Kfar Ruppin

Today was one of those incredible mornings, with the best experience Kfar Ruppin could offer. I started early at the fishponds, had just under two hours to bird. The fishponds were packed with birds; the numbers, diversity and quality were almost overwhelming. There were so many birds (eBird checklist here). There's this one large reservoir, half-empty, that held a fantastic selection of birds, including finding seven Ruddy Shelducks and three Siberian Buff-bellied Pipits (eBird is great but their name, American Pipit (japonicus) sucks), Isabelline Shrike, several Caspian Stonechats.

The ruddies (ducks? geese?) were spooked by an explosion nearby and headed off strongly, to the disappointment of some local birders who were keen to see them. I hope they landed nearby. They provided nice flight views, not the greatest flight shot but gives a taste of the surroundings - alfalfa field with overhanging Black Kites, date plantations.

Reed Bunting is pretty scarce and shy in Israel, so it was nice to get this relatively showy bird, albeit sat on a wire:

Later on at Amud Reservoir, our restoration pilot project, things are looking very good - the reservoir is full of birds (eBird checklist here) and the habitat is great. Photo from this morning by Jay Shofet:

While we were talking about the project to our guests, this monster Bonelli's Eagle flew towards us. I ran to the car to grab my camera and got a nice flyby sequence.

Million dollar question

I have not posted here for a while, so today's birding has to qualify for a blogpost. In the morning I participated in a meeting regarding management and monitoring of Common and Little Terns breeding in Atlit Saltpans. Luckily, the meeting was just late enough to allow for some good birding beforehand. It was rather productive, with some fine waterfowl, shorebirds, Avocets, Spoonbills, Flamingoes. I thoroughly enjoyed birding there - light was good, birds were tame, quite alright (eBird checklist here).

Could have been a decent shot had I not clipped the wingtip of the slender-bill

Canthaxantin overload

After the meeting, en route to the next meeting (one million dollar question: is birding the time between meetings, or is work the time between birding?), I swung by Hama'apil Fishponds. Haven't visited that site for some years, and was pleased to discover how good was the habitat there, with muddy and well-vegetated ponds. Indeed, birds were plentiful - Ruddy Shelduck, Sibe Stonechat (presumably armenicus), Citrine Wagtails, lots of raptors and many more (eBird checklist here). I strongly recommend birding this site - easy access, central location that offers quality birding. 

Ruddy Shelduck and friends

Distant Sibe Stonechat

What. A. Bird.

Existential thoughts on birding in rubbish dumps

After two brilliant days, birding on our last day in Kaziranga (21 Feb) was hampered by the torrential rain that had started the previous afternoon. We left late in the morning after the rain had paused. We headed over to Diring Tea Estate, the main haunt for Blue-naped Pitta and a few more 'hill' species. We were hoping for good activity after the rain, but in fact it was pretty slow and birds didn't play ball - quite many species were 'heard-only'. Check our eBird checklist here. We heard one pitta right at the start of the trail, but couldn't locate it. No other birds were vocal in the degraded forest. Same for Oriental Scops Owl - three singing birds but we couldn't find any of them. We did add some species but nothing out of the ordinary. And it was nice to bird on foot after sitting in a jeep for so long.

Diring Tea Estate

Nest stop was Kaziranga Beel, a small wetland outside the reserve. Due to the heavy rain access to the wetland itself was flooded, and we didn't see too much there either. At least I could get down to ground level to photograph the small goose flock, in bad light. Good hirundine activity is evident by the photobombing birds.

Ruddy Shelducks and Bar-headed Geese (and Barn Swallow)

Bar-headed Geese are very pretty, aren't they? (and Sand Martin)

We had a couple of Bengal Bushlarks that were new to the trip:

A pair of Oriental Pied Hornbills entertained us by the main road:

In the afternoon we returned to the eastern range of Kaziranga NP. It was somewhat slower than previous days, and we really did not add too much. Two-barred Warbler and Black-throated Thrush were new trip birds. This White-fronted Goose was a good local record:

Indian Pond Heron on a mobile rock

On Feb 22 I started the long journey back home. Before flying out of Guwahati I had time to check the rubbish dump that holds the world's largest concentration of the Globally Endangered Greater Adjutant, the Asian Marabou counterpart. We had scoped them on the rubbish dump from a huge distance after landing in Guwahati a few days earlier, but I was hoping for better views. So I asked my driver to make a quick detour towards the rubbish dump. I thought I'd get views from outside the dump, but suddenly I found myself in the epicentre of disgust and misery. We were surrounded by hundreds of people rummaging through the rubbish, including young children. 

