Decade summary #8 - Best of 2017

Almost there! Just one more annual summary after this before my 2019 summary.
2017 was another exciting year - fieldwork season in Iberia, trip to India, summer visit to Shetland, two visits to Israel at either end of the year, and in between lots of good birds in the UK.

Early in the year I cleaned up some good divers and seaducks, including this obliging White-billed Diver in Lincolnshire:

The trip to India, with Gidon, Amir and Eli, was primarily targeted at seeing a Tiger in Ranthambhore, which we did...

A trip to Kaziranga offered excellent birding, including this stonking male Pied Harrier, surely one of the best raptors of the world:

I spent most of April and May in Portugal and Spain, doing fieldwork for my PhD with my outstanding field assistants Re'a and Daniel. We had a very successful season and a great time together, and didn't stop birding for a moment. 

Sisónes

My second visit to Shetland, this time with my family, was wonderful, how can it not be? Barely an hour after stepping off the ferry we were treated to a fantastic show by a pod of Orcas hunting seals outside Roger and Agnes's,

The UK provided me with quite many rarities; nothing as intense as in 2016, but I guess Elegant Tern, PGtips, Stilt Sandpiper, Parrot Crossbill, Black Scoter, Pacific Diver and Coues's Arctic Redpoll aren't a bad annual tally.

During a quick November trip to Israel I was treated by a friendly Red-rumped Wheatear to a private show:

Full summary of 2017 here.

Ranthambhore cleanup - mammals

Probably my last blogpost about India. Here are some images of mammals from Ranthambhore I had no time to process earlier. Ranthambhore is fantastic for mammals. The abundance of deer, wild boar and other types of tiger food explains why there are so many predators there. Driving around the park, you do see many hundreds of deer every day. Commonest species is Spotted Deer:

Sambar is tiger's favourite prey. Their eyesight is poor and they're not very fast runners like Spotted Deer. They often are seen wading in lakes.

Nilgai is an impressive beast, reminded me of the African Eland antelope

Wild Boar

Black-faced Langurs are very common in the park

They often adopt the contemplative posture

Not easy to photograph with their extremely long tail and a 500mm...

 Black-tailed Mongoose

Interesting shape to their pupils

Indian Palm Squirrel

And of course there was this mammal too, our main target in India. Arrowhead.

Check this great video by Amir:

Tiger, yawn

You may ask yourself why am I awake at 05:00 updating the blog. Our hotel., The Ranthambhore Bagh, is adjacent to a wedding venue. The f@%&king music is still playing now... Those Indians sure know how to party all night long.  I couldn't sleep all night. Thanks!

Anyway, yesterday was a steady day. The human brain is quite something because we had an amazing encounter with a tiger, but it still felt like a somewhat slower day. Again, we had an unrestricted full-day permit. If you ask me that's the only way to work in Ranthambhore, despite the costs. We failed to find a fresh tiger or anything else of interest. Arrowhead gave the same show as she had the previous day, offering again extreme close-up in bad light mainly. 

Yawn...

If I were a male Tiger I'm sure I'd fall in love with her. She's so beautiful, isn't she?

Nice views when she walked along the lake, in front of Jogi Mahal, the famous Ranthambhore landmark. But my big lens failed to capture the classic scene. Amir did better.

 We added some new birds, and again our daily tally was about 94 species. Some nice stuff.

Stork-billed Kingfisher

River Tern

And some for the birders:

Again, tons of Hume's Warblers and some Greenish Warblers too:

Greenish Warbler

Oriental Honey Buzzard - 2cy (female?)

 We had several White-capped (Chestnut-breasted) Buntings, including this male:

We found one day-roosting Indian Scops Owl, and ended the day nicely with this fine Brown Fish Owl:

Heading out soon for a final half-day safari drive, so wish us luck.

Tiger taster

First day of birding in India today. Great to be back - first time since 2001. We spent a full day in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. It was an amazing day, with sightings of three different tigers. The morning was tough but from noon onwards we had much better results. Arrowhead, a 3 year old female, spent a few hours loafing around one of the lakes. She is really used to humans, and was certainly not scared of vehicles, maybe only slightly angry - when the masses arrived in the afternoon it did get pretty nasty around her. What an amazing animal. I saw one in Corbett in the previous millenium, from a distance, so today's experience was quite something. The majesty, the power, the beauty, uhhhh....Truly breathtaking.

My photos today are mostly extreme close ups.  All these are full frames:

The beauty 

The look... 

The canines...

Arrowhead is scarred, as a result of territorial fights with her mum and sisters. She is just reaching sexual maturity at her age and holds a large territory.

The camouflage...

The park was packed with animals - hunderds of deer (3 species), and the menu included several other types of tiger food.

Birding was not easy today.  First, I am completely rusty - I need another day or two to remember all the regular calls. Second, we were really focused on tigers today and rarely stopped for birds. And third, it is really not easy to bird in Ranthambhore - you must sit in the jeep all the time. But still, after all excuses, we did rather well - check our eBird checklist from today.  There were lots of common resident birds. Quite many Siberian migrants around - literally hundreds of Hume's Warblers, with smaller numbers of Greenish Warblers, also large numbers of Red-breasted Flycatchers and few Taiga Flys, many Tree and few Olive-backed Pipits etc. 

One for Euro-birders - Taiga Flycatcher

We worked with an excellent guide / driver named Sushil Chauhan - strongly recommended. Thanks Sushil!
I have many more images to edit (2 cards...), but this will have to wait for another day. After a full day in the field, and another one tomorrow, I need to catch some sleep. Good night. Tonight I will dream about tigers.