Safari birding

In the morning headed to the Safari park near Tel Aviv to collect a Pallas's Gull that had been treated at the NPA wildlife hospital there, and was ready to be released back to freedom. Before entering the hospital I had a look at the gull flock there. I found four of my colour-ringed yellow-legs. The adult yellow-legs are getting horny now - note how bright yellow the legs and bill have become. In this image appears a bird I ringed as pullus in summer 2010, hence it's in its fourth calendar-year. Also, note the Siberian Gull in the back, just to the right of the hippo nose...

Safari scenes

Quite many ducks on the lake - wild but very tame.

Shoveler

I released the Pallas's Gull at Ashdod - what a stunning bird. A real bird (according to Andy's standards (-:). It flew off well immediately (good job NPA hospital staff!), called several times and out of nowhere appeared two more Pallas's Gulls that joined my bird. I know this is personification but the bird looked very happy to be free again, after a month in hospital. Hope it makes it back to Kazakhstan safely.

Pallas's Gulls 

Hume's Warbler!

This morning I went to try and ring the Hume's Warbler I found near my house, to confirm its ID. I tried and succeeded. I was joined by Roni Livne. In fact during the first two hours of the morning we heard it several times but didn't manage to see it at all. Until finally it made its way into my net.

This is a sweet little bird. Pretty bright on secondaries fringes, and rather extensive pale lower mandible, but otherwise quite typical looking - greyish above, buffish supercilium, tiny MC wingbar, narrow and ill-defined tertial edges, dark legs. The forehead is dirty from sticky eucalyptus pollen.

Hume's Warbler (Phylloscopus humei)

While setting the nets up before dawn I had a male Eagle Owl singing next to me for about an hour: "uhhh... uhhh... uhhh...". What a bird. A 'real' bird, not like the above.

And another real bird: 

Lesser Spotted Eagle 

Thanks Roni for the help.

Micro-pelagic

This morning I went out to sea with the NPA marine team - Yatir and Alex. They are conducting monthly transects looking mainly for cataceans and sharks, but birders are always welcome on their dingy. Sea was quite calm today, so my breakfast didn't end up as fish food this time. We left Ashkelon and travelled four miles out into the sea, then headed north for about 10 miles and then returned south closer to the coast. We didn't find any marine mammals or sharks, only had some tuna and jellyfish. Birdwise, it was rather slow too. Apart for some gulls and Sandwich Terns, we had one Yelkouan Shearwater, two fly-by Gannets, and several Pallas's Gulls. Adults are really smart already with their black hood. Thanks to Yatir and Alex, looking forward to the next trips.

Yelkouan Shearwater

Pallas's Gull

Frontier birding!

Two examples of how useful it is to have your phone with you while spending time with family:

On January 21st I went walking with my younger son in the eucalyptus forest behind my house. I had a pipit high in the canopy, and without my bins I could see nothing on it. It gave some calls that were OK for Olive-bcked Pipit - but I wasn't sure as they were of the more difficult tree-pipit-like type. I got a terrible recording with my phone - but it was good enough for Martin Garner to confirm it was an OBP - village tick of course. How cool is that? This is what MG wrote: "The pitch reaches up to 8 kHz and has fading quality to it - just like an OBP. Tree Pipit pitches around 7 kHz and has strongly modulated end with less fading", Thanks Martin - also for the sonogram.

Olive-backed Pipit, Nir Moshe, Israel, 21 January 2013

And then, this afternoon I was having a picnic in the same forest near my house. Again, no bins. Just before heading home in the afternoon, heard a Hume's Warbler calling from a nearby Carob tree. I couldn't see the bird but got the phone out again - slightly better quality this time (thanks Barak). Again, village tick! Will try to see it tomorrow.

Hume's Warbler, Nir Moshe, Israel, 9 February 2013

A Turk, a Faroese and an Israeli went birding in the desert...

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke? Well it was quite good. Met up this morning with Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu and Silas Olofson in the Judean Desert. They have been birding in southern Israel for the past week, and had a great trip up till now. We birded in Wadi Mishmar which was OK. Not too busy but some good stuff among the commoner desert species. Highlights included Cyprus Warbler, some Sinai Rosefinches and a singing Striolated Bunting heard. The guys stayed after I had left, hope they managed to see it. Unusually, I didn't manage to get any proper bird image worth uploading. So instead - here's Silas:

NL day 5 - proper birding at last!

At last had time today for a full day of proper birding. Left early with Gert and Reinoud Vermoolen and we headed west to Zeeland. We met there Pim Wolf. Pim is just awesome - he really knows every bird and stone on Zeeland (though there are no stones on Zeeland). 

We started off at the beach of Brouwersdam, despite the wind and cold. No sign of the hoped-for Great Northern Diver but lots of seaducks and divers. Highlights for me included two Long-tailed Ducks (male and female) that gave much better views than my previous bird, but still difficult to phtograph. Also five Velvet Scoters with the many commons, about 15 Slav Grebes, one Black-throated Diver among the numerous reds and two distant Ruddy Shelducks. Later on we found some Purple Sandpipers feeding on the rocky seawall - they are such tough little shorebirds. I really enjoyed watching this obliging individual fighting the waves.

Purple Sandpiper 

Something for my Israeli followers:

Common Goldeneye

And for gullers:

argenteus Herring Gull 2cy

We continued working our way through the island, where we encountered huge numbers of geese. This was the goosiet day I've ever had. We had in total today 9 proper species of goose and another two plastic species. So at first we started scanning through the large flocks of white-fronts, barnacles, brent and bean. We found one Pink-footed, and then we found two Pale-bellied Brents at Scharendijke - here's a record shot of one of them:

Pale-bellied Brent (center)

We continued birding and enjoyed a selection of geese, ducks and shorebirds, and some groups of Bewick's and Whooper Swans. Especially productive were the Polders south of Burgh-Haamstede. We had there some Hen Harriers, a Goshawk and best - a superb adult Black Brant. Much better than the two hybrids I had in the UK! Look at this full collar, almost connecting in the back of the neck. Also note how much the dark belly extends beyond the belly, and the solid dark mantle.

Black Brant - adult

A bit east of Burgh-Haamstede we found this fine adult Rough-legged Buzzard as it was fighting the wind for some minutes. Great views but light was shit. 

 Rough-legged Buzzard

This is the best I managed to get of the uppertail pattern:

After we said goodbye to Pim, we headed to Oudeland van Strijen in very poor weather. Again tons of geese. Couldn't find the red-breasted that was showing there in the morning - I guess perhaps we were reluctant to work the geese outside of the car because of the rain. We did manage to locate two Lesser White-fronts though - good views but again poor light conditions so the images don't do them any justice - they are very smart-looking geese.

Lesser White-fronted Goose

On the way back home checked the lake at Barendrecht but for the first time in eight winters the Bufflehead didn't show. Bummer.

But nevermind - it was a great day, good company, weather could have been better but could have been worse also. Tomorrow I return home - looking forward to some warm sunny weather. Many thanks to all of my friends and colleagues in UK & NL - BTO, Sovon, DBA, Gert, Martin, Tristan, Tormod, Chris, Nick, Andy, Rob, Vincent, Arjan, Reinoud and Pim are just few of the great people I met - you all made this trip highly successful and so much fun.