Fire front!

This is our traditional July Hermon ringing weekend. For family reasons I could participate only in the first half, which was very good. Not huge numbers but some very good stuff. Highlight was this female Red-fronted Serin. Only the second ever to be ringed in Israel (I ringed the first at the same place in 2003) and a good winter rarity in Israel, it's extremely rare in summer but we've had some records on Mt. Hermon in recent decade. I believe it breeds quite close, perhaps on the E slopes of the Syrian part of Mt. Hermon. Of course we didn't find any breeding during our breeding atlas project. Unfortunately, like all adults this time of year, it was terribly worn and ragged; but still a good-looking bird! Stuck to its bill are remains of Creeping Cherry (Cerasus prostrata) - important food source for many high-altitude species this time of year.

Red-fronted Serin - 2cy female

I don't have the totals yet but it seems that Syrian Serin and Linnet were well represented. Goldfinch numbers were alarming low. Rock & Black-headed Buntings OK too I think. This adult Balkan Warbler might be from the local breeding population or an early migrant - they're on the move already:

Balkan Warbler

Rock Bunting

We had quite many Hill Sparrows coming down to drink but unfortunately none got caught.

Hill Sparrow

Alpine Swifts 

We normally open our nets early enough in the morning to catch a bat or two. This time we had a stunning  Long-eared Bat sp. (waiting for taxonomic updates from my bat friends).

Long-eared Bat sp. (Plecotus spp.)

Many thanks to the team members - Nadav, Gidon, Yosef, Ron, Re'a and all the others.

Hermon final day - Wuthering Heights

Last day of Mt. Hermon breeding bird atlas for this season today. After lots of difficulties with the military, at last managed to check one of Mt. Hermon's hotspots - Bul'an Valley, which is a high-altitude valley that extends into Syria. We worked in a good team today, and saw lots of birds. Birding there was so great - every bird was special.

Right as we started we bumped into a family of Crimson-winged Finches. Later on we had several more families.

Crimson-winged Finch

As we started walking down the valley we quickly heard singing Hill Sparrows. They normally breed in small numbers on Mt. Hermon, but today we had about 35 singing males and quite a few families - very high density.

Hill Sparrow

Bul'an Valley is one of the best sites for White-throated Robins. And indeed we found three breeding pairs, which brings the survey total to 11 pairs! First I saw a female chasing away a juvenile Great Spotted Cuckoo. Later on Asaf had another pair, and then I joined Dotan et al. who had found a very active pair feeding in the nest. We kept our distance away from them not to disturb their breeding. Hence the crap record shots.

White-throated Robin - male

White-throated Robin - female

Other goodies we had were several pairs of Upcher's Warblers, some families of Spectacled Warblers, Black-headed and Cretzschmar's Buntings, Tawny Pipit breeding and many more.

Quite good mammal activity too, with about 30 Wild Boar, including an impressive herd of 25, and some foxes and hares.

Wild Boar

Didn't find any snakes but had lots of other reptiles including this sweet little endemic - Hermon Bowfoot Gecko (Cyrtopodion amictopholis):

Very common was the near-endemic form Mt. Hermon Lizard (Lacerta laevis kulzeri)

We found this impressive grashopper, Ocneropsis bethlemita

The beautiful sage Salvia indica flowers now in vivid colours: 

  

 Lunar Landscape - Syria in the background

Many thanks to Nadav who organized the survey with me, and to all the extremely skilled field ornithologists who helped with fieldwork. Thanks to SPNI and Hoopoe Foundation for supporting this project.

Hermon day 3 - wind!

This week is difficult. Hard work and lots of logistic problems and difficulties - got back home and I'm really exhausted. Finally we got permission from the military to survey parts of the higher elevations. But as soon as we got up there our motivation crashed becuase a sensational wind was blowing - something like 100 km/h. This hampered our birding efforts of course - birds kept very low, and hearing was difficult. Photography was almost impossible. But eventually I managed to see some of the species I wanted to find and confirm breeding - we had fledglings of Crimson-winged Finch, Horned Lark and Hill Sparrow. Other stuff included Spectacled Warbler, and one flyover Raven. At only one spot we sort of enjoyed our birding - we found a small puddle in a relatively sheltered valley, and quite many seedeaters came in to drink, mainly Linnet and Syrian Serin. One juvenile Hill Sparrow came in briefly to drink but I was too slow with my camera.

Mammals included a close encounter with Wildcat, and Caucasian Snow Vole (Chionomys gud).

Horned Lark

Rock Sparrow

Syrian Serin - male

Northern Wheatear - the commonest and most prominent bird today in the higher elevations.

Today the civil war in Syria was more apparent. Rebel troops attacked the Syrian Army troops in the town of Qunetra, right on the Israeli border. At one point we sat and watched the was in front of us. I felt really weird, watching birds and flowers while just 20 km away a bloody was was going on. Crazy world.

Qunetra on fire

Thanks Heidi for the company and help this morning.

Breeding atlas stuff

As part of my breeding atlas project of the Batha habitat in the N Negev, I checked Mt. Khiran reserve this morning, E of Meitar. Sadly, even though it's protected as a nature reserve, habitat is strongly degraded there by overgrazing. But still I managed to see some quality birds. Most prominent were Spectacled Warblers - I had five families with fledglings. 

Spectacled Warbler - adult male 

Spectacled Warbler - recently-fledged juvenile

 Almost Tristram's Warbler but not quite...

I found no Long-billed Pipits, but I did have a singing and displaying Tawny Pipit. I will need to check for more signs of breeding later on in the season. In addition I found a nest of Black-eared Wheatears, and had two singing male Hill Sparrows - one was with a female on a nest. First breeding record for the greater Be'er Sheva region. Another good bird I had was a pair of Desert Larks.

 Hill Sparrow

Quite a cool recording from this morning - Hill Sparrow and Spectacled Warbler:

Eilat Festival day 3 - Nizzana

Led the Nizzana tour today with Meidad. Left Eilat at 04:00. We arrived at Nizzana a bit late but started seeing birds immediately. It took me about 10 seconds to locate a dancing male MacQueen's Bustard, and the next hour was truly magical - so many birds that the tour participants didn't know what to look at first. We had at the same spot two hilarious dancing bustards, four Cream-coloured Coursers attacked by a superb male Pallid Harrier, Asian Desert Warbler, and Pin-tailed and Black-bellied Sandgrouse. Overhead good migration started off - many raptors including Steppe, Lesser Spotted, Booted and Short-toed Eagles, Egyptian Vulture and Alpine, Pallid and Common Swifts went overhead. 

Egyptian Vulture

Then we started driving towards Ezuz, where we saw a huge take-off of White Storks (about 1000), some of them returned to drink in a small waterhole. Then they all took off, and were joined by a small group of Eurasian Cranes.

White Storks

White Storks and Eurasian Cranes

At about 09:30 the weather deteriorated and a dramatic sand storm began blowing hard, slowing our birding considerabely. However we stayed near that waterhole a little longer where we had quite many Hill Sparrows coming in to drink, with additional birds there being some large flocks of Spanish Sparrows, Cretzchmar's Bunting and Eastern Black-eared Wheatear.

Hill Sparrow

Spanish Sparrows

We checked some more sites near Nizzana. Didn't see too much else but found some Dorcas Gazelles, and had a nice group of Negev Iris.

Dorcas Gazelle

On the way back to Eilat we stopped at Sde Boker which was very productive. We had there typical desert species such as Arabian Babbler, Tristram's Starling, BlackStart etc. The babblers were really entertaining, hopping on the ground near us looking for grubs. A flyby Eurasian Griffon was cool just as we drove out. Got back to Eilat tired but very satisfied.

Arabian Babbler

Schwarzschwanz 

Rock Agama

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.

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.