Pratincole zen

Amidst the series of blogposts from my trip to Kenya in July (one more left to go), I need to remind myself that there is quality stuff to be presented from here in Israel too. This is a tough period for birding, with extreme weather. Birding is really limited to the first two hours of light. Yesterday I stopped in Kfar Ruppin for a couple of hours before heading up to the Golan heights for less fun work (regulating the operation of bird-chopping wind turbines). Two hours of early morning birding zen is exactly what I needed ahead of a difficult day.

Good things are happening in Kfar Ruppin. The kibbutz has made a strategic decision to direct their future towards sustainability, nature and tourism. I am very proud to collaborate with our partners at the kibbutz. Our pilot project there, Amud Reservoir, was looking amazing as always first thing. Mimicing natural wetland water cycles, water levels are low now, which translates into a huge, beautiful reedbed, exploding with Savi's Warblers, Acros, Little Bitterns and such (eBird checklist here). 

Kfar Ruppin fishponds are looking very good now. Two large reservoirs have low water levels, exposing precious mud to migrants. One reservoir held a great flock of Collared Pratincoles, a post-breeding concentration of the locally-breeding population. I love pratincoles. With the soundtrack of Blue-cheeked and Common Bee-eaters, this pond provided me with the zen experience I needed (and another checklist).

What other species can you spot mixed in the pratincole flock?

That corner of the reservoir attracted also quite many shorebirds, and terns. Little Tern isn't common inland. One Whiskered Tern is in here too.

Whiskered Tern

Temminck's Stints - so tiny compared to Little Stint!

All videos embedded here were taken using a Swarovski ATX85 scope and a Swarovski phone adapter.

Nostalgic photo-dump

 Once upon a time, when I was a young blogger, my blogposts typically went something like this: 'Today I went birding here and I saw this and that'. Then I matured and developed and started writing about deeper stuff like feelings and sociological observations. Today, before a meeting at Ma'agan Michael, I made time for my monthly point-count session at our evolving bird park there. It was a busy morning of point-counts, and the conditions were horrific with gale-force easterlies (listen to the background noise in the videos below), yet somehow photography went ok and I felt a need to share my photos with you, the world. Nothing to write home about, no special reason, just a representation of common and less common birds I saw today, like back in the days; some photos are decent, others less so... my eBird checklist for the morning is here.

Great White Pelicans

Pygmy Cormorant

Egyptian Geese looking very wild (they're not)

Late Squacco Heron

Ruddy Turnstone on the rock

Eurasian Curlew shared the rocks

Temminck's Stints

Avocets looking smart as always

Pallas's Gulls on the beach

Wait for it! Not easy to be a gull on Ma'agan Michael beach - constant disturbance

Check the wind blowing the sand in the video above - Google Photos stabilizer did a good job.

Different Armenian Gulls

The Valley of Dreams and Wires

I am staying up north with friends for a couple of days. Early this morning I escaped for a sweet few hours of birding in the Bet She'an Valley. This is one of my favourite parts of the country, not only because I lived there between 1998 and 2001. I challenged myself to pick up as many species as I could, so I rushed from site to site and did not invest in photography at all. Admittedly, I was pretty lucky, especially with some migrant passerines that were present in ones and twos. I walked some alfalfa and scrub near Kfar Ruppin, then scrub and fields near Tirat Zvi, and ended up down at the bottom of the Jordan Valley below Kfar Ruppin at some beautiful reservoirs. As always, Bet Shean Valley is packed with birds, and diversity was very high too. Many species with big numbers. Some highlights were Little Crake, 2 Citrine wagtail, 5 species of shrike (woodchat most common). Among the most prominent were Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters, that congregate in the valley at this time of year. I counted about 70. Not easy to get wireless photos pf them - wires are their favourite perch.

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater - adult

1cy

It was heartwarming to still be able to see fair numbers of Turtle Doves. I had over 100, including flocks of tens; far fewer than the tens of thousands I'd see in the same area 15-20 years ago.

Namaqua Dove has become a regular feature of the valley, which is lovely.

There were only small numbers of Honey Buzzards that took off - main passage should start any day now. One of them swooped down, very focused, and came down to drink in an empty fishponds:

That eye...

There were moderate numbers of shorebirds in the dry fishponds, with some variety but nothing too special. Nice to see over 60 Collared Pratincoles:

Demonstrating it's not black-winged or oriental

Temminck's Stint (adult) with two Little Stints - 1cy (top) and adult (bottom)

A few more random photos:

Huge numbers of Barn Swallows, many of them of the local breeding taxon transitiva

Black Stork 1cy

Desert Finchs

Pygmy Cormorant

Short-toed Eagle pre-sunrise

By 09:00 I was defeated by the heat and retreated to aircon coolness. All in all it was a brilliant early morning - 115 species in just over three hours ain't too shabby I think. Full eBird checklist here. Thanks to Avner for his help.

Not so sacred...

At last went birding today, after too long. Birded the Ashdod ponds - perhaps for the last time for the next few years. Almost the first bird I saw almost knocked me off the car seat - a stonking African Sacred Ibis:

This African species is held in captivity in Israel in small numbers (and it is a prominent invasive species in some parts of the world). There used to be a tiny feral population in NW Israel until some years ago but they weren't reported in recent years. There are no records of wild individuals in Israel. This individual was unringed, flew well, was rather shy and showed no signs of captivity. Of course, it probably is a feral bird. However, the chance that is a wild bird cannot be dismissed - this species performs considerable migration in sub-Saharan Africa, similar to the movements of Yellow-billed Stork. Stunning bird nevertheless, especially with these impressive breeding plumes.

Otherwise, the ponds were packed full with shorebirds, mainly Tringas. 130 Wood, 50 Green etc. - big numbers. 30 Little Stints and one Temminck's Stint:

Nine Little Ringed Plovers:

Big numbers of Ruff and few Snipes:

The only gull on site was this diminutive Armenian Gull - what a tiny bill!

Not too many migrant passerines - some Yellow Wagtails, Isabelline Wheatears, one Savi's Warbler, and this 1cy Woodchat Shrike:

The morning ended in a sad way. At 08:00 the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed and Hamas resumes firing rockets into Israel. From 08:01 onwards I was birding amidst sirens and explosions. Rushed back home to be with my family. So depressing to see how Hamas leaders are determined to destroy Gaza - both people and land.

Patch working sucks

And why does it suck? Because instead of twitching sexy birds or working sexy sites I keep spending too much time in my stinking ponds producing nothing, and because you guys get to see the same images of the same, common birds.
Anyway, today I had some time in the morning so had a quick look at 'my' Ashdod ponds. I thought that as it was 9/11 today, it would have been appropriate for me to find an American lost soul or a bombshell from Afghanistan. But again the best I could find were two Broad-billed Sandpipers. None had a ring on, which is a pity as they look so much better with a ring on, ain't they? One of them was quite well-behaved. In addition I had one citrine Wagtail flying around but didn't manage to see it on the deck.

Broad-billed Sandpiper

I had a nice group of four Little Ringed Plovers in the early morning light. They are such delicate and sweet plovers. Pity I had this ugly piece of concrete in the frame.

Little Ringed Plover

As usual I had a few Temminck's Stints:

You can see this adult temmicnk is exactly halfway through its primary moult (PMS = 25).

There is a large increase in snipe numbers. I am working hard on them too... but all of them have such a long tail...

Common Snipe

You can see this bird is a 1cy by the blackish tips to its lesser coverts:

On the way back home I had a quick look at Hulda reservoir, which produced 20 Ferruginous Ducks, an early Black-necked Grebe, 1 Monty's Harrier and 3 White-winged Terns. In the nearby fields there were large numbers of Ortolans and Cretzschchshzhthmar's Buntings in mixed groups.

Cretzschmar's Bunting

Very large numbers of Turtle Doves are going through now:

Apart for that, the fields held the typical selection of Whinchats, Greater Short-toed Larks, Issy Wheatears and Tree Pipits.