Mr. Snowden

Took some time off today to revisit Israel's first Snow Bunting at Acre. I saw it few hours after it was found last Friday, but it was pretty skittish and there were other twitchers on the way to see it so I kept my distance from it and came out with record shots only. Since then it has become very settled and tame, and it might spend the entire winter with us. Seeing images of my friends who came later on to see it, I had to return and improve my images. When I arrived at Acre in the morning the light was crap and it was very windy. As I got out of the car met Noam, Rami, Amir and Eran - they were watching the eclipse male Red-breasted Merganser very close to the carpark. After spending a few minutes with the merganser, I moved on to the bunting's patch. The bird was showing down to a ridiculous distance, feeding with no fear whatsoever. First it was feeding on the ugly concrete blocks, then it moved a few meters to feed on the ground on some bushes. After a while even the sun came out which was nice. This time I am more satisfied with my results...

Snow Bunting - 1cy male 

Red-breasted Merganser

Amir

Later on I was joined by Frank. I went with him to look for the Great Black-backed Gull for his Israeli list. We searched for it for a couple of hours but it didn't show. Some Pallas's Gulls were flying around though:

Slightly disappointed we went to have hummus at the famous Sa'eed Hummus bar. We then walked back to our cars. Just as I was saying goodbye to Frank, with the camera already inside the car, I noticed the GBBGull flying low overhead - classic!

Conservation birding

Today I went south to spend the day with our NPA partners. We met to discuss the promotion of four new protected areas in the Arava and southern Negev, that are extremely important and sensitive for ground-breeding birds. Data from the big atlas projects I coordinated in the Arava and Negev provided the infrastructure for this process. Hopefully after today we will be able to move things forward through the national planning system a bit faster.

So the day included mainly driving from hotspot to hotspot. All hotspots were in fact very cold (low temperatures and few birds) and we really didn't have any time for proper birding, but along the way we did collect some species. 

Early in the morning near wadi Hayun we had an outstanding number of Spotted Sandgrouse - 310! They were in several flocks all flying east. Here are 40 out of them:

Bumped into quite many Hooded Wheatears today, singles almost in every site we stopped at. 

Hooded Wheatear, female

We had also 25 Temminck's Larks, and one Asian Desert Warbler at KM76: 

On the way back stopped to have a look at the lovely 'Turkish' Black Redstart I had ringed last year at Mitzpe Ramon. Looks pretty similar, with the same white feathers on left cheek:

Thanks to Roy, Ohad, Shay, Ella and Yaeli for a great day out.

Last day of raptor monitoring - for now

Did today the raptor transect that was disrupted on Friday by the Snow Bunting. Worked in a military firing zone not far away from my house - excellent steppe / rangelands there. This area held the Tawny Eagle in August. Ezra found there three Little Bustards over the weekend but I couldn't relocate them today.

Raptor activity was good after the air heated up - 6 Imperial Eagles, 1 Short-toed Eagle (rare in winter), 2 Pallid Harriers, 1 Barbary Falcon again, 1 Merlin, many Common and Long-legged Buzzards etc.

Barbary Falcon - 1cy

 Eastern Imperial Eagle - adult

Pallid Harrier - adult female 

Short-toed Eagle

Common Buzzard

Isabelline Wheatear

Snow Bunting - first for Israel!

My morning began with more raptor monitoring in the N Negev, in very fine weather. Took my two sons with me. The first hour was nice with a few Imperial Eagles and a Barbary Falcon. But at 09:46 I got an excited phone call from Tuvia Khan - he had just found Israel's first Snow Bunting at Acre with David Kotter! I had to decide fast what to do, and I decided to postpone the raptor stuff till tomorrow, and go for the bunting. I dropped the kids at their grandparents' place, met up with Rami M and headed north to Acre. Quite a long drive but thank god Israel is a small country (and my car is fast...) - took me just about 2 hours to get there. When we got there a small group of twitchers and both finders were already on the bird. Very quickly we were on it too (relief...) as it was feeding on the rocks near the waters' edge. As there were more twitchers on their way, we kept our distance from the bird not to disturb it. Hence my long-distance record shots. During the two hours or so I was there the bird showed on and off, feeding on the rocks and on the sandy bits, and flying around a bit. After we left other photographers had better conditions - see this great video by Liron Ziv for instance. 

What a fantastic bird! Have seen them in N Europe several times before in summer and winter, but in Israel it's something else. Though not totally surprising (sort of annual in N Turkey in winter), this is a great find by Tuvia and David - congrats guys! Possibly this bird was driven south by the massive storm of last week.

Some of the first twitchers on site:

All the way from Holland for a bloody Snow Bunting?!?!

Acre beach is such a great site. Packed with birds and really under-birded. While we were there waiting around for the bunting to show I saw Yelkouan Shearwater, Arctic Skua, about 100 Golden Plovers, many gulls including 1cy Mediterranean, and lots more. Need to return soon for a full day.

More raptors and more mud

Continued my muddy raptor transects today. Today I did the Judean Lowlands. Best bird of the day was along the road driving there - a Pin-tailed Sandgrouse flying almost at the same speed I was driving along route 6, in a very northern location.

Raptor activity started off pretty slow (still very cold nights) but later on raptors started moving around more and I had quite many eagles (Greater Spotted, Eastern Imperial and Booted), buzzards (Common and Long-legged) and harriers (Marsh and Hen). Also two Peregrines. When I first saw this 1cy Common Buzzard my heart skipped a beat:

Part of a flock of 32 Golden Plovers:

In the resrvoirs many ducks, including good numbers of White-headed Ducks and some Ferruginous Ducks and Black-necked Grebes.

White-headed Ducks

White Wagtail

Thanks to Shimshon for the company in the morning.

Yesterday found this run-over Wild Cat (Felis silvestris, thanks Ezra) not too far away from my house, near Kiryat Gat. Erased some ugly intestines etc. from the image...

Mud monitoring

This morning I did my first raptor monitoring transect of the season, in the NW Negev. This area too received large amounts of rain recently, and as a result the tracks were terribly muddy. By the end of the day I was pretty exhausted of fighting the mud. Got bogged a few times, one of them seriuosly enough that I had to be pulled out of the mud by a tractor after another 4WD that tried to pull me out got bogged himself (thanks Harel and Itai).

But in between I did see some raptors and other birds along the 20 km transect.

Saker - 1cy

It seems that the Sakers that overwinter in NW Negev have very low survival rates as every year we have there almost solely fresh juveniles.

Other falcons I had were three Peregrines and one Merlin. I had three Eastern Imperial Eagles, two adults and a 1cy. This is an adult of course:

Buzzard numbers are lower this year compared to last winter - I had only 11 Long-legged Buzzards and 9 Common Buzzards.

Long-legged Buzzard - 1cy (pale eye), rufous morph

No pallids but four Hen Harriers:

Found the regular Sociable Lapwing flock but they were too deep inside a muddy field surrounded by muddy tracks, so gave up on the photo op. Had 11 Golden Plovers among the many Northern Lapwings:

Some nice mixed flocks of seedeaters including Goldfinches, Linnets and Spanish Sparrows: