Cold brings birds!

With a massive temperature drop yesterday afternoon from 32 degrees to 19 degrees Celsius it was clear that we would be having a lot of birds this morning.

I arrived around 6:30 at the JBO (later than planned, because somehow my alarmclock wasn't working..) and saw that Yosef Kiat just finished the first round and brought back quite a few birds.Throughout the morning a good number of birds helped themselves in the nets and in the end we had caught 205 birds spread over 19 species. Only 14 birds were recaptured. Among those 205, lots of Blackcaps but also 5 Thrush Nightingales, Tree Pipit and last but not least in the last round a Syrian Woodpecker! 

 Syrian Woodpecker (Dendrocopus syriacus), 2cy female

 It had some weird albinistic feather on both wings.

 The JBO

The ringing site

After the ringing I quickly stopped by at the hostel and continued to the Old City to visit the Dome of Rock. Last visit it was too busy with people so we didn't visit the place, but now there weren't too many people, so I gave it a try. Seeing the Dome of Rock from closeby is pretty impressive!

 The Dome of Rock

 From another angle

 The Al-Aqsa Mosque

 The Mt. of Olives seen from the Old City.

I walked back through the small streets of the Old City and visited the neighbourhood Musrara to look for the Lesser Kestrels that breed there. I didn't find any, they were probably hunting outside the city at that time of day. Lesser Kestrels have seriously declined the last decades here in Jerusalem with now only 5-8 pairs left.