Israel trip with Birdfinders - Day 3.

Day 3. Thursday, 24 March, 2011


Next to our hotel was Shulamit Park, a magnet for migrants. On other days, several of the others had gone birdwatching even before breakfast. I decided to go as well today. The park is planted with many trees, and the lawns are watered every day. At the top of the central mound, where the winos sleep, there is a very attractive bottlebrush tree which attracted most of the migrants. Wryneck, eastern olivaceous warbler, eastern Bonelli's warbler, blackcaps, lesser whitethroats and Spanish sparrows were all in evidence. However, I was not in the park. A small heron had been seen in the marina and I got up before 6 AM to see it before it flew away. I saw it only briefly and distantly and against the light of the rising sun. It was a striated heron.

After breakfast we left at 7:45 AM as usual and drove to kilometre 33 to look for Dunn's lark. On arrival at this desert site there was a solitary car. Nearby, a photographer had set up a hide and a small battery driven water fountain to attract the birds. I wondered what he thought of 16 birdwatchers suddenly descending on his remote watchpoint! In the event, we only saw desert larks, a bar tailed lark, a woodchat shrike and a flyover short-toed eagle. We also flushed a large Cape hare, which bounded off into the distance.

Bar-tailed lark

Cape hare

We moved on to Yot Vata. On a nearby site of acacia forest we hoped to find Arabian warbler, one of the "big five" most wanted birds. Arabian warbler is a very localised bird, but it is resident and sedentary. At first we saw eastern Bonelli's warbler, hoopoe, a couple of very nice blackstarts, etc before the Arabian warbler eventually appeared and showed well for several minutes. We also saw a scrub warbler and a gecko, and some people saw a couple of sand partridges in the distance. Flyovers included a black stork and booted Eagle.

Arabian warbler

Geckoey thing

Next stop was the Yot Vata sewage ponds where we found our first cattle egrets, reed warbler, squacco heron, woodchat shrike and, further on, citrine wagtail and Dead Sea Sparrows. A little further on we heard our first turtle dove and a masked shrike performed for several minutes nearby. On the way back an amazingly confiding wryneck performed on the path in front of us.

Masked shrike

Black-eared wheatear

Wryneck

It was only a short hop to the cafe at Yot Vata where we had lunch, followed, for me, by the now traditional large ice cream! As it was fairly warm, we went up into the mountains to the Shizzafon sewage ponds. These were sewage ponds with a difference! There wasn't much water and the ponds were landscaped with attractive vegetation, bushes, reeds, etc. Here we enjoyed squacco herons, linnet, bluethroat, citrine wagtail, Northern wheatear and a solitary white stork.

Citrine wagtail

Black-winged stilt

Northern wheatear

White stork

Having found no hooded wheatears we made our way back to the fields at Yot Vata. This yielded several firsts for me including a small number of Cretzschmar's bunting, an ortolan bunting, large numbers of white wagtails, greater short-toed larks, bimaculated larks, desert wheatears and yellow wagtails. There were also smaller numbers of red-throated pipits, water pipits, Siberian stonechat, woodchat shrike, masked shrike, and kestrel. One kestrel caught a quail and proceeded to eat it on a roll of straw in full view! Finally, a couple of tawny pipits were another first for me. A fitting end to another good day!

Cretzschmar's bunting

Desert wheatear

Ortolan bunting

Tawney pipit

Kestrel with quail (alive when we first saw it)!!

Norfolk 5 and 10 July 2010 - Montagu's harrier at last.

After our 'not bad' visit to the New Forest, David and I decided to visit Norfolk, and also to try and see the river warbler which had turned up East of Norwich (i.e. a very long way from home).

The day started well with some distant stone curlews in a field near Weeting. A useful year tick.

On to Titchwell for the buff-breasted sandpiper. We saw a corn bunting (which I needed) on the way and we were confident. Too confident as it turned out. The buff-breasted sandpiper proved elusive and after 2 hours or so we decided to call it a day and look for Montagu's harriers at North Creake. That also proved fruitless so we headed for the river warbler. It didn't normally come out to play until 21.00 or 21.30 so it was almost dark when it did appear. It had been singing for quite a while before we saw it a few times flit from place to place in the reeds. Not a very satisfying twitch if I'm honest. We watched / listened to it on and off for about an hour before heading for home where we arrived shortly after 01.00.

At the end of the week I decided to go back to Norfolk. I retraced our steps except for the river warbler. At the stone curlew site I watched a common curlew for about half an hour from behind a bush and it came quite near.

Curlew.


On the way to Titchwell, a couple of miles from the coast, I heard a quail and saw it fly briefly. I tracked down the corn bunting and photographed it.

Corn bunting.


At the reserve the buff-breasted sandpiper was more forthcoming and someone from the hide who had seen it came out to tell those on the bank where it was. Very distant but visible for quite a long time.

















Buff-breasted sandpiper (behind oystercatcher).


While I was waiting I saw a spoonbill on the other side of the freshmarsh as well as 3 little terns.

I headed off to North Creake with a couple of guys I met at Titchwell. We weren't sure which site to watch from. There were warning signs at some of the most obvious gaps in the hedge but we found a site to the West which gave good views. Eventually, one of the guys spotted a harrier in the distance and we saw an unmistakable male Montagu's harrier as it came nearer but still distant. My record shot is not one I'm proud of but here it is:

Montagu's harrier.


We also saw a turtle dove fly nearby, another year tick.

I and one of the guys went to Swanton Novers in the hope of seeing a honey buzzard but no luck. A couple had been seen that day by a chap who visited Scandinavia a lot and had seen hundreds of them, but they are not breeding this year so their trips were less predictable as they had no need to find food for young.

After that I went back to North Creake hoping to get a better view of the Monty's. I met some others there including a couple of Americans and one of them pointed out a harrier not too far away which I didn't examine too closely while trying to get a picture. The general view was that we had seen a Monty's but later inspection of my photos revealed that it was in fact only a male marsh harrier. If any them reads this, I'm afraid it wasn't a Montagu's harrier, guys.