waded most of the night. We weren't very optimistic but ended up with quite a good catch - almost 100 shorebirds and a few other bits and bobs. Not as good as last year but still more than I expected based on our scouting results. 

Most birds caught were Little Stint and Dunlin, but apart from them quite a good variety. Hightlight was a 1cy Red Knot caught just before dawn - one of the very few ever ringed in Israel. Good bird.

Red Knot - 1cy

Broad-billed Sands are always nice birds to handle -we ringed three:

Broad-billed Sandpiper - 1cy

Marsh Sandpiper

Kentish Plover

Temmick's Stint

Yosef started a project that involves colour-ringing Ringed Plovers and Ruff. So keep your eyes open for them:

Ringed Plover 

Ruff

One of the non-shorebirds trapped late in the evening and early in the morning - mainly Willow Warblers and Common Kingfishers:

Quail

Many thanks to the co-organizers and leaders - Yosef, Francis, Gidon, Avishai and to the large team that helped us make it such a successfull session.

Good birds for the New Year

Yesterday I was out for the first time after too long. I went ringing at my site in Ashdod with Re'a and Arad. It was a typical and good autumn morning. While setting the nets up we had Nightjar and Long-eared Owl flying around us. Early in the morning the air was filled with migration sounds: Tree Pipits ending a night of flight; Wrynecks giving their kestrel-like calls; shrikes croaking from the reed-tops. We had a good catch with lots of Willow Warblers and a mix of other acros. Later on we started catching a surprising number of sylvias, and ended up with six species - Lesser and Common Whitethroats,  Blackcap, Sardinian, Garden and (bird of the day) - Rueppel's. It was a rather advanced 1cy male. In spring they're rather common, but in autumn they're much scarcer. This is exactly the correct time for them. I catch one at Ashdod almost every year.

Rueppel's Warbler - 1cy male

Common Whitethroat - 2cy

It was still very hot se we closed early and went for a quick look at the Ashdod ponds. We were surprised by the extraordinary number of shorebirds and gulls, perhaps the largest numbers I have ever seen at this small site. We had about 800 shorebirds - mainly Little Stints and ringed Plovers. We started scanning and Re'a and myself got onto a Red Knot exactly together and shouted it out simultaneously. Common on both sides of the Atlantic, Red Knot is a good rarity in Israel and this is the first record for Ashdod. But apart for the knot we found nothing out of the ordinary. Good numbers of Marsh Sands and Temminck's Stints were nice. One Citrine Wagtail among the many yellows. Nice adult Lesser Grey Shrike. Good birding.

Red Knot - 1cy

I started working through the 200 gulls to look for rings but had only one bird with aluminium ring only. About 150 gulls were baltics (lots of juvs among them) with few armenian, yellow-legged and about 10 siberians. Note the small and extremely worn 2cy Armenian Gull in the front left of this image:

Baltic, Siberian and Armenian Gulls

Knot a bad day

What a lousy pun...
Anyway, spent the morning with Jon Olav Larsen, a Norwegian birder and reporter. We left Tel Aviv early and made our way directly to the Ma'agan Michael beach. Quite many birds on the beach, with the best bird being this 1cy Red Knot. This bird has been present since Friday at least. It was showing pretty well.

We met Liri on the beach and he joined us for the rest of the morning. Other quality species on the beach were one Oystercrapper, 1 Eurasian Curlew, and 1 Gull-billed Tern. There were good numbers of plovers roosting on the beach, including 13 Grey Plovers and about 40 Greater Sandplovers.

Greater Sandplover

About 30 Sanderlings were present, most were juveniles but some adults haven't completed their moult yet:

We had a nice take-off of about 1000 White Pelicans:

Pied Kingfishers are always photogenic:

Many Marsh Harriers kept spooking all the birds:

At one point during the morning I expressed my will to see an Eleonora's Falcon, and indeed 10 seconds later Liri spotted a falcon flying over the sea! It approached us while chasing after passerines migrating over the sea, and we identified it as a dark-morph Eleonora's! Cool bird!

Other good birds this morning included 7-8 Citrine Wagtails, 1 Spotted Redshank and 1 Eurasian Cuckoo.