Yelkouan Shearwater party

 As promised, here is a collection of photos I took of Yelkouan Shearwaters on Wednesday. I was standing at Palmahim and enjoying a fishing party, participated by hundreds of gulls and terns, and over 70 Yelkouan Shearwaters. As mentioned in the previous blogpost, this winter is special for Yelkouan Shearwaters. The numbers seen this winter are higher than average in recent decade or so - there have been many observations of large numbers, especially along the northern Mediterranean coast of Israel (check this eBird checklist by Itamar Donitza et al. for example). What's really unusual is the distance to shore. In normal years they are typically seen flying past at a fair distance from shore. This year they are often seen foraging very close to shore, giving fantastic opportunities to document them. This is what happened to me on Wednesday. The shearwaters joined the gull feeding flock, and were fishing very close to shore. Mostly around 40-50 m from shore, but some bolder individuals came as close as 20 m to shore. I have never seen anything like this in Israel before. I took close to 1000 photographs of them. I tried to document as much as I can the variation in their underwing and vent patterns. Besides the variation apparent in the intensity of darkness of axillaries, lesser coverts and vent; the impression of underwing pattern also depends on light conditions and angle. Additionally, I was also hoping to find a rarer shearwater among them, without success. I selected few photos to present here.

Well-marked individual, with dusky axillaries extending onto lesser coverts and dusky stuff on rear flanks and vent

Fishing

Seawatching

Wednesday morning I visited Palmachim beach. A large storm was boiling, the wind was already good, the sea was properly rough - just before the rain started at noon. 

When I arrived at the seawatching spot, I was greeted by a sea full of birds:

There was really good activity of gulls close to shore, attracted to large fish shoals. Soon I noticed that there were good numbers of Yelkouan Shearwaters among the gulls, feeding very close to shore, sometimes down to 20m. Fantastic. This winter is special for yelkouans - their numbers are bigger than usual in recent years, and they are often seen feeding very close to shore. I focused most of my attention on the shearwaters, and took many hundreds of photos of them. I was hoping to find another shearwater among them (which I didn't), and document their variation. I also really enjoyed watching them fish, using short dives. It was difficult to digiscope in these conditions...

I will devote a separate blogpost to the Yelkouan Shearwaters - out of the hundreds of photos I took a few tens are blog-worthy. I will leave you with one I am pleased of.

The gulls were dominated by Black-headed Gulls, but there were a few other gulls mixed in, though the diversity was fairly low.

Lesser Black-backed Gull (fuscus)

Armenian Gull (adult) - lots of black on wingtip with little white, and nice black bill band

Yellow-legged Gull (I think) - bill too heavy for caspian, large head, and rather uniform wing

Many Sandwich Terns were fishing close in too:

One Pomarine Skua passed two distantly for a photo, but two Arctic Skuas made near passes - one super close. The first bird is especially small (check the size comparison with Black-headed Gull!), but still an Arctic.

Second bird

Back at the car, a Greater Spotted Eagle flew over, battling against the strong wind:

More images in the eBird checklist here. Stay tuned for a deep study of Yelkouan Shearwater.

Little gullfest

Since the start of the year, a series of storms have been hitting our shores, bringing some good seawatching opportunities. Only today I managed to free some time for seawatching, and went over to Palmakhim, south of Rishon Letzion,  where I joined several others. The wind was blowing hard, but the direction was not ideal - too much southerly element to it. There were few true pelagic species - six Yelkouan Shearwaters and an Arctic Skua. Main interest was in gulls, specifically small ones: There was a lovely concentration of Little Gulls, fishing in the sheltered bay with Sandwich Terns. They are rather scarce in Israel, so their numbers were pleasing: At most we had 13 together, in total about 17. Beautifully-patterned, elegant - I love Little Gulls, especially when they're young (there was only one adult).

M or W?

There was also varied large gull action:

Proper cachinnans, near adult- very pale mantle, lots of white, little black

heuglini - adult

armenicus - 1st cycle

armenicus - adult

I think this is barabensis - tricky gull

Dark underwing secondaries indicate this is a fuscus-thingy

eBird checklist here.

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.

Micro-pelagic

This morning I went out to sea with the NPA marine team - Yatir and Alex. They are conducting monthly transects looking mainly for cataceans and sharks, but birders are always welcome on their dingy. Sea was quite calm today, so my breakfast didn't end up as fish food this time. We left Ashkelon and travelled four miles out into the sea, then headed north for about 10 miles and then returned south closer to the coast. We didn't find any marine mammals or sharks, only had some tuna and jellyfish. Birdwise, it was rather slow too. Apart for some gulls and Sandwich Terns, we had one Yelkouan Shearwater, two fly-by Gannets, and several Pallas's Gulls. Adults are really smart already with their black hood. Thanks to Yatir and Alex, looking forward to the next trips.

Yelkouan Shearwater

Pallas's Gull