The desert prince

As the coordinator of the Negev & Arava atlas project, I have the privilege to chose my own boxes. So of course I gave myself the best boxes while I sent the rest of my team to survey shitholes in the desert... Today was no exception. I returned to one of my favorite places in the country, in the remote part of the Arava, Alaemon-land. In my previous visit there I had some birds but noticed hardly any breeding activity. This time things were much better. As I got out of the car I immediately heard the beautiful song of a male Hoopoe Lark, and soon found it performing its awesome display flight over the gravel plains. This is one of the most beautiful and rare sights of Israeli desert. Sorry for the crap images, I gave the birds respect and didn't get close at all.

Taking off:
Climbing up:
Almost missed it:
Later on I found this guy's wife, and then another pair in display. I hope they have some breeding success. Other good larks included many displaying Bar-tails and one singing male Temminck's. A few Spotted Sandgrouse were flying around:

Spotted Sandgrouse - male

Spotted Sandgrouse - male and female

I found this smart little Desert Agama Trapelus pallidus sunbathing by my car:

A brief stop at Bahad 1 produced two Levant Sparrowhawks and a Collared Flycatcher.

Dirty dancing

Spent a few more days this week doing atlas boxes in the greater Nizzana region. The area received some very welcome rain last week, and the wadis are becoming green and lush. It seems to be changing the fortunes of this breeding season already, with some good breeding activity of our desert species. I found several pairs of Temminck's and Bar-tailed Larks, and had one brief Dunn's Lark west of Ezuz on the 7th. I found two female MacQueen's Bustards with small chicks, while their males are still dancing like crazy:

I must pay respect to my loyal assistants, the Crested Larks. They are the commonest breeding bird in the area, and I use their amazing mimicry skills whenever I do bird surveys. The males mimic the birds they hear around them, and by listening to their mimicry I can get a very good idea of what I should be expecting in the area. It's like a kind of an area search or point count carried out by the larks.

Crested Lark

This guy combined singing with some dancing as well:

Desert Wheatear numbers have gone up and many pairs are very busy breeding now. The males are so attractive and I never have enough of them:

Desert Little Owls are doing pretty well to:

I see Black-winged Kites in the area often. I wonder if they have become a regular addition to the Israeli avifauna after last years' influx.

There are still rather few migrants in the wadis, but Be'erotayim grove is packed with common migrants. The only bird of interest there was this Eurasian Cuckoo:

New gallery by Thomas Krumenacker

My good friend Thomas Krumenacker has just published a new gallery in his website with fantastic images from his recent trip to Israel. Most were taken during the festival week, and I had the privilege to disturb Thomas several times with phone calls while he was trying to get these shots. I like especially the Temminck's Lark take-off shot - one of the best I've ever seen!

Where have all the good birds gone?

You might have noticed the sudden disappearence of all the good birds in Israel in the last couple of weeks. Just have a look at the update frequency on my rarity pages - since the end of the festival we haven't had even a semi-decent pseudo-rarity. Hope things change soon.

But by then I have to settle for our common, local birds. Yesterday I had a meeting at home. While discussing standardizing national monitoring methods I noticed a couple of Spectacled Bulbuls preening on a loquat tree in my garden in beautiful soft light. Being one of Israel's commonest birds it's seriously underrated, but in fact they're one of my favorites - charismatic, social and attractive-looking. I grabbed my camera and fired off these shots, while my friends were laughing: "He's created another post for his blog".

Mountain Buntings

Yesterday afternoon I headed south along the Dead Sea to meet up with Johannes and his team from Belgium. En route I made a quick stop for a Mountain Bunting site right on the main road south of Ein Gedi. This site was discovered by chance by Itai during a festival Dead Sea tour, and it seems to be the easiest and most reliable site in Israel at the moment for this tricky species. And indeed I had three birds feeding right by the road in nice afternoon light. I had very little time with them so results are not too good but I will certainly be back there. This is a female: These are the original afternoon colours before PS colour adjustments. What do you think is better?

Male (left) and female (right):

We headed down to Neot Hakikar where we had great views of up to five Nubian Nightjars feeding very actively before the twilight dwindeled and the nightjars called it a night. Other wildlife we had included a Diadem Snake Spalerosophis diadema and Long-eared Hedgehog Hemiechinus auritus. The Belgian guys have images of both, I was a bit lazy...

Kingfisher control

Received nice news from our ringing center that a Kingfisher I had ringed in October 2010 at my ringing site in Ashdod was controlled by Itay Shomshon at Ein Afek Reserve, near Haifa, on 30/3/11, distance of 122 km. This bird was probably moving south when had I ringed it, and Itay caught it during its' return migration north. Nice stuff!


View Kingfisher Ashdod - Afek in a larger map