Busy days

The last two days we've been pretty busy with bird ringing with many people around so I can say I am pretty tired right now. Birds, birds and birds! Every morning we do ringing and most of the nights also swallow ringing and in the afternoon we osome trap fixing or birdwatching.

Still a lot of birds are around everywhere. There are quite a few Semi-collared Flycatchers present in most of the Date Palm plantations and Pied Wheatears are regularly seen as well, especially in the Northern Date Palm Plantation. Yesterday a first for Israel was discovered by two Dutch birders, Marc Guyt and Arjan van Egmond. They discovered a vittata 'morph' Pied Wheatear at the K20 Date palms. After seeing a few Pied Wheatears and a single Cyprus Wheatear (the 'first' Cyprus Wheatear that was found in the Northern Date Palms turned out to be a Pied) we quickly went for the Wheatear and soon we saw lots of cars and also lots of people. Our first Israeli twitch!

Highlights from ringing yesterday were Ortolan Bunting, some Steppe Buzzards, a female Sparrowhawk and a 'coutelli' Water Pipit. Today we had a small fall of Chiffchaffs, suddenly there was a flock of 80 birds hanging in just a few nets. Pretty impressive! We had a 2nd Semi-collared Flycatcher.

After some nap time we did a quick tour to K19 where we saw a 2nd year Bonelli's Eagle and hundreds of Short-toed Larks, some Red-throated Pipits, a few Turtle Doves and the Northern Date Palms held 2 male Semi-collared Flycatchers and an adult male Pied Wheatear.

 Ortolan Bunting

 Water Pipit 'couttellii'

 Sparrowhawk, 2nd year female

 Aviad with a nice Steppe Buzzard

Pied Wheatear 'vittata', adult male

 Bonelli's Eagle, 2nd year bird, K19

 Red-throated Pipit, K19 cowsheds

Semi-collared Flycatcher, 2nd year male, Northern Date Palms