Eilat Festival day 2 - difficult morning, good afternoon

This morning I led a tour for the festival. We started off at the IBRCE. On the lagoons we had some gulls and shorebirds, and a Caspian Tern. At the ringing station it was very very slow, but still we had a nice selection of migrants, including one Balkan Warbler. Thanks to the ringing team for their efforts and for not wearing pink T-shirts today.

Then went up to the mountains. We had unstable weather today which meant we had zero raptor migration. From the mountains I looked back down into the valley and the weather looked awful down there with so much dust in the air, so I decided to stay up in the mountains for some desert birding. We arrived at Uvda Valley when it was pretty hot already. A nice green patch produced some migrants, and two breeding pairs of Spectacled Warbler. But most fascinating was a large flock of locusts that settled on this green patch. They have already transformed into the adult, yellow form, and indeed we saw many locusts mating. This is pretty bad news for farmers but good news for migrants that will have many caterpillars to feed on in a couple of weeks... 

Then we walked across the desert a bit to look for some larks, but saw few birds. I had distant flight views of two Bimaculated Larks, and heard a Lesser Short-toed Lark, but my clients weren't able to connect with any of these. We say quite many Water and Tawny Pipits, and eventually we had some low-migrating Steppe Eagles and Steppe Buzzards but in very small numbers. For me as a leader it was a pretty tough morning but if I read the description above it seems like a pretty good morning.

Adult Desert Locust

In the afternoon checked the very productive canal north of the cowsheds. I had a pretty good time with three Citrine Wagtails, including a cracking male, two Little Crakes, White-tailed Lapwing (I briefly saw the other one south of IBRCE so there are two for sure), Caspian Stonechat, some Savi's Warblers and quite many common migrants such as Bluethroats, Lesser Whites and Chiffchaffs.

Citrine Wagtail

 Caspian Stonechat

Bluethroat

Eilat Festival day 1 - new to science?

What a great first day! Drove down slowly to Eilat, very slowly... First I stopped near Sde Boker to check a site for more Hill Sparrows. Along the way saw some Steppe Eagles on the move.

Steppe Eagle with Brown-necked Raven

I checked a site that held Hill Sparrows in previous invasion years, and indeed also today there were some singing males there. I've photographed enough of them recently, so today I sound-recorded them. Most males gave the normal song:

But one male gave a weird song, I have never heard anything like that before, nor managed to find anything mentioned in literature about this song-type. It's a tri- or disylabilic call, superficially similar to Cretzschmar's Bunting. 

On the way out of the wadi I managed to hit a rock and my car broke down. I had to wait there for two hours until a replacement car arrived. Thank god I have a leased car. Hope Eldan don't read my blog...

Finally I was on the move again. Made a quick stop at Neot Smadar which was amazingly dead (but also very hot and windy). Virtually no migrants around, but this petite female Namaqua Dove was nice to photograph:

Checked in at Hotel Agamim, said hello to the guys and headed out again. The old saltpans south of IBRCE were full of birds. How may species can you identify in this image? I can see 13.

Slender-billed, Caspian, Armenian, Baltic Gulls; Caspian and Gull-billed Tern; Black-winged Stilt, Ringed Plover, Spur-winged Lapwing, Greater Flamingo, Ruff, Little Stint, Redshank.

KM20 saltpans were OK too - some Marsh Sands and 3 Greater Sand-plovers in nice breeding plumage. Typically, columbinus acquires summer plumage very early.

Greater Sand-plover

Then went to have a look at the White-tailed Lapwing that had been present for the last week or so, in the ditch south of IBRCE. Nice bird.

White-tailed Lapwing 

Late afternoon at North Beach was very quiet; only some White-eyed Gulls were worth noting.

In the evening we had our opening event at the IBRCE. Great event, good food, free alcohol - not a bad way to end the first day...

Good night.

Eilat Festival promo & new Birding Map

Tomorrow I drive down to Eilat to guide for the 7th International Bird Festival. I've been waiting for this week for very long now - I really need this week of total birding, great company, posh hotel, good food (and no wife and kids...). I am sure we will have a superb week - nowhere in the WP beats Eilat in March. Looking forward to meet new and returning clients, and lots of old friends.