 

 

And I was there to watch and photograph birds. Globally Endangered birds. I have birded in many rubbish dumps and sewage ponds before, but this was something else. My brain was swinging between operation as a wildlife photographer, and feelings of a distressed western tourist just wanting to get away from these horrible scenes. In India one cannot escape from extreme poverty, but this type of extreme poverty is normally witnessed out of a passing train window. I was not expecting a close encounter with those miserable people. In the back of my brain I knew they exist, but my western brain normally avoids thinking about them. In this case, I was walking between those miserable people, carrying optics that cost much more than these people will ever earn, trying not to get my clothes dirty before boarding a flight. I felt so disgusting, and even much more now while I sit in front of my desk in the UK. 

I felt a sense of 'duty' to document the adjutants when I was there, that's why I went there, no? So I fired off some shots in bad light conditions, and asked the driver to get me the hell out of there.

This is the general scenery where the adjutants hang around:

I found it horrible to see people, cows and birds 'working' together on the same pile of rubbish:

Here are my photo objects. Not many birds can be described as ugly. In this particular setting, to my eyes these Greater Adjutants are genuinely ugly.

Huge

With Black-eared Kites - many on the rubbish too

After this distressing and surreal experience, I wanted to cleanse my brain a bit, so returned to Deepor Beel for an hour of quieter birding. Again it was good with large numbers of waterfowl, but nothing too exciting there. 

Lesser Whistling-Ducks

Bronze-winged Jacana

The last new trip bird - my only Brown-headed Gull of the trip:

Two days too late

I arrived for a short family visit in Israel yesterday afternoon. This morning, completely knackered after yesterday exhausting day of travel, I did the obvious thing - I went in the early morning to Ma'agan Michael to see the putative Asian House Martin - potentially the first for WP. Since it was found by Barak, it remained extremely faithful to a very small area. I met up there with some friends and together we spent several hours searching for the martin amongst the thousand or so Barn Swallows. The only white-rumped birds we saw were two Little Swifts. The martin must have made a move - it was not seen yesterday either; last seen on December 27th.
Luckily for me, I enjoyed birding so much this morning. It is so great to be in Israel. Sooooooooo many birds. And the weather was lovely. I shot today using 3-digit ISO today! I have almost forgotten how to shoot in sunlight. And company was great too. I birded in a small area for about 2.5 hours, not really hard - we were mainly looking at hirundines, so all other stuff was picked up randomly. I had 82 species (and 1 additional taxa...). Highlights were 8 Ruddy Shelducks, some Citrine Wagtails, what I think is possibly a Steppe Gull (need to do some more homework on it) and some Pallas's Gulls, and on the way back home had two Black-winged Kites along route 6. How I missed this kind of birding.

Black Storks - just because they're so pretty

Super-tame Black-necked Grebe

This is the possible Steppe Gull. Almost cachinnans-like in structure. This neck streaking is typical. Dark bluish mantle. Medium sized bill with good gonys.

This flight shot is overexposed. P10 and P9 black all the way to PC. Black on P4, but pattern on P5 excludes YLG.

6 Pallas's Gulls and one Armenian

Marsh Sandpipers and Spotted Redshank

Thistle Mantis (Blepharopsis mendica) 

This is probably my last post of 2016. I had hoped to end the year with a bang, but hey - all part of the game. If the martin reappears while I'm here in the next week I will give it another try.

Turkey day 3 - Işak Paşa to Van Gölü - colours and quality

For me it felt like an overall slower day, but looking back and reading at this post gives me the impression of a cracking day. Anyway, after the exhausting climb up Mt. Ararat the previous day, we started off early on June 22nd and first went to check the area around Işak Paşa castle south of Doğubayazit. This is a well known site for Grey-necked Bunting and Mongolian Finch. We saw no buntings at all, and of Mongolian Finch we had only some brief flyby views. So what did we see?

