No, it's not over yet

Very good ringing at Ashdod today - still lots of migrants, nice variety, first fledglings of local breeding species, some old returning Reed Warblers. Had a really nice time. Still lots of Blackcaps but among them many Garden and Eastern Olivaceous Warblers. Three Olive-trees, 2 Barred and some other fine birds.

Olive-tree Warbler

Barred Warbler - 3cy+ female

Garden Warbler

Spotted Flycatcher

Many thanks to my team this morning - Shlomo, Arad and Miriam.

Is it over yet?

After hectic March and April, may seems to be much slower. Still lots of migrants around but nothing like in early May. Some nice additions to my ever-growing garden list - Olive-tree and River Warblers. Looking back at this spring, it is amazing how few true rarities we've had here. Basalt Wheatear and vittata, but that's it really. I still have some hope for the coming week or two to produce a good shorebird perhaps, Great Knot anyone?

I resumed my project on our Yellow-legged Gull population with Amir. We ringed already some chicks and one adult female - my first adult YLG. Not too much fieldwork planned for the next few weeks otherwise. Getting ready for a Fish Owl trip to Turkey in July with some mates.

So this is the wing pattern of michahellis breeding in the E Med: P10 almost completely white with a thin black subterminal band, P9 with medium-sized white mirror, substantial black to P5 with tiny black spot on P4. Deep grey moons on P8 and P7.

Top to bottom

Last days have been very busy and involved lots of driving, as usual. I spent the weekend up in the north with my elder son Uri. On Friday we went ringing at Hula lake with the HVRS team - Dotan, Nadav etc. This special morning was in memory of my dear friend Amit Geffen who passed away in 2007. Amit was a great young birder and photographer. It was very inspiring to meet all of Amit's family and friend.

Ringing was very very busy - the acro factory working in full blast. But in between the acros some nice birds. In the near vicinity the pair of Black-winged Kites are breeding again. Thousands of Sand Martin up in the air. Pelicans and storks taking off. Great fun. 

Little Bittern - male

Barred Wobbler - 2cy male

Corn Bunting

On Saturckday morning I went with Uri to the highest place in Israel - Mt. Hermon. The scenery was beautiful but it was very very cold with lots of snow still on the higher elevations. As normal in this season, birds were rather few but still I saw or heard many of the Hermon specialties - Sombre Tit, Upcher's Warbler, Horned Lark, Syrian Serin, Rock Bunting and Raven - most in flight or just heard. No chance for photography. semirufus Black Redstarts were more active than other species:

Yesterday I went to check some important habitats in Nizzana - Ezuz region. It was a terrible morning with just no birds at all! It was amazing to see or hear so few birds. No bustards at all, one family of coursers, few BB sandgrouse, and that's it. No interesting migrants at Ezuz park or at the sewage ponds.

In the evening I had a very successful nightjar excursion with Mr. Dov Litvinoff, mayor of Tamar regional council. I took him and a few of the leading farmers from the agricultural communities there to see 'my' nightjars and to discuss ways to better protect their habitat. I was joined by two large-caliber figures - Yossi Leshem and Dan Alon. We had amazing views of no less than seven Nubian Nightjars, some Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters before dusk, huge bat activity, and I think that even the toughest farmer was moved by the almost spiritual experience of watching one of Israel's rarest birds, at the lowest place on earth, in full moon.

Migration explosion

Yesterday I had one of my most amazing migration days in Israel ever. I had a couple of meeting at Eilat around midday, so I made an early start and spent the morning birding in the greater Eilat area. I started off at Neot Smadar. The place had outrageous numbers of birds - several species were just exploding. I will give you some numbers I estimated during my 1.5 hours there, all from the car, to demonstrate what I mean by 'exploding': Blackcap 1000's, Lesser Whitethroat 1000, Olivaceous Warbler 200, Spotted Flycatcher 150, Ortolan 300, Tree Pipit 250, Willow Warbler 50, Whinchat 50, Red-backed Shrike 70, Masked Shrike 100, 1000's of hirundines of six species and lots more - all of this in some small fields! Just unbelievable. I have never seen so many passerines in such a small area before. I had the feeling that because there were so many birds I was actually seeing nothing and missing lots of good stuff. I was just skimming the surface and I felt I had no chance to find anything interesting. Still I had among the warblers some barred, olive-tree and upcher's. Let alone photography - I had no time for real photography; all the images below are very casual shots taken while driving around. 

Red-backed Shrike - many beautiful males among the huge numbers

One of many Masked Shrikes

About 15 Great Reed Warblers

Spotted Flycatcher on every sprinkler

About 50 Rufous Bush Robins

One of seven (!) Rock Thrushes

Whinchat

Very late Stonechat among the many Whinchats

One of many Tree Pipits

Good numbers of Tawny Pipits too

And of course hundreds of Yellow Wagtails

There were some large flocks of tired Bee-eaters on the ground, feeding on bee-hives.

