Eilat seawatching

I spent two and a half days in Eilat, that included work, scuba diving and birding. Order of importance is debatable... This is the story: My elder son is really into scuba diving, and I am too. We went down to Eilat for him to complete his advanced open water training. I joined him on one dive but got an ear infection and couldn't dive anymore. I spent the rest of my days working, with compulsory dawn and dusk visits to North Beach, where all the action is these days. Everywhere else in the country spring migration is officially over and birding has become very static. In contrast, at North Beach, especially in the very early morning, birding was very dynamic with lots of stuff moving. I enjoyed that a lot. Check this representative eBird checklist.

Super moon setting over Sinai

Shachar's two recent rarities, Sabine's Gull and Great Crested Tern didn't linger, but there was plenty of interest at sea to keep me busy. Sooty Shearwater numbers are higher than normal, with a maximum of 14 yesterday morning. This could be an underestimate - shearwaters kept flying from one side of the gulf to the other constantly. Every scope sweep came up with at least one or two. One early morning, two sooties patrolled over the beach, even flying inland a bit, then returning to sea - could they be prospecting an overland crossing - to where? It was almost dark when I took this photo, as it flew over my head, so it isn't great:

Two Cory's Shearwaters were present too. There was very good skua/jaeger action too - three species seen: Arctic/Parasitic, Pomarine and Long-tailed - two magnificent adults with loooooong tail streamers, too distant for photography I'm afraid but good scope views. There were plenty of terns too, quite large numbers of Common and Little moving through. Quality terns included Lesser Crested, Bridled and White-cheeked. 

Three White-cheeked terns with a casual Sooty Shearwater

Little Terns on the move

There aren't many shorebirds in Eilat now, most should be busy breeding now very far north. This lovely female Greater Sand-plover shared the beach with humans one morning:

I spotted at a great distance a tiny white dot heading north. As it approached it became clear it's a Red-necked Phalarope - you should be in the arctic now, in nicer plumage than this!

Crested Eagle meets Red-necked Phalarope

Greater Flamingo is a silly bird. I counted 820 at KM20 saltpans where they look very settled - don't know why they don't breed there. Therefore it was very cool to spot a flock of 25 flying low over the water, heading north, battling against the wind. Migration magic.

Swerved from side to side, they eventually passed overhead

Unbelievable that such comic birds can actually migrate

White-eyed Gull for dessert

Norfolk rarity

Last night the wind switched to a proper northerly, which means better seawatching conditions. I haven't been out properly for toooooooooooo long, actually since I got back from Iberia, so I was very keen to head out. During the few hours of sleep I dream of albatrosses and Fea's Petrels. I arrived at Cley at 05:00. At first the few birds were disappointingly distant, because the wind had switched to north just few hours earlier. Rather soon I clocked on a Sooty Shearwater - nice, but too distant for a photo. Then birds were pushed closer inshore by the strong wind and there was a nice constant passage of terns and gannets. Albert didn't fly past, nor a pterodroma. Bird highlights of the morning were a Manx Shearwater, Little Gull, 40 Common Scoter and a Guillemot. Sadly I had to leave after a couple of hours - had to get back home for schoolrun. See full list here. After leaving the others had a couple of spoony Poms and a Velvet Scoter.

Sandwich Tern

Gannet and bird choppers

But the true highlight of the morning was an extremely visitor to Norfolk - DIM Wallace who walked into the seawatching shelter in nonchalance, like it's his midlands local patch. Great to see him here, alongside some of Norfolk's finest.

Goodbye spring, hello summer

Yesterday spent the morning birding with Meidad in Eilat and S Arava. It was a fine day, but it really gave the feeling of the end of spring - very few terrestrial migrants on the ground; only shorebirds put on a good show.

We started off VERYearly and arrived at north beach at 06:00. Markus and his hardcore Finnish mates arrived earlier and they had seen three White-cheeked Terns before we arrived. Unfortunately the terns did not reappear. There were quite many commoner terns around, three Sooty Shearwaters, 4 flyover Oyestercatchers and not too much else.

Striated Heron

Sandwich Tern

Little Tern

We then checked the saltpans. Those south of IBRCE had 19 Red-necked Phalaropes among the many shorebirds and gulls. They are such fine birds. Unfortunately all the images were taken from the car window, from the top of the bank, thus the lousy angle. Some of them were in really nice breeding plumage. Typically for phalaropes, they do nothing else than forage in circles, chasing small flies. This is really a video job.

Red-necked Phalaropes 

Curlew Sandpiper - unfortunately the prettier ones kept their distance

This must be a 2cy - very worn scapulars and coverts. 

Dunlin - I wonder which subspecies this is. Bill far too long for schinzii, but face, breast and flanks too streaked for alpina.

