Milestone celebrations

Today I celebrated a special milestone, 1000 days of consecutive birding. In 2019 I started my participation in eBird’s Checklist-a-Day-Challenge. I elaborated by increasing my effort, not only submitting any checklist, but by actually going birding every day. I developed my personal definition of meaningful birding – at least 30 minutes of proper birding, fully absorbed in birding, with binoculars around my neck. On August 15^th 2019, while I was in the UK for a family visit, I had a one-day glitch that disrupted a 234-days long streak, and started counting again. Since August 16^th 2019 I have birded properly every day, and today was my 1000^th day. This streak has taken me through the entire COVID-19 pandemic… Now, birding and eBird is solidly a part of my being – I just have to go birding every day, and I hope I always will.

I celebrated this birding milestone by an early morning visit with my dog Bamba to my very local patch, Nahal Ekron. My alarm rang at 05:30, I started birding at 05:49. I walked 0.84 km one way, and then walked back the same route. 

The track takes me along the Ekron stream, that runs here in a ditch and has reeds growing on the shoulders. There are some scattered trees on the shoulders, and adjacent gardens of houses flanking the stream are attractive to birds too. The annual vegetation has mostly dried up by now. The walk one way and then back took me 54 minutes, which is longer than my average, because today I carried my camera and spent few minutes on photography. I normally don’t carry my camera when I visit my local patch. Today I decided to carry it, to celebrate the milestone and also because yesterday I had a close camera-less encounter with a Little Bittern, and had to make do with a ropey phone photo taken through my bins.

It was an OK morning session (eBird checklist here), a solid 40 species, without any crazy highlights but a few things that made me happy:

·       There were many babies out today, including my first-of-year Red-rumped Swallow, Goldfinch and Linnet. Linnets breed in nearby vineyards and orchards; a family party flew over the stream.

·       A large mulberry tree and adjacent huge Blue Jacaranda were full of warblers, higher-than-average numbers of Blackcap and some Garden Warblers too. There were two Barred Warblers (not Two-barred Warblers) flying in and out of the tree. They were too quick, or I was too slow, so this is the only reasonable photo I managed of one of them, likely a young female. The number of warblers seemed higher than normal, representing the massive migration experienced in different parts of the country.

·       Swifts! I love swifts. My love of swifts perhaps isn’t so strongly expressed as Hanna’s, but they certainly make me very happy with their utter awesomeness.

THEY ARE BACK! THE FIRST 4 SWIFTS HAVE RETURNED! #WELCOMEHOME #swifts pic.twitter.com/ZaqbbetiaI

— Hannah Bourne-Taylor (@WriterHannahBT) May 8, 2022

·       This soundtrack:

Then in the afternoon I submitted another checklist. It was my grandmother's memorial anniversary - she passed away 27 years ago. My family gathered in the main cemetery of Jerusalem, including my brother. This cemetery is not very well vegetated so there weren't many birds. Yet, the Linnets there made me happy, and sad - perhaps one of the last pairs breeding in Jerusalem; they used to be much more widespread. Alpine Swifts, Short-toed eagle, a Willow Warbler hoouiting, it was OK I guess. eBird checklist here. Does anyone else record birds during memorial services?

Quality timing

A few more days of birding produced some pretty good stuff. Yesterday, while I was heading towards our main offices in Tel Aviv for meetings, Yuval Dax alerted of a Great Snipe he had just ringed. Luckily, it was a short detour for me, so I was on site very quickly to see the bird before release. Top class bird - I have been trying to find one in recent weeks without success. Well done to Yuval and thanks for letting me and Jonathan join in and enjoy the bird.

This morning I did more fieldwork in batha habitat north of Jerusalem. Weather was unstable and overcast, and bird activity was pretty low - birds were very quiet and kept a low profile. Still I managed to find breeding proof of most priority breeding species (Long-billed Pipit, Spectacled Warbler, Cretzschmar's Bunting), saw both Rock Sparrows, and a mobile Upcher's Warbler that was clearly a migrant. I did not photograph a single bird this morning, did a bit better with common butterflies:

Levantine Marbled White - male, super abundant

Clouded Yellow

On the way out I was surprised by a large, dark falcon flying low over the road. I pulled over dangerously, got the bins and camera out - dark morph Eleonora's Falcon! I was really excited - not so rare in Israel, especially now, but this was the first individual I photographed. Light conditions were horrible, sadly...

3cy (?) dark morph Eleonora's Falcon

After a couple of flybys it headed north - unbelievably (for me) I managed to get a sharpish photo of it a mile away:

On the way home I made a quick midday stop at the JBO, which was actually whopping with birds (eBird checklist here), possibly due to the weather change. I was there just after the morning ringing session had ended, so unsurprisingly many of the birds present were ringed. Up till now it's been an awful season for Olive-tree Warbler in Israel. While an average early May visit to JBO should produce double figures, this year only two were ringed so far. Yet I managed to see one - an important year tick... Sadly I forgot to change camera settings after my Eleonora's encounter, so most images I took came out useless. Only few I managed to salvage.