First we birded along the good track heading south from the castle to the grassy upland plains. As anywhere else in this region, Black-headed Bunting was the most obvious species. I saw so many during our trip and this was the first (and last) one I photographed: 

We tried really hard to locate Mr. buchananni, but all we could find were Ortolans - they were everywhere. We got worried and started suspecting that all previous birders misidentified them... 

Ortolan - male

Ortolan - female

Still we had many good birds there. Some brief Mongolian and Crimson-winged Finches, Twite, quite many White-winged Snowfinches, and one singing male Common Rosefinch that showed rather well, our only rosefinch of the trip:

We had some Red-fronted Serins around the palace, again showing too well - in fact one landed for a second on my lens when I was trying to photograph it:

Quite many Whinchats breeding on the grassy plains:

This is dedicated to my Israeli followers:

עקעק

Again, good numbers of Western Rock Nuthatces and Eastern Black-eared Wheatears were seen breeding on the rocky hills, as well as our only Hill Sparrows of the trip. A pair of Golden Eagles breeds on the cliff just around the corner from the castle.

Unfortunately, here like everywhere else in E Turkey, signs of intensive huting pressure were very evident, with few mammals and lots of pellets: 

Işak Paşa castle - Doğubayazit in the background

 

After drinking coffee with millions of holidaying Turks at the castle gardens, we headed back south. A short stop at Tendurek moutain pass produced a very very cooperative Rufous-tailed Rock Thrush. Who said that only in the tropics you get colourful birds?

Tai Chi training 

 And then he came to check us out:

 And even sang a little for us:

At Çaldiran we met some new Kurdish friends over lunch:

When planning this trip, I used info and tips from some good friends. But I learned that I need to double-check my info, as I made a stupid mistake. There are two Nemrut Daği's in Turkey - one with a crater, overlooking the west shore of Van Gölü, and another some hundreds of km west (where Kurdish Wheatear breeds). I discovered that only when we were on the road heading to the wrong Nemrut Daği. Anyway the trip was much longer than we expected, and we decided to give Nemrut Crater a miss. Next time. We focused on reedbeds around the lake for Paddyfield Warbler. First we checked a small reedbed along the road on the N shore of the lake, that looked good (  38.780481° N   42.608487° E). Indeed there was some paddyfield activity there but it was too hot and we saw very little. A family of Armenian Stonechats showed there - the female was terribly worn. What a dark-looking bird!

That's one of the two recently-fledged juveniles of the Armenian Stonechat:

Then we followed a tip from Emin and headed to a fantastic site in the NW corner of the lake, just south of Ahlat ( 38.733648° N  42.441921°E). This is a very interesting and diverse wetland, with a matrix of small canals and patches of reeds and bullrush. We had plenty of Paddyfield Warblers there, some of them showing very well, especially in the small clumps in the NE side. All were adults - I suppose the young have not fledged yet, and very worn.But still good looking acros, as good as acros can get...

Paddyfield Warblers

I know this is out of focus but note the distinctive wing formula - very short and deeply notched P2, and P4 well emarginated (probably also P5), creating a very short, rounded and fingered wing structure. Dark distal half to lower mandible was very prominent too.

Other good birds at this site included a pair of Ruddy Shelduck, some Moustached Warblers, Bearded Reedlings and Penduline Tits. In the end we made one hell of a circuit to see Paddyfield Warbler; I'm sure there are sites much closer to Van, but it was nice to be there. 

After we were done there we started heading back to Van along the south shore of the lake. Beyond Tatvan we used the last minutes of sunlight to check a patch of scrub / degraded forest ( 38.455103° N  42.323805° E). There are few dense patches of forest or scrub in the Van region, and it was good to bird there for a short while. I am not sure whether the tress there are natural or planted (oaks and polar), but this site is very different from anywhere else in Van region. We didn't have anything special there, just some singing Nightingales among other common forest birds, but this site looks promising and certainly worth another check. I played Phylloscopus music but nothing responded...

In Van we stayed at the pretty shabby Medi Hotel, quite close to the airport.