Israel: Day 13

As expected, the last few days have seen a significant increase in the number of Levant Sparrowhawks (c2500 for me today and yesterday together) and a noticeable drop in the number of Honey Buzzards. The birds continue to fly mostly too high to photograph, so you'll have to take my word for it that the sight of a flock of 500 Levants thermalling up and away is truly spectacular.

Black Kite low over the olive groves, shortly before dropping
down to feast on a turd (not mine)

Dark morph Marsh Harrier, poor distant shot, but you don't see many of these

Red-footed Falcon, nice and low for a change

Israel: Day 11

Apologies for a few days with no updates, the wi-fi has been a bit temperamental...

The count has been a little slow, with the main Honey Buzzard passage all but over, and the Levants and Lesser Spotted Eagles still warming up. White Pelicans have been the stars, with a flock of 3000+ hanging around on the valley, frequently breaking up into smaller groups and bimbling around, giving some nice close views.

Of the raptors there have been, most have all been very high up, not high enough to prevent me picking up a beauty of a pale juvenile Oriental Honey Buzzard yesterday though, nice WP tick!

White Pelican

After the count today, we went for a drive around the Bet She'an valley, which provided some nice photographic opportunities:

Red-backed Shrike

Steppe Buzzard

Isabelline Wheatear

Golden Jackal

Little Bee-eater

Little Owl

Egyptian Mongoose

Israel: Day 8

Today was my best day yet in Israel, with 4 lifers (reflecting my shameful lack of European birding effort lately) and a great variety of species, both passing overhead and grounded migrants. We started of with a look at some ponds, which held a single Marbled Duck (lifer#1) amongst a heap of Little and Black-necked Grebes, and a Savi's Warbler (lifer#2) in a roadside ditch. As we dropped one of the team of at his watchpoint there was an Eastern Black-eared Wheatear (lifer#3) hopping around.

Eastern Black-eared Wheatear

My watch started well with a good stream of Lesser Spotted Eagles for the first hour, but this soon tailed off with the total on 321, the rest of the morning consisted of a steady Honey Buzzard (540) and Levant Sparrowhawk (605) passage. After a 'heads-up' from the Hula Valley, a flock of 600 Great White pelicans appeared over the ridge to the North, appearing to be nothing more than a distant shimmering cloud at first, but eventually coming close enough to admire. One bird (visible in the middle of the photo below was leucistic, raising brief hopes of something rarer) The highlight however was a stunning juvenile Steppe Eagle which passed over low enough for a record shot, and I finished with an adult male Red-footed Falcon high overhead.

Great White Pelicans

Steppe Eagle

After the watch we went for some more birding, this time around some freshly cut cereal fields. As we arrived, a quick scan revealed 3 Roller (lifer#4) sat on the deck, and occasionally flying to reveal their astonishing cobalt blue wings. While watching these, both Pallid and Montagu's Harrier patrolled the fields, sometimes coming really close. As we left, a young Lesser Grey Shrike perched up nicely close to the car.

Roller

Montagu's Harrier

Pallid Harrier

Lesser Grey Shrike

EDIT!!! While writing this outside my room, a Scops Owl (lifer#5) started calling in some nearby trees, we all rushed over and managed a brief view of it as it flew to the next clump of trees. What a day!

Israel: Day 6

Today was my best watch of the count so far, with a stunning 4549 birds over my watchpoint, most of which were concentrated into a few hours. There were constantly birds pouring South overhead, mainly Honey Buzzards (3200), followed by Black Kites (760), Levant Sparrowhawks (450) and a smattering of Lesser Spotted Eagles, Montagu's Harriers, Booted Eagles and 4 Egyptian Vultures. At times it was totally overwhelming, with birds streaming overhead while I struggled to identify, count and record them (and take a few cheeky photos) at one time. At one point a well-meaning farmer dropped in for a chat and to give me some grapefruits, right while a huge wave was passing over, my conversation/observation balance was tested to the limit!

Apparently this is still just the beginning, I can't quite imagine what 10X this number will look like, expect superlatives galore and possible profanity when the real big numbers start.

Egyptian Vulture

Honey Buzzard swarm

Lesser Spotted Eagle

Lesser Spotted Eagle

Israel: Day 5

Had a day off today, so went birding around the fishponds and fields to the south of our Kibbutz. It was incredibly hot, but enjoyable nonetheless with good numbers of waders on a drained fishpond, mostly Little Stints, plus Marsh and Curlew Sandpipers, all picking around the feet of massed White and Black Storks, Grey Herons, Egrets and Glossy Ibis. A few raptors came overhead, ironically giving much better views than the ones I have been seeing over the Raptor watchpoints.

A real delight was seeing Turtle Doves bursting out of almost every bush