Eastern Red-rumped Swallow!

Yesterday (January 30th, 2025) news broke of an Eastern red-rumped Swallow at IBRCE Eilat, found by the excellent young IBRCE team members, Zvi Schwarzfuchs and Noah Konopny. If accepted, this will become the 4th record in Israel. It's a great record but certainly expected - surely more to come, now that they had been split and more attention is paid to late-autumn and overwintering red-rumped swallows, their numbers increasing in recent years. 

This morning (January 31st) I left with Rony Livne early. We arrived at IBRCE at dawn, joined a few other birders who made the long way down to Eilat, and immediately sunk our teeth into the huge hirundine flock up in the air. There were hundreds of Western House-Martins flying over the park, close and far, low and high up. They were joined by quite a few Barn Swallows and Pale Crag-Martins. With the low light, every pale rump looked promising, but after almost two hours of intensive searching we failed to relocate it. Our motivation levels deflated as we started to accept the painful dip. 

Finally, around 08:30 Micha Mandel suspected he saw it briefly, then I spotted it hawking over one of the lakes - bingo! Bimbo! We quickly called all the others and everyone had great views of this smart little vagrant. It hawked for insects around us for a long time, sometimes at arms length, so close we could almost touch it. With all the other hirundines flying around with it, it was actually quite spectacular. The heavy streaking on the breast and also on the belly were very prominent in the field. The rump seemed very deep rufous, and the connection between the dark cap and the dark mantle was obvious - no pale collar visible. Also the face was dark and streaked. Compared to the fantastic field views, photographing it was a very different story. We didn't spend too much time trying - I'm sure that with more time I'd get better results. Luckily it landed on a tree briefly which allowed some decent shots to be taken. 

I failed to get any proper flight shots - most of my photos depicted blurred blobs. Still, I got record shots, and great views, and an Israeli tick - my first in 2025. 

Bloody branch got in the way but you get the point

Fun in the Golan

Since the northern ceasefire went into effect a few weeks ago, birders returned to northern Israel and started finding lots of great birds. It was tormenting for me to see all these wonderful reports come in, without being able to travel north. Yesterday I had to get away, after weeks of intense personal stuff and work overload. I left early with Jonathan and Rony. Climbing up the Golan heights from the Hula Valley after dawn was breathtaking. I missed this region so much.

It was very cold up Mt. Bental, and at first bird activity was low. At least it was very beautiful up there.

Slowly the sun climbed out of the cloud, temperatures rose and birds became more active. We met up there with Barak and Uri. We first found a couple of sweet Red-fronted Serins, then we had several more, total of about eight. That's a good number for Israel. Sadly all the serins I saw were very mobile and I didn't manage to get any decent photos of them.  The stars of the morning were two Radde's Accentors that have been hanging around there for a couple of weeks. Great to see this rare birds - I haven't seen one in Israel since 2011. They were not easy to see, but eventually I managed a half-decent photo.

I also enjoyed the nice numbers of Rock Buntings there, I find them pretty in the pastel-toned winter plumage.

We left Mt. Bental satisfied (eBird checklist here), and headed south. A stop at Mt. Bnei Rasan wasn't very productive and the wind picked up, so we continued further south towards Meitzar Reservoir, where a Red-wattled Lapwing had taken residnce in the last few months. We found it quickly, hanging out with Spur-wings on some rough ground. These are my first photos of this rarity in Israel. I did see one briefly in early 2024 in the Hula valley but all I managed that morning was a sound recording as it flew past me in thick fog.

We descended from the Golan Heights via Susita, where we had four Crag Martins, and a Blackstart - this is a northern range extension for this desert species in Israel. Every northern Big Day we do we visit Susita for Blackstart and a few other species.