Goodbye spring, hello summer

Sorry for the long absence since my last post, I visited cold Germany with my family. No time for birding resulted in no birds of note.
Back in hot Israel, these are the last days of spring - here migration is really slowing down, compared to Europe where things are just warming up. Weather was good this afternoon so I spent some time checking reservoirs near my house.
There was a nice mix of late migrants and good breeding species. Among the migrants were this flock of about 100 pelicans. Note the Sand Martins in front of them - there were about 2000 hawking for insects over the water in Hulda reservoir, which was very birdy as always.

One good bird that made a brief appearence was this Blue-cheeked Bee-eater. It flew in from the south, perched on a Tamarix bush for a few seconds, I got some distant record shots, but before I managed to get any closer a bloody crow flushed it away. This is a good record for this region.

Other good migrants in the three reservoirs I checked were 6 Whiskered and a single White-winged Tern, 1 drake Garganey, 4 Purple and 20 Squacco Herons, 5 Curlew Sandpipers and over 200 Ruff.

I had some good breeding birds too. There were six pairs of Ferruginous Ducks. It was nice to see the males' courtship - they puffed their heads and breasts up like goldeneyes, and chased after the females. Another quality breeding species was Collared Pratincole - I had two pairs, the females sitting on eggs.

White-tailed Eagle

This morning I participated in the national waterbird census organized by the NPA. My team checked several reservoirs in the S Judean Plains and coastal plains. We began late after we got a report on poachers shooting gazelles not too far away. Unfortunately the bastards managed to disappear before we arrived.
Birdwise, things were pretty slow with waterfowl numbers much lower than usual. This is somewhat surprising bringing into account the terrible weather conditions north of us this winter.
Zohar reservoir was the only productive water body. This beautiful reservoir is big and complex, with developed vegetation and always supports a great diversity. One of the first birds we saw was this huge White-tailed Eagle, spooking all the ducks and being harrassed constantly by crows. It was nice to see a 'real' bird, without rings, wingtags or antennas . I apologize for the miserable record shots - the bird was very distant.

Other quality birds there were two juv White-fronted Geese (my first geese this winter), 6 Ferruginous Ducks among the many other Aythyas, 3 Great Crested Grebes, and over 50 Wigeon.

There were about 500 cormorants and a single Pelican thrashing the fish in the reservoir in a real feeding frenzy: