Israel trip with Birdfinders - Final days 6 and 7. Sunday & Monday.

Sunday 27 March 2011

This was our last full day. A brief trip to Shulamit Park produced the usual mixture of migrants.  
This is a yellow vented (or spectacled) bulbul, a common bird in Israel but a lovely one.

Yellow-vented (or spectacled) bulbul

After an ample breakfast, we headed up to the mountains where there was a good chance of a large raptor passage. Our guides' hunch was correct. In about 75 minutes we enjoyed a constant passage of several hundred raptors. There were many steppe buzzards but also a number of black kites, steppe eagles, booted eagles, a long legged buzzard and an osprey.

Our next stop was Holland Park again. Whilst we were let loose all over the park, our 2 guides headed up to the far end. With hindsight, I can only imagine they had prior information which they wanted to check before calling the group. At some point Martyn had to come and find everybody, giving them instructions to make for a particular bush at the very far end of the park. This seemed rather inefficient and an example of poor communication.

Anyway, the bush in question was alive with small warblers. It gave me my first views of Ruppell's warblers, subalpine warblers and, very briefly, Menetries warbler.

Ruppell's warbler - male

Subalpine warbler

After Holland Park we headed again to Yot Vata for lunch. Then we split into 2 groups. I was loosely with a group looking for Caspian plover whilst the others looked for greater hoopoe larks. The Caspian plover hadn't been seen for a few days and I thought the chances were very slim. I stayed in the same place mainly photographing a northern wheatear beating the living daylights out of a beetle!

Northern wheatear - here he is about to start on the beetle!

Northern wheatear - "I'll have these legs off!"

Northern wheatear - the fight continues!

I also came across a woodchat shrike. . . .

Woodchat shrike - lovely bird

. . . an isabelline wheatear. . .

Isabelline wheatear

. . and a red-throated pipit.

Red-throated pipit

Subsequent, we split up again. Some of the group went looking for the reported Oriental turtle dove whilst others, including me, went to the salt pools looking for greater sand plovers. We did eventually see one very distantly, but the Oriental turtle dove was not to be seen. At the end of the day we watched a pair of very unselfconscious little crakes which came right out into the open about 10 or 15 m from us.



Little crake - female (sorry for the quality of this shot in the half darkness. It was taken at ISO 6400)

 This happened while we were waiting for dusk and the arrival of some Lichtenstein's sand grouse . They did eventually arrive but they landed on the far side of the pool instead of near us. We could just make out their silhouettes on the other side of the pool.

Monday, 28 March, 2011

This was the day of the 350 km drive back to Tel Aviv. However, we did make an early visit to a site close to Eilat in search of a hooded wheatear. It was not to be found but we did see a white tailed wheatear, a common cuckoo, some blackstarts, an eastern Bonelli's warbler and a very pale short-toed eagle.

Some of our number were keen to see long billed pipit. As we got closer to Tel Aviv we stopped at a nature reserve in the southern Judaean hills. The guides left all of us at the top of the valley whilst they drove most of the way down again, leaving unclear instructions. As a result I didn't see spectacled warbler and only saw long billed pipit in flight rather than being able to see it perched. This was another example of poor communication.

Nevertheless, I was very happy overall with the birds I had seen on the trip. James and Martyn used their experience and truly astounding call recognition ability to find many birds that I would never have seen. I would certainly recommend Birdfinders.

After the usual strict security at the airport, our flight was on time and arrived at Luton a few minutes early. It was quite chilly while we waited for the minibus to take us to the off-site car park. We finally got to bed at about 2 in the morning, exhausted but exhilarated by the trip.

Israel trip with Birdfinders - Day 1. Here it is!!

Lynne and I went on this trip, the first of its kind that we had ever been on. I did a lot of twitching last year, but I came to the conclusion that it was far better to spend petrol money going abroad where I would see loads of birds instead of chasing after one here that I mightn't even see!

After the 5 hour flight from Luton to Tel Aviv we met up with our guides James Smith and Martyn Kenefick. We set off in 2 minibuses to the Guvelot Kibbutz. This was basic accommodation for the overnight stop.

Day 1 proper. Tuesday 22 March 2011.

We set off early the next morning with a packed breakfast, but not before I had found a Syrian woodpecker in a tree near our chalet. When we got on the road, almost immediately a great spotted cuckoo flew in front of the bus followed by common myna birds nearby.

The main target birds this morning were McQueen's bustard and cream-coloured courser, 2 of the big 5 birds that we would be looking for on this trip. We stopped in the middle of the desert and piled out to scan the horizon. Very soon we had located both birds in the far distance (too far for photographs but visible with the scope), along with woodchat shrike, desert lark, and various distant raptors.

We then moved on to a set of sewage ponds to look for sandgrouse. After sitting still for a while we managed to see black bellied, spotted and pin-tailed sandgrouse, as well as a black shouldered kite, pallid harrier, hen harrier, bluethroat, oriental skylark, short toed lark, crested lark, zitting cisticola, black winged stilt, lesser whitethroat, white wagtail, yellow wagtail, spur-winged plover, and several more common waders.



Zitting cisticola

 We also witnessed mass migration of several hundred white storks, common cranes, red-rumped swallows, common and pallid swifts, and various raptors including Steppe buzzard, long-legged buzzard, lesser spotted eagle, short-toed eagle, black kite, and Western marsh harrier. We were lucky in having James Smith as our guide. James has been to Israel every year for the last 21 years and has done 6 annual raptor migration surveys, so he was able to pick out the various species with consummate ease.

Migrating white storks

Short-toed eagle

Long-legged buzzard

Pallid harrier - male

Pallid harrier - female



We moved on to another reservoir area where we saw a number of relatively common waterbirds, ducks as well as 3 southern grey shrikes.

Southern grey shrike

At the next stop we saw masked shrike, Northern, Isabelline, desert, Cyprus, pied and mourning wheatears, blue rock thrush and the rare Syrian Serin (otherwise called Tristram's Serin). This was turning out to be a brilliant first day. I was ticking so fast my pen tip was on fire!

Eastern mourning wheatear

Nubian ibex

Palestine sunbird - male. The female is just too drab to put up!

Desert lark

Eastern black-eared wheatear

After lunch we set off again and stopped much further south in the Negev desert looking for larks and especially broad-billed larks. We did see short-toed, calandra, bimaculated, crested and broad-billed larks before the day was out, as well as trumpeter finch, Isabelline wheatear, etc. At dusk, another pallid harrier came into the distance but we were piling in to the buses to head for Eilat.

The Dan Panorama Hotel was really nice. A luxury hotel with lovely rooms, fabulous buffet food and friendly service. The food was too good really and we certainly put on weight after the trip! Lynne was in her element with the huge range of vegetarian food. After dinner, we had the bird report and, after one drink, we sloped off to bed, exhausted!!

Day 2 - soon!