Posts tonen met het label Bee-eater. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label Bee-eater. Alle posts tonen

dinsdag 7 augustus 2012

Day 5: A cream-coloured evening

22nd of July:

Another day on Lanzarote! After some good breakfast we left the apartment with all of us. We wanted to do some hiking in the neighbourhood of Guatiza. We searched for the Barranco de Teneguime. We thought we'd found the right track and started the walk. Later it turned out it was a track walking just parralel to the Barranco, so we were walking on the hills on the egde of the Barranco. We saw some Ravens and apart from the Berthelot's Pipits that are always everywhere there was not much seen. After the short hike we drove to Los Cocotheros, a small village along the coast, east of Guatiza. We checked the saltpans there but there were no waders or such thing present. The birds simply just weren't around. Around noon we decided to go Jardin de Cactus. This is a wonderful garden full of catcuses and other plants, very impressive. Since there was water, there were also some nice birds around. We found at least 4 Melodious Warblers here, a nice surprise, as this is, as far as I know, not a common migrant here, and four together is a good score then! There were also flocks of Spanish Sparrows and the flyover of two Bee-eaters was a good one!
Jardin de Cactus
 Spanish Sparrow (Passer hispanicus), male
Melodius Warbler (Hippolais polygotta)

In the afternoon some snorkling and swimming was done in the sea near Costa Teguise, resulting in the observations of some really nice fishes, such as Lizard Fishes. In the evening my dad and I went to El Jable again. We went to the same areas as before. Soon we had 10+ Stone Curlews:
Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus insularum)

Other observations were at least 7 Hoopoes:
Hoopoes (Upupa epops)

A nice Kestrel of the ssp dacotiae:
Common Kestrel (Falco tinniculus dacotiae)

We knocked on the door on this Southern Grey Shrike was at home:
Southern Grey Shrike (Lanius meriodinalis koenigi), the 2cy bird

And here a recording of the bird singing/calling:

But best of all, was the group of 12 Cream-coloured Coursers we came across. My dad first heard them calling in a patch nearby. Then a few took off but the rest stayed and showed really well. I screwed up a bit with my camera settings, just when was close to the car.. you can guess, my dad has perfect images of that moment!
Cream-coloured Courser (Cursor cursorius)
El Jable, with the Famara cliffs on the background.

zaterdag 14 april 2012

Atricapilla take over

Massive migration last night with as a result many birds around. The Heligoland traps worked amazing with trap 7 being the star trap, every round we had at least 30-40 birds in the trap. In the early morning Bram and Chris had a Levant Sparrowhawk escaping from a mistnet. I still haven’t seen one though..
The end result is 901 new and 60 recaptures. So a total of 955 birds today! One of the best days ever here at Eilat! Amazing….!

The Blackcaps was our main bulk species but we also had lots of good variety. Many Ortolan Buntings, a Hoopoe, quite a few Masked Shrikes, Rufous-tailed Bush Robins, a Bee-eater, a Pied Flycatcher, 2 Barred Warblers and the most interesting bird was a probable hybrid Collared x Pied Flycatcher!

Yesterday we had over 500 birds with a nice Little Crake caught in our toilet!

Next to massive passerine migration, raptors were exploding as well. A few thousand Steppe Buzzards passed through, as well as a good number of Steppe Eagles, Lesser-spotted Eagles, 2 Imperial Eagles, 1 Bonelli’s Eagle and the first Honey Buzzard of the season.

And just now Bram and Yuval brought a nice Scops Owl back from the traps. Nice dessert for the day!

 Common Bee-eater (Merops apiaster)
 Yes, Great Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) bigger than Little Crakes (Porzana parva)
 Barred Warbler (Sylvia nisoria), adult female
 Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), male
 Probable hybrid Collared (Ficedula albicollis) x Pied Flycatcher
Masked Shrike (Lanius nubicus), adult male