Little Stint - so lovely in summer plumage

 

At KM20 saltpans some more phalaropes, 3 Broad-billed Sandpipers, and some other stuff.

Broad-billed Sands

White-winged Terns

Grey-headed Wagtail

On the way home we checked some more sewage farms that were pretty empty. At Ketura sewage had this recently-fledged juvenile Hooded Wheatear:

Only at Neot Smadar we had few more migrants, including Spotted Flys, Masked Shrikes and a few Whinchats.

Spotted Flycatcher

I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob

IThis morning I went solo-seawathing at Ashkelon again. Yesterday's strom had slowed down a bit, but the wind was still strong, the sea high, and there was lots of rain. Great fun.

Always when I go to Ashkelon I face the same trade-off - do a solo seawatch at Ashkelon and save two hours of extra driving through heavy traffic, or rather drive all the way to Jaffa, and join the others? This morning I chose Ashkelon.

There were lots of gulls and terns throughout the morning but quality birds were rather few and far between. Only 45 km north, Barak and Shachar had a great morning with 18 Leach's Petrels. I received only two of these, though I had reasonable views of both. A beautiful adult Med Gull with complete black hood was very nice though.

Morning totals:

Leach's Petrel 2

Sooty Shearwater 2

Cory's Shearwater 1

Mediterranean Gull 1

Mediterranean Gull - ad. summer!

I was not the only human on the beach. Apparently some people are even more masochistic than seawatchers. Thank me for not sharing with you images of this looker walking out of the water.

Mediterranean Walrus

Eilat pelagic part 1

Continuing yesterdays' taster, here is a small selection of images I got from the 'pelagic' trip with Avi Meir. I know that going out into a tiny gulf in a small dingy is not quite a pelagic, but this is the best we can get here in Israel.

Anyway, the conditions were great - soft wind, calm sea, comfortable temperatures, and as soon as the chum went into the water we got response very fast. The most active and attractive birds were Cory's Shearwaters - we had six or seven birds in total. They are such fantastic birds, and it was great fun for me to be in such proximity to them.

When I started seawatching in Eilat in the 1980's, days with 40-50 cory's were not uncommon, but their numbers have gone down dramatically in Eilat since the early 1990's. In fact between 2003 and 2010 hardly any were seen at Eilat. This decline corresponds with global population decreases, and with the ever-increasing pollution of the Gulf and crashing fish populations. This seems to be a relatively good summer for them.

I have hundreds of cory's images to go through, and I hope to get some on the blog during the next few days. This is just one more appetizer:

But apart for cory's, we had lots of other good birds. There were a few White-eyed Gulls flying around, but only this one showed interest in the breakfast provided by Avi.

This must be a 2cy, but I am not completely sure. As they're semi-tropical birds I don't know whether their moult cycles correspond to the Northern Hemisphere moult cycles we 'gullers' use when dealing with our gulls. This bird is going through its first wing moult, with P1 to P3 fully grown, and P4 growing. T1 to T3 also moulted (see 2 images below), and the new T2 and T3 have black tips. Leg colour is in fact pretty bright compared to juveniles that have dull grey legs.

I strongly recommend to have a look at the new page dedicated to White-eyed Gull in gullresearch.org, with images mostly by Avi and Amir Ben Dov.

White-eyed Gull (Larus leucophthalmus)

We had only one skua, this 2cy Arctic Skua. It made two brief fly-by's but never showed real interest in the feeding frenzy near our boat. It has not started moulting yet.

Arctic Skua (Stercorarius parasiticus)

Towards the end of our morning session quite a few terns arrived. Most were Common Terns (about 25), and among them we had one or two Bridled Terns. This bird never got quite close enough, so I have only these record shots. BTW don't panic, the tern above is just a Common Tern in strong light.

Bridled Tern (Sterna anaethetus)

Common Terns did get close indeed:

This 2cy Common Tern got me excited at first when seen from a distance - it was very pale and at first I thought it's an arctic, but after seeing it well it was safely identified as common. We don't get this plumage often in Israel; most of the 2cy's stay for their first summer somewhere in the southern oceans.

I had some trouble with my gear and screwed up its flight shots, so many thanks to Avi for this super image:
I really need a faster set of camera and lens, so if anyone out there wishes to donate me about 10000$ I will be very grateful.

Anyway, one Little Tern was among the larger species:

We had two Sooty Shearwaters. One of them came in to feed (pretty late when light was very contrasting already). This individual is rather scruffy and not very attractive, but they behave really nice compared to cory's - they just sit there and feed.

Sooty Shearwater (Puffinus griseus)

So stay posted for another batch of cory's images tomorrow.