23rd of February

The 23rd we woke up at 5.30 and around 6.00 we drove to the ringing station, ready for some ringing. We trapped some nice species and saw some nice Steppe Eagles flying overhead.

White-spectacled Bulbul

Laughing Dove

Savi's Warbler

and Indian Silverbill.

There was also conspicous migrating overhead of Steppe Eagles, a local Greater-Spotted Eagle and an extremely early Honey Buzzard!!! The earliest for Israel. I made a recordshot of the Honey Buzzard:

And some Steppe Eagles:

In the afternoon we first went to search for a Pale Scops Owl, just outside Eilat. We failed to find it but we did see Blue Rock Thrush (singing), Blackstart and Palestine sunbirds. Afterwards we went to check the famous North Beach. This resulted in a nice dark morph Western Reef Heron, Pied Kingfisher and Desert Wheatear:

Then we went to K20, where we saw plenty of Slender-billed Gulls, Flamingo's, a Kentish plover, some Little ringed plovers and very stunning Little-green Bee-eaters:

And last but not least we checked Holland Park, resulting in a group of 12 Sand Patridges (lifer), 2 male Ruppel's warblers, a few Lesser Whitethroats, a Common Whitethroat and Arabian Babbler. Below a recordshot of the Ruppel's warbler:

Back at the IBCRE we see the one and only Pallas' Gull of our trip flying overhead. It was distant, and only seen with my binoculars but it was impressive! At dusk we hear some crying Jackals and that was it the day..