Seawatching

Wednesday morning I visited Palmachim beach. A large storm was boiling, the wind was already good, the sea was properly rough - just before the rain started at noon. 

When I arrived at the seawatching spot, I was greeted by a sea full of birds:

There was really good activity of gulls close to shore, attracted to large fish shoals. Soon I noticed that there were good numbers of Yelkouan Shearwaters among the gulls, feeding very close to shore, sometimes down to 20m. Fantastic. This winter is special for yelkouans - their numbers are bigger than usual in recent years, and they are often seen feeding very close to shore. I focused most of my attention on the shearwaters, and took many hundreds of photos of them. I was hoping to find another shearwater among them (which I didn't), and document their variation. I also really enjoyed watching them fish, using short dives. It was difficult to digiscope in these conditions...

I will devote a separate blogpost to the Yelkouan Shearwaters - out of the hundreds of photos I took a few tens are blog-worthy. I will leave you with one I am pleased of.

The gulls were dominated by Black-headed Gulls, but there were a few other gulls mixed in, though the diversity was fairly low.

Lesser Black-backed Gull (fuscus)

Armenian Gull (adult) - lots of black on wingtip with little white, and nice black bill band

Yellow-legged Gull (I think) - bill too heavy for caspian, large head, and rather uniform wing

Many Sandwich Terns were fishing close in too:

One Pomarine Skua passed two distantly for a photo, but two Arctic Skuas made near passes - one super close. The first bird is especially small (check the size comparison with Black-headed Gull!), but still an Arctic.

Second bird

Back at the car, a Greater Spotted Eagle flew over, battling against the strong wind:

More images in the eBird checklist here. Stay tuned for a deep study of Yelkouan Shearwater.

Ma'agan Michael gulls

Today I had some time in Ma'agan Michael before a meeting (it often works out like that...). A serious storm developed overnight so I had some expectations for a short but productive seawatching session. I arrived at Crocodilopolis, an ancient mound just south of MM to discover that the gale-force wind was blowing from the wrong direction, SSE. What time I spent scanning the sea was fruitless - I did not see a single seabird. Therefore I focused on gulls and shorebirds on the beach. Nadav joined me. Several gull species were moving up and down the beach - Armenian, Yellow-legged, Caspian, Pallas's, Siberian, Slender-billed and Black-headed. Shorebirds sheltered on the beach behind the mound, including 11 Greater Sand-plovers and fair numbers of Kentish. Check my eBird checklist here. Light conditions were surprisingly good for a storm, so I enjoyed some relaxed photography.

Pallas's Gulls - have I mentioned before that they are the best gulls?

Yellow-legged Gull

I found this colour-ringed Armenian Gull roosting on the beach. In fact it is a bird I ringed back in April 2014 and released at ashdod (thanks Yosef & Amir for reminding me). It was rehabilitated at the Israeli Wildlife Hospital after a case of Botulism, and seen several times since at Ashdod and MM. I wrote an article after its release for the Israel Birding Portal; it includes a video of the release, featuring my son Noam, then 4.5 years old...

Sandwich Terns

Slender-billed and Black-headed Gulls

Slender-billed Gull

Grey Plovers

Huge numbers of Great Cormorants

Fishing shoals stranded in the rockpools

Birding Barbara

Had a great day in N Norfolk with James, Terry and Marie. Our main focus was geese - the large pinkfeet flocks attracted some quality geese over the last few days. We set an aim to see 14 goose taxa today but ended up with only eight... We started early around Syderstone and Docking. Scanning our own flocks produced little more than a few Tundra Beans, some Euro Whitefronts, a wild-looking Greylag, and a couple of funny hybrids. But hey, we didn't get bogged which was an achievement. As normal in these conditions, birds are distant and the best one can expect is crap digiscoped record shots. 

After some time others relocated the Red-breasted and the Todd's Canada side by side, north of Docking (thanks Ben for gen). We headed over there and the birds were on show. A mile away but scope views were good. Photos were, ehmmm... But great to see these two quality birds in the same scope view. This is my first 'wild' Canada Goose in the WP, and only my second-ever Red-breast. By the attention it receives from local birders, it should be 'wild' too. 

The Beauty and the Beast: Red-breasted Goose and Todd's Canada Goose, with Pink-footed Geese

Digiscoped through Swarovski ATX95 with Samsung Galaxy S5 and Novagrade adapter

Non-plastic Greylag? Who knows

Funny pigment-challenged (thanks Dave!) Pink-footed Goose. When I first saw its head, I thought it was a Lesser Whitefront. It clearly isn't. Sorry about the quality - a very long way away.

According to part of our team, the day's highlight was a brilliant breakfast at a secret N Norfolk spot:

While we had a quiet and cosy breakfast, outside things were happening. We moved on to Titchwell for some quality seaducks. When we got there, Storm Barabara had hit the coast and the weather was quite horrible. We were greeted at the carpark by this friendliest Robin, demonstrating pure Christmas spirit. James didn't miss an opp to pap him, and got down and dirty. Hardcore wildlife photography.

Braving the storm, we headed down to the beach. We had a quick look on the freshmarsh, and amazingly James picked up this adult Yellow-legged Gull, despite his frequent declarations that he doesn't do large white-headed gulls. 

One Water Pipit was on the freshmarsh too. On the beach it was pretty awful. The wind was so strong we couldn't stand up. Hunched under the concrete blocks, trying to find some shelter, we scanned the large raft of seaducks bobbing up and down on the choppy sea. The crazy wind had pushed them away from shore so views were less than great. But still it was quite fun with quality. There were over 25 Long-tailed Ducks, 6-7 Velvet Scoters, 1 Slavonian Grebe, 1 probable Black-throated Diver. I just love long-tails - great birds:

On the way back we paid a visit to the Ferruginous Duck on Pat's Pool. I would not twitch this bird independently, but the others were keen so why not. When we got there we scanned hard through the distant tufted flock and couldn't find the bird! Then we were shamefully told by other birders it was right under our nose, mooching about with the dabbling ducks. The sky darkened then as a result of the fading light and intensifying storm. Another set of excuses for rubbish photos. It was time to head back home.

 Ferruginous Duck 

With Gadwall

'Merry Christmas boys and girls!' says Mr. Fudge

First international Yellow-legged Gull recovery and nice morning at UEA

Got nice news today from Cyprus. Robin Snape, David Preece and their colleagues from North Cyprus Society for Protection of Birds and Nature (KUŞKOR) read a colour-ring on a Yellow-legged Gull. They traced it back to me and Amir Ben Dov - we ringed it as a chick in the colony breeding in the Tel Aviv University Zoological Gardens in May 2013. This image is by David Preece!

This is our first international recovery after four years of ringing Yellow-legged Gulls at this colony. Only 365 km away but still a significant piece of information. Gulls from this colony move around quite a bit in Israel, but until this one we knew nothing about their longer-distance movements. It's about time we stick some GPS tags on them.

I don't have images of the specific individual that was resighted in Cyprus, but this one below was ringed together on the same day, photographed in March 2014 when it was almost one year old:

And this is how it should look like now, almost two years old:

Nice walk around the UEA broad this morning with Drew. He found a Grasshopper Warbler reeling earlier on and I heard it as well when I arrived. Lots of singing Reed Warblers, Garden Warbler, several Willow Warblers and generally nice to be out.

Off to Scilly soon, wish me luck.

Birding at last!

Wow, this was a long break. But today I finally managed to get myself out of Norwich, courtesy of Jake and Drew. We left early and headed first to Sheringham for a couple of hours of seawatching. **Lesson 1 in UK birding - if the weather is good (like it was today), lower your expectations.** 

No wind resulted in, well, alright birding. Some movement of Red-throated Divers, Common Scoters, Guillemots, one Scaup, one Shag and a few other bits and pieces. Some divers swam rather close in:

Red-throated Diver

Red-throated Diver and Shag

Then we moved on to Cromer. By the pier the long-staying Caspian Gull showed too well at times. It was associating with a Yellow-legged Gull, and most of the time they were both perched on top of Hotel de Paris. Caspian Gull looks a bit different here compared to the more Asian birds that reach Israel. Slightly more black on the wingtip (tiny black dot on P4) and bill shape not quite the same - a bit heavier. Note that now it's growing P8 to P10 so when it finishes growing them in a couple of weeks the wingtip will have even more white.

Caspian Gull

Yellow-legged Gull 

What a brute

FF

We spent the rest of the day at Stiffkey, which was really nice even though we didn't have anything special. Lots of birds both on the scrapes and on the mudflats.

**Lesson number 2: always carry a good rifle when birding to shoot down dog walkers.**

Some highlights included 3 Curlew Sands, 2 Green Sands, 4 Rock Pipits, Peregrine, 14 Spoonbills, 1 continental White Wagtail, 2 Whinchats. Not too shabby.

Rock Pipits

Thanks to Jake and Drew for the ride and company - it was a good day indeed.