Arabian birds, friendly birds

Yesterday I went down to Hazeva in the northern Arava. I met up with Ayla Rimon who's leading the new birding center launched there. I worked with her on her monitoring goals for this year - we checked some optional monitoring sites etc. First of all good luck to Ayla with the new position! 

At Hazeva in winter, birds are few and far between, so you need to make the best out of each bird there. The study group working there on Arabian Babblers for several decades now, led by Prof. Amotz Zahavi,  has accustomed babblers and other birds. This gives incredible opportunities to study them from very close, almost like ringing. Many of them are colour-ringed for individual identification.

Arabian Babbler 

Ayla the Babbler Princess

Blackstart

Note the fine spiderwebs on the thorns...

Arabian Warblers, the rarest and one of the most important species of the region, managed to evade us all morning. Only just before noon we bumped into a couple - but they were very mobile and moved on quickly before I managed to properly photograph them:

Arabian Warbler

Judean Desert

Yesterday (27/12/09) I had a meeting at Neot Hakikar, so I took the morning to check Wadi Mishmar in the Judean Desert. I primarily went to check whether the Kurdish Wheatear that took up a territory there last winter had returned, but there was no sign of it. Actually there was nothing unusual, the only birds of note were 2 Spectacled Warblers, 1 Cyprus Warbler heard, and several Trumpeter Finches. So I had some time to study and photograph the common desert species. This Blackstart was very cooperative:

Of course many Tristram's Starlings were hanging around the car park, waiting for leftovers. this is a female:

As I got my breakfast out, these inquisitive Arabian Babblers came to check me out. This is a male with a juvenile. They actually had some luck with a piece of bread I dropped on the ground.

Other birds of this group went for the traditional desert cuisine - grub a-la-acacia.

And after food it's time for some social interaction. This one is for Amotz Zahavi:

After I walked away from my car, the whole group went to check it out:

This Desert Lark was nicely back-lit:

And this is a badly-exposed image of a white-crowned Wheatear in the strong desert light: