Smelly Griffons

Today I joined a large team organized by the NPA. We went to ring Eurasian Griffons that got trapped in one of their traps in the Judean Desert. It was a well-organized event, which was important as handling 60 (!) griffons means much work.

We arrived on site in the morning, and had a couple of minutes to enjoy the scenery and breath the caracass stench in.

This is how 60 griffons inside a trap looks like. They behave, sound and smell like chickens.

It was good to meet many friends. We even had a TV crew that joined us.

We started processing the griffons quickly. My role was to ring the new birds and replace old rings. Out of the 60, only seven were new; all the rest had been trapped previously. Most are local desert birds, but some of the birds travel between the desert and northern Israel, and some have even visited distant countries in Europe or Africa.

After release there were some nice photographic opportunities.

Here with a Brown-necked Raven:

Patch working sucks

And why does it suck? Because instead of twitching sexy birds or working sexy sites I keep spending too much time in my stinking ponds producing nothing, and because you guys get to see the same images of the same, common birds.
Anyway, today I had some time in the morning so had a quick look at 'my' Ashdod ponds. I thought that as it was 9/11 today, it would have been appropriate for me to find an American lost soul or a bombshell from Afghanistan. But again the best I could find were two Broad-billed Sandpipers. None had a ring on, which is a pity as they look so much better with a ring on, ain't they? One of them was quite well-behaved. In addition I had one citrine Wagtail flying around but didn't manage to see it on the deck.

Broad-billed Sandpiper

I had a nice group of four Little Ringed Plovers in the early morning light. They are such delicate and sweet plovers. Pity I had this ugly piece of concrete in the frame.

Little Ringed Plover

As usual I had a few Temminck's Stints:

You can see this adult temmicnk is exactly halfway through its primary moult (PMS = 25).

There is a large increase in snipe numbers. I am working hard on them too... but all of them have such a long tail...

Common Snipe

You can see this bird is a 1cy by the blackish tips to its lesser coverts:

On the way back home I had a quick look at Hulda reservoir, which produced 20 Ferruginous Ducks, an early Black-necked Grebe, 1 Monty's Harrier and 3 White-winged Terns. In the nearby fields there were large numbers of Ortolans and Cretzschchshzhthmar's Buntings in mixed groups.

Cretzschmar's Bunting

Very large numbers of Turtle Doves are going through now:

Apart for that, the fields held the typical selection of Whinchats, Greater Short-toed Larks, Issy Wheatears and Tree Pipits.

Day and night

Last night I decided to take advantage of the abundance of waders and small moon; I organized a good team (Yotam, Ora, Hiller, Shlomo and Yosef) and we went mistnetting in the muddy Ashdod ponds. Night conditions were different from the morning, with fewer and more scattered birds, but the main pool was still good enough. we set our nets up quickly and by dusk everything was ready. We kept going until 23:00. We didn't catch too many birds, but we had a very good variety. Commonest species of course was Little Stint. I was happy to catch the single Broad-billed Sandpiper I saw in the morning. Such a great bird! Its bill is so unique.

Broad-billed Sandpiper

Another good bird for these inland ponds was this juv Turnstone. Again, I had only one in the morning, and we managed to trap it!

In the morning I did not see any Kentish Plovers at all, but we caught one - an adult.

Kentish Plover

We had one adult Dunlin too, losing its black belly:

Though present in large numbers, we had only two Ringed Plovers:

Of the tringas we had one Redshank:

And four Wood Sandpipers:

And this Spur-winged Plover added some colour:

Not quite a bird, this Kuhl's Pipistrelle was a real sweety:

After a short sleep, I returned in the early to my CES for 'normal' ringing. It was pretty good, with Willow Warblers dominating the catch. Two Tree Pipits were nice:

Early morning migrants included many Ortolans and Tree Pipits.

The gulls are back

Beware: this is going to be a long post, which is surprising bringing into account the crap images. I appologize to all the gullophobes, but from now until March this blog will be flooded with gull stuff.

This morning I had some time between meetings to check the Ashdod ponds. Eventually this was not enough, as the ponds were packed with birds. On the way in I saw some Baltic Gulls sat near the rubbish dump, in classic poses:

In the ponds themselves I had 50 adult Baltic Gulls in one group:


All gulls were in a similar moult stage, with P1-2 or only P1 replaced, all the others unmoulted:

Among the baltics I had one juv. Armenian Gull and my first Siberian Gull of the season - a large, powerful bull:

It showed the typical suspended moult of this form. It had P1 to P6 moulted, and P7 to P10 unmoulted. Interestingly, its right wing was much more worn than its left wing (see worn primary tips in above image). It is quite difficult to see the moult in this image but I checked it well in the field.

What a beast!

I was happy to find our first ring of the season, CV21 which is back again for its fourth year, this time earlier than ever. Here is an image of it from last year.

There were tons of waders, with hundreds of Ringed Plovers, Little Stints and different tringas.

Ringed Plover - 1cy

Many of the stints were juveniles, with their crisp rufous-fringed plumage.

Little Stint - juvenile

There were about 10 Temminck's Stints, this adult already in full winter plumage:

I tried really hard, and scanned the waders again and again and again, but could not produce anything more interesting than single Broad-billed and Curlew sands, and a Turnstone. No sharp tails, no buff breasts, no long toes, no red necks...

Among the tringas, Marsh Sands showed in pretty good numbers, about 15:

I even tried to turn this Squacco Heron into an indian pond but even that didn't work:

There were good numbers of Turtle Doves on the move, many coming down for a drink in the ponds.

Good numbers of passerines were present too, mainly Yellow Wagtails and Willow Warblers. This is an adult male feldegg which is still the commonest form:

And this is a 1cy feldegg (note the difference in greater coverts pattern from the adult above):