Day and night

Last night I decided to take advantage of the abundance of waders and small moon; I organized a good team (Yotam, Ora, Hiller, Shlomo and Yosef) and we went mistnetting in the muddy Ashdod ponds. Night conditions were different from the morning, with fewer and more scattered birds, but the main pool was still good enough. we set our nets up quickly and by dusk everything was ready. We kept going until 23:00. We didn't catch too many birds, but we had a very good variety. Commonest species of course was Little Stint. I was happy to catch the single Broad-billed Sandpiper I saw in the morning. Such a great bird! Its bill is so unique.

Broad-billed Sandpiper

Another good bird for these inland ponds was this juv Turnstone. Again, I had only one in the morning, and we managed to trap it!

In the morning I did not see any Kentish Plovers at all, but we caught one - an adult.

Kentish Plover

We had one adult Dunlin too, losing its black belly:

Though present in large numbers, we had only two Ringed Plovers:

Of the tringas we had one Redshank:

And four Wood Sandpipers:

And this Spur-winged Plover added some colour:

Not quite a bird, this Kuhl's Pipistrelle was a real sweety:

After a short sleep, I returned in the early to my CES for 'normal' ringing. It was pretty good, with Willow Warblers dominating the catch. Two Tree Pipits were nice:

Early morning migrants included many Ortolans and Tree Pipits.

The gulls are back

Beware: this is going to be a long post, which is surprising bringing into account the crap images. I appologize to all the gullophobes, but from now until March this blog will be flooded with gull stuff.

This morning I had some time between meetings to check the Ashdod ponds. Eventually this was not enough, as the ponds were packed with birds. On the way in I saw some Baltic Gulls sat near the rubbish dump, in classic poses:

In the ponds themselves I had 50 adult Baltic Gulls in one group:


All gulls were in a similar moult stage, with P1-2 or only P1 replaced, all the others unmoulted:

Among the baltics I had one juv. Armenian Gull and my first Siberian Gull of the season - a large, powerful bull:

It showed the typical suspended moult of this form. It had P1 to P6 moulted, and P7 to P10 unmoulted. Interestingly, its right wing was much more worn than its left wing (see worn primary tips in above image). It is quite difficult to see the moult in this image but I checked it well in the field.

What a beast!

I was happy to find our first ring of the season, CV21 which is back again for its fourth year, this time earlier than ever. Here is an image of it from last year.

There were tons of waders, with hundreds of Ringed Plovers, Little Stints and different tringas.

Ringed Plover - 1cy

Many of the stints were juveniles, with their crisp rufous-fringed plumage.

Little Stint - juvenile

There were about 10 Temminck's Stints, this adult already in full winter plumage:

I tried really hard, and scanned the waders again and again and again, but could not produce anything more interesting than single Broad-billed and Curlew sands, and a Turnstone. No sharp tails, no buff breasts, no long toes, no red necks...

Among the tringas, Marsh Sands showed in pretty good numbers, about 15:

I even tried to turn this Squacco Heron into an indian pond but even that didn't work:

There were good numbers of Turtle Doves on the move, many coming down for a drink in the ponds.

Good numbers of passerines were present too, mainly Yellow Wagtails and Willow Warblers. This is an adult male feldegg which is still the commonest form:

And this is a 1cy feldegg (note the difference in greater coverts pattern from the adult above):

Black-winged Kite Nizzana

This morning I went ringing in an alfalfa field near Nizzana, where the Black winged Kite has been hanging around for almost two weeks now. I was joined by Ron, Elon, Darren and Nimrod. Ringing was busy and with good variety, more about it below.
Anyway, the kite showed up just as we finished setting the last net, and immediately started hovering over the field.

Soon it discovered our mistnets and was very pleased with the new perches we erected for it in the field:

It is such a great bird. Even though I've seen it a couple of times before in Israel, it's always a fascinating bird to watch. Its' hovering and gliding are so unique.

So as I said ringing was good, with 145 birds in total. Nothing groundbreaking but lots of good stuff. Most impressive were Marsh Warblers - we had 16 birds, which is possibly a national record (Hadoram mentions 14 in his book from the 1980's), almost like Ngulia... We had many Reed and Sedge, 12 Savi's, and 16 Willow Warblers. Out of the 24 Yellow Wagtails, four were beema with a very broad white supercilium, pale ear coverts, very white below and rasping 'eastern'-type calls. Other birds of note were three Isabelline Wheatears and a Garden Warbler.

Isabelline Wheatear

While ringing we couldn't ignore the hundreds of sandgrouse that came in to drink in the nearby ponds. Among all four species, 40 or so Crowned Sandgrouse were nice. Three Tree pipts were flying around, my first for the season. After ringing we had a quick look at the ponds after the sandgrouse had finished drinking. The ponds produced three Collared Pratincoles, a Temminck's Stint and three Namaqua Doves.

What a terrific day, and thanks to all the guys for the hard work!

Ma'agan Michael

Yesterday I spent the morning at Ma'agan Michael. I joined Itai, Ohad, Yosef and Francis to practice on a new net I am planning to use for gulls in Ashdod this winter. Setting the net was quite easy, and then we had the whole morning to sit around and wait for terns to land in our catching area; of course none did so. But in the meanwhile quite a few birds amused us on the beach.
This moulting adult Sanderling was almost pretty in the golden morning sun.

Sanderling

Among the several hundred terns there were 3 Gull-billed Terns. This juvenile was still being fed by a parent and was often begging.

Gull-billed Tern

While sitting around I wasted batteries and memory space on terns flying up and down the beach. 500 mm is really not the adequate lens for this type of photography.

Common Tern - juvenile

Common Tern - adult

This moulting adult Grey Plover was distant most of the morning but just before we left it got closer.

Grey Plover

I managed to read a few of Yosef's colour rings. First is IKP on a common, then PP on a little.

Night beast

After three years of ringing bloody warblers like an idiot at my site in Ashdod, at last I figured out how to set a net across the Lakhish stream, and started catching some big waterbirds.
Yestrerday I had a very good ringing session. We caught two (stupid) juvenile Night Herons - big beasts...

This is Shlomo my loyal volunteer:

We caught this terrific Pied Kingfisher:

And about 10 Common Kingfishers, that are always amusing to show to the kids:

And yes, I still had bloody warblers, quite many in fact. 6 Savi's Warblers were good. We had an adult Marsh Warbler. Note the short and pale claws, the thick bill and the long and pointed wing:

Marsh Warbler

There were quite a few Willow Warblers, and I expect to get some big numbers of these long-distance migrants in the next few weeks.

Willow Warbler