Christmas tree

Several juv. Montagu's Harriers were knocking about, plus Eleonora's and Barbary Falcon

After a pretty short mind-blowing time at Neot Smadar I felt I had to go to a place with less birds, where I have a chance to find something good. I drove down to Keture but the place was exploding with birds too. Damn. Hundreds of Ortolans, wagtails (incl. 1 citrine), pipits etc.

Namaqua Doves

Still many Isabelline Wheatears around

At about 08:00 an enormous passage of raptors began overhead - many thousands of Honey Buzzards and among them lots of eagles, hundreds of Levant Sparrowhawks, Black Stroks etc. It was getting hot so many Honey Buzzards were coming down to drink behind the sewage ponds providing good photo opps:

Then I continued to yotvata. Just as I arrived I got a call from Itai who had just found an Arabian Dunn's Lark - excellent bird! We soon relocated it and it behaved quite well. As far as I know none bred in Israel this year; wonder where this nomad is heading to.

Arabian Dunn's Lark

The Yotvata fields also were exploding with birds - about 1000 Ortolans, and lots of other stuff.

Eastern Black-eared Wheatear

Collared Pratincole - one of two

At the smelly sewage ponds 300(!)  Yellow Wagtails, and tons of pipits, shrikes, wheatears etc.

Temminck's Stint - adult moulting into summer plumage

Before my meetings I had time for a quick look at KM20 saltpans. Thousands of shorebirds there, among them at least 16 Broad-billed Sandpipers, 38 Red-necked Phalaropes, 1 Greater Sandplover, 1 Curlew Sand etc.

3 Broad-billed Sandpipers

Some White-winged Terns were typically collecting insects from the water surface. Light conditions were awful but they're such nice birds, aren't they?

After the meeting I went with Itai to north beach. Many hundreds of Common and other terns, but despite the southern wind nothing special showed up. Still I added some nice birds to my day list - the two Brown Boobies still present, 1 Sooty Shearwater, some White-eyed Gulls etc.

What a day! Just for fun I counted my day list - 126 species! And that's without trying too hard and with half a day of meetings. Wow.

Not Alaemon, Irania!

This morning I surveyed with Meidad my favorite wadi of the central Arava. This site was very productive during previous years when I did my atlas survey there - see some examples here and here. We left home rediculously early and arrived on site at first light. First it was pretty cold and we saw nothing. Then it warmed up a bit and we still saw nothing. Then it got pretty hot and we still saw nothing. Eventually I heard a distant Hoopoe Lark singing, and had a pair of Bar-tailed Larks, plus some migrants, but that was it more or less. Very disappointing. I don't know exactly what the reason was for this poor show. Again it was a very dry winter there, with no germination of annuals at all in spring, thus this breeding season must have been very poor. However I was expecting a bit more. Maybe it was just one of these days that birds don't want to play.

We left the remote wadi in mid morning and started heading back home, both of us totally knackered both physically and mentally. We phoned Barak & Oz who were birding nearby at Neot Smadar. In an amazing act of prophecy, I asked Barak to find an Irania within the next few minutes before we reached a junction leading us away from Neot Smadar. Six minutes later - text from Barak: "Irania. too late?". I made a U-turn and we headed south to Neot Smadar. We got onto the bird quite quickly - it was a lifer for Meidad and a good bird neverthless. Perhaps not as exciting as in Hartlepool but still a great bird to see - large and charismatic with that big black tail. This species breeds in very small numbers on Mt. Hermon, but is always more exciting to watch as a rare migrant in the south. Many thanks to Barak & Oz for the quick info and directions.

White-throated Robin - female

The place was packed full with birds: during the ten minutes we were there we saw many B&W flycatchers, nightingales, buntings, shrikes, pipits and of course millions of Blackcaps. Several Crag Martins worth noting. Good passage of Honey Buzzards and levants overhead. But I was dead tired so we gave up on birding and made the long way back home.

Massive attack

This morning I went ringing with Eyal and Yoram near Be'er Sheva. Eyal was expecting a big morning, and indeed at first light we started hearing thousands of ticking Blackcaps in the Eucalyptus grove. This was one of those days with huge numbers of migrants. I heard similar reports from other ringing stations and birding sites in Israel, so this migration wave must include millions of Blackcaps and other migrants.

What was interesting this morning was the absolute domination of Blackcaps - we ringed tons of them but almost nothing else. I hypothesize that during such massive and dense falls of one single species, other species that might compete over the same resources just disappear, perhaps to habitats of lesser quality.

Also interesting (but sad) was the total lack of colours in our catch - the most colourful bird was Nightingale.

In the field we had one Collared Flycatcher, and some Ortolans and Tree Pipits.

Eastern Olivaceous Warbler