Barred Warbler

Common Nightingale

Thrush Nightingale

Good to meet up with Avner and Shlomi.

Back to the hills

After the short Cypriot break, I resumed fieldwork in the Batha hills north of Jerusalem. On Thursday I surveyed some higher-elevation hills. While bird densities were somewhat low, perhaps due to higher levels of anthropogenic disturbance, I did find most expected breeding species including Long-billed Pipit, Cuckoo, many Eastern Black-eared Wheatears and Cretzschmar's bunting. As expected at these higher elevations, there was quite good activity of Woodlark - top quality bird IMO.

That wing pattern

Zoothera Lark!

Also Spectacled Warblers were pretty active and showed nicely, though light was a bit harsh:

On Prickly Thornet (Sarcopoterium spinosum)

With Red Everlasting (Helichrysum sanguineum) bottom right

Despite the near-shrubless habitat, there were hordes of Blackcaps in the low bushes, and Ortolans, mainly on the move but some came down to drink in puddles:

Black-veined White are very common in this habitat:

Pyramidal Orchid is one of the latest-flowering orchids in Israel:

Yesterday in the afternoon I visited Gazelle Valley in Jerusalem with Piki and my brother. We searched without success for a Great Snipe that is still there. Big numbers of swifts were impressive - those ultra-aerobats drinking in the main pond against the sun provided some photographic opportunities that I barely grasped:

Gazelle Valley eBird checklist here.

Today was super-productive at my local patch and at home. I had a Little Bittern surprise me in the garden while hanging up laundry, and a Red-footed Falcon flew over.  An early morning visit to my patch, Nahal Ekron (see checklist here) produced the goods - Little and Spotted Crake, Little Bittern and Barred Warbler on a fantastic Mulberry tree that also hosted 2 Golden Orioles.

The Bee Gees

Arad really insisted that the title of this post will be 'The Bee Gees'. First of all, it's his favourite band, and I think they represent many aspects of Arad's personality. But more important, while ringing at Ashdod this morning we used more 2.8 mm rings (BG) than we usually do. They went mainly on Sprossers - we had 29 (almost Ngulia numbers...), but also we had three Barred Warblers and one Olive-tree Warbler.

It was a very busy morning with big numbers (220 in total) of 16 species; unfortunately I had to leave early while we were still trapping well. Mainly Blackcaps, Lesser Whites, Sprossers and Reed Warblers. None were really dominant which made ringing more fun but punching the data in much more difficult. It was nice to catch one Marsh Warbler.

In the field, three Little Bitterns, Little Crake and Water Rail kept dodging our nets the whole morning. Some Levants were seen taking off in the morning.

Many thanks to Arad, Miriam and Roei for their hard work this morning.

Barred Warbler - 2cy male

Olive-tree Warbler

The Bee Gees - image taken from their Wikipedia page

Good autumn ringing

This morning I did my monthly ringing demonstartion at Ashdod. As in my previous visit, ringing was very busy with a great fall of Chiffchaffs and many other species too. We worked hard!
Early in the morning I first heard and then caught this Common Waxbill (another bird was flying around but didn't get caught). Both were certain escapees - they had funny rings on them. This species colonized parts of southern Europe recently, interesting to see whether it does the same here.

Common Waxbill

A nice surprise was this extremely late Barred Warbler (1cy male; most pass through Aug - Sep):

Early in the morning a small flock of seven Penduline Tits was caught - such great birds!

Quality warblers at Ashdod

Yesterday and today I had very productive ringing at Ashdod, with strong passerine migration. Of course warblers were the dominant group, but among the tons of rubbish blackcaps there were some good warblers too.
Olive-tree Warblers pass in large numbers through central Israel these days, but are rather scarce along the Med coast. This was the first for my site. It really refused to pose nicely for the camera:

Among the many Reed Warblers, I had this single Marsh Warbler. In autumn they pass through in good numbers along the coast in reedbeds, but in spring they are actually commoner in the scrubs of central Israel. Note how P2 falls nicely between P3/P4, creating a vert pointed wingtip.

I had good numbers of Barred Warblers:

And this Great Reed Warbler was as fat as it could get - 41 grams!

Ashdod ringing

Yesterday I had a productive ringing session at Ashdod, with big numbers, good diversity and excellent weather. Best birds were several Barred Warblers, Nightingales and Sprossers.

Barred Warbler - adult male

Male Prinias are very attractive during breeding with their black bills:

JBO iz da best!

The JBO is really at it's best these days. An early start produced two goodies - first this fine adult Long-eared Owl:

Yotam is still half asleep:

And then a 2cy male Eurasian Nightjar - what a terrific bird:

It agreed to pose for a minute on a stump before it flew to roost:

Later in the morning a good and varied catch, with birds of note being two Savi's and four Barred Warblers:

This Garden Warbler was nice too:

Other good stuff included a Balkan Warbler, many Sprossers, a few Masked Shrikes and lots of other stuff.