Raptors

Repeated the raptor census transect in the NW Negev today. Good weather and much less mud. Didn't get bogged today! Had a good day with lots of good raptors, especially falcons. I had three young Sakers, which brings the total for this winter to four at the NW Negev- an adult has been seen recently. Also had four Peregrines and two Merlins.

Saker - 2cy 

Also had four Eastern Imperial Eagles - three adults and one 4cy:

Fewer buzzards today compared to December. So difficult to photography anything not perched on a pylon.

Long-legged Buzzard

Didn't really count kites - I estimated something like 15000 today, and I wasn't even close to their core of activity (Dudaim dump). Other raptors I had were two Booted Eagles, and some harriers.

One or two Black Kites

Not too much other than raptors. A flock of fourty Dotterels was nice. Couldn't find the sociables anywhere near my transect. About 50 Swifts on the move north (spring already!). 40 Stock Doves at the same place like last time.

Stock Dove - Israeli rarity

Yellow-eyed beauties

This morning I returned with the A-Team to Hameishar Plains. Freezing cold in the morning - frost remained on the ground until about 9 am. Before 07:00 very few birds but when it warmed up a bit we started catching more. We smashed the record set in our previous visit in December, and caught 18 (!) Asian Desert Warblers - 14 new and 4 retraps. This means that on the same stretch of habitat along the road we ringed altogether 25 different individuals! Difficult to estimate how many actually are in this area - must be many tens. This is really phenomenal. Each one of them is such a beauty.

This little bird left a small present on Rony's head

Apart for the desert warblers, again we had great species variety. I most enjoyed three Hooded Wheatears - a ringing tick for me in fact. There was an exceptional concentration of 6 males in one corner of the valley. Also three more Mourning Wheatears, one Temminck's Lark and one Bar-tailed Lark - all quality species for all of us.

Hooded Wheatear - 2cy male (hatched 2012)

Hooded Wheatear - 3cy+ male

Temminck's Lark - female

Bar-tailed Lark

The habitat looks really good. Last week it rained more at Hameishar, and more germination and caterpillar production is expected in the coming weeks. Lots of larks around, all birds feeding like crazy on caterpillars. Again good lark show today - about 50 temminck's and 2 thick-bills.

On the way back home ringed a pair of White-crowned Wheatears. I normally hate photographing birds with my phone but in this case the image does show the amazing scenery that this wheatear views every day:

Many thanks to the team - Yosef, Ron, Ron, Rony, Meidad, Arad and Tom.

Birding in the snow

The storm that hit Israel over the last week has finally ended. This was a major event, with phenomenal amounts of rain over much of Israel, severe floods, heavy snow on the mountain peaks, and good rain in the desert - which gives hope for a good spring in the desert.

In my region the storm didn't cause much damage until yesterday, when an electricity pylon collapsed in my village, and caused a power cut for six very cold hours in the evening. 

Yesterday morning I went up with Eli to Mt. Amasa, which is the southern tip of the central mountain ridge of Israel. This is a very special place for birding, with a mix of desert species and mediterranean species. I am sure that yesterday the Desert Larks there didn't understand what the feck they were doing in Antarctica. Anyway, when we got there heavy for was covering the mountain and we were unable to see anything. So we went lower down the slopes, where there was less snow but visibility was better. Didn't see much but there were some Finsch's Wheatears and Long-billed Pipits looking very wet and cold. I need to practice snow photography. But to get a B&W bird properly exposed in such conditions seems almost impossible.

Finsch's Wheatear

One Golden Jackal was running around - too cold in the den?

Mt. Amasa - 360 ° panorama

Bamba and Eli were very happy playing around in the snow:

Come kitty kitty

I was supposed to seawatch off Jaffa again this morning, but the Ayalon highway leading to Tel Aviv got flooded this morning and traffic became impossible. So I headed to Ashkelon instead. Wind was slower but the waves were bigger and visibility was rather poor. Much fewer birds today; In two hours I had only a couple of Yelkouan Shearwaters, one Kittiwake, one distant Gannet and an adult Mediterranean Gull. This seems to be a good winter for kittiwakes in Israel.

Good seawatch

We are experiencing a major westerly weather system here ion Israel; at least in the northern half of the country this is expected to be the system of the century, percipitation-wise. It is supposed to peak tomorrow night, and still bring gale-force winds and lots of rain and snow until Friday. Today when I got out of home the wind was blowing so hard I was afraid it's going to knock my car over. I managed to make it to Jaffa driving through serious weather, but when I got there the wind was slower and visibility was quite OK for most of the time. I also expected the sea to be much higher, but the waves were not too bad. I joined Shachar A. and Igal M. for a couple of enjoyable hours before I had to leave for some meetings in my main office in Tel Aviv. It was a big day for Yelkouan Shearwater - we had at least 300 (!) by the time we left at noon. They passed south in small to medium groups. I tried very hard to find a short-winged, pale-faced one among them, but not today. Maybe tomorrow. One sooty was the only other shearwater we had. Other highlight was five Kittiwakes - a good rarity in Israel; this is one of the highest daily counts in Israel. We had about 10 skuas, most distant but one closer bird was a pomarine. 5-6 Gannets, some Pallas's Gulls, and a Peregrine that tried its luck on shearwaters.

Black-legged Kittiwake - 1cy

Dutch Wild Ass

Spent the day birding with my good feind Gert Ottens from Holland. We started off early at Hameishar. Again birding was fantastic there. This is the best place in Israel to see Asian Wild Ass, and indeed we found four beasts - a lifer for Gert. Also good numbers of Dorcas Gazelles - about 20.

As in my previous visit, most inpressive were Asian Desert Warblers - I counted 30 (!) just along a 1 km long section of the main road, including many goups of threes and fours together, chasing wheatears. Incredible.

Asian Desert Warbler

Like all other birds there, feeding on caterpillars (see the second bird in the background?)

Also several Spectacled Warblers around, including one male that started display-flight singing.

Spectacled Warbler 

Lots of wheatears feeding on the caterpillars. I was especially happy to have this stonking male Hooded Wheatear - my first proper images:

  

Pity the servo AF didn't work well:

Caterpillars

Very good lark activity too: 40 temmincks (some singing and displaying males already), 1 thick-billed, many bar-tailed, some greater and lesser short-toed plus commoner species.

Temminck's Lark

Other birds included many Spotted and Crowned Sandgrouse, and some Tawny Pipits.

Now what's the Dutch Ass thing all about? So Gert is one of the founders and organizers of the famous Deception Tours. And they have this kind of gag sticking deception tours stickers in bizzare places and photographing them. That's what Gert did this morning.

On the way back home we had a look at Urim area. Both birders and birds were in siesta-mode, so we didn;t see much. Still 20 Sociable Lapwings:

And this huge adult callidus Peregrine - note the white, faintly barred underparts, relatively narrow and pointed moustache, and huge size.