I will do my very best to upload daily summaries during the festival week. Each post means less sleep for me, but I feel obliged to do so. So please stay tuned!

Here are some birds we might expect during the week, and highlights from previous festivals:

Western Reef Egret

Pallid Harrier

 Little Crake

 'vittata' Pied Wheatear

Basalt Wheatear

Caspian Plover

Black Bush Robin

I am also very happy to announce the publication of a new map - Negev Birding Sites, produced by Meidad Goren of Ramat Negev Birding Center. This is a comprehensive and most up-to-date travel guide to the Negev; it provides so much useful information, and is really well-designed.

Festival guests will get a copy of the map, and during the week maps will be available at Hotel Agamim, where we're staying. For further info, contact Meidad: meidadgoren@gmail.com

Spring alive!

As I have mentioned earlier on, we're doing a breeding atlas in 'Batha' habitats (barren, rocky slopes) this spring. today I did an atlas box at Mt. Amasa, N of Arad. As I have also mentioned before, this is one of my favourite birding sites in March. Arrived very early and was greeted by a superb dawn chorus - Woodlarks, Linnets, Eastern Black-eared Wheatears, Rock and Hill Sparrows. When there was enough light I started walking the slopes. I found some species pretty advanced in breeding: Spectacled Warblers with fledglings, Rock Sparrows and Little Owls with active nests.

Spectacled Warbler - male

Spectacled Warbler on Phlomis platystegia bush

Phlomis platystegia is a dominant bush in this area, though it has a rather restricted range. Such pretty landscape.

Eastern Black-eared Wheatears were very active; I had 14 singing males - very good density. They are amazing mimics. I saw no females at all. Incubating?

Eastern Black-eared Wheatear

Still some Finsch's Wheatears around - I had four males and this female:

Finsch's Wheatear - female

Other interesting breeding species I had were Long-billed Pipit (pair), singing Eurasian Cuckoo, singing Cretzschmar's Bunting, three pais of Rock Sparrows, four singing Hill Sparrows, four pairs of Little Owl (nominates), two pairs of Scrub Warblers, breeding Blue Rock Thrush - very good species composition in this special habitat.

Scrub Warbler

They are cool little birds aren't they?

Not too many migrants around; 4-5 Rueppel's Warblers represented a good migration wave through S Israel these days.

Rueppel's Warbler

Eyed Tulip (Tulipa agenensis)

Palestinians crossing the border to poach herbs from the Nature Reserve create a serious conservation concern. They are mainly after Gundelia tournefortii, which has entered our Red List as a result of this poaching.

Nearby, at Tel Arad NP, Gilead Irises (Iris loessicola) are flowering.

In the afternoon I located a HUGE locust swarm on my way to Noam's kindergarten., some minutes away from my house. I was in a hurry and had no camera with me... but it was an amazing sight.

Hill Sparrows

Spent another day in the Negev looking for new locust swarms and searching for poisoned birds. Today the locust swarms moved further north towards the N Negev, so fewer locusts in the Nizzana region. Had no dramatic discoveries but birding was pretty good despite the heat. There's a lovely green patch at  30.966537° N 34.491512° E, along a route diverging north from route 211. In this small patch I had loads of migrants, mainly lesser whites and chiffchaffs, but also one male Subalpine Warbler, 5-6 Rueppell's, 1 Siberain Stonechat, 10 Quail, some larks, Savi's Warbler, some Bluethroats, 50 Desert Finches, 1-2 Hill Sparrows. Very cool.

I had today Hill Sparrows singing and displaying in several sites. Some were very confiding, but light conditions were shit. We are experiencing a large-scale breeding invasion into large parts of the Negev, I guess similar in its magnitude to what we had in 2010.

Hill Sparrow

Desert bloom

'Lovely Green Patch' 

Birds of Kuwait

A few days ago I received a copy of the newly-released Birds of Kuwait. I got it from my good friend Mike Pope, co-editor of the book. This a superb book - fantastic images, and very interesting species accounts. Wish I could go birding in Kuwait - looks like such a great country for birding. Many thanks to Mike for the copy and congratulations for such an impressive production!