Big Bang!

Curruca, Curruca, Curruca, Lesser Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat…. 222 Lesser Whitethroats were ringed this morning! With this amount of birds the Heligoland traps worked really well, with some traps having 10 Lesser Whitethroats at one single time.

The ringing hut (picture from a few days ago of course, because today the sun was shining!)

The entire morning we were catching loads of birds, mainly Lesser Whitethroats, but there were some other highlights ofcourse! Orphean Warblers were represented well, with 14 birds caught! We got a stunning male Little Crake out of a crake trap late in the morning, our 3^rd Subalpine Warbler of the season, an adult female, was ringed. Among these cool birds we also had the more common but still scarce birds in the hand, like Hoopoe and Quails.

 Cretzchsmar's Bunting (Emberiza caesia), adult male

 Subalpine Warbler (Sylvia cantillans albistrata), adult female

 Little Crake (Porza parva), first-year male

Quail (Coturnix coturnix).

It's miiiiiiine!

For the first time since about a week we had a clear view again. The Jordanian and Eilat mountains were clearly visible and instead of a vague wash of clouds we had clear skies. Highlights from the migrating birds were 2 Crag Martins, 1 Little Swift, 2 Ospreys, 1 Lesser Kestrel and 1 Black Stork.

In the evening we did swallow catching of course, catching about 60 swallows, mainly Red-rumpeds. We were just 6 new birds short of 400 ringed today...

 Christian: urgh, dirty swallow. Yotam: dirty indeed. Roni: retained vernicular toe feathers pointing towards retarded moult of 4th calenderyear.

Ringing from the 15th of March: 

Balkan Warbler  23 – 4

Barn Swallow 20 – 1

Blackcap 11 -

Chiffchaff 19 – 7

Collared Dove 1 -

Common Whitethroat 5 – 2

Cretzchsmar’s Bunting 2 – 1

Eastern Black-eared Wheatear 1 -

Eastern Olivaceous Warbler 1 -

Eastern Orphean Warbler 12 – 2

Hoopoe 1 -

House Martin 8 -

House Sparrow – 1

Laughing Dove 6 -

Lesser Whitethroat 222 -3

Little Crake 1 -

Little Green Bee-eater 1 -

Palestine Sunbird 1 -

Quail 1 – 1

Red-rumped Swallow 38 -

Reed Warbler 4 – 2

Rueppel’s Warbler 3 – 1

Sardinian Warbler 4 - 1

Savi’s Warbler 3 -

Sedge Warbler 2 -

Spanish Sparrow – 2

Subalpine Warbler 1 -

White-spectacled Bulbul 1 -

Woodchat Shrike 1 -

TOTAL 393 – 29 = 422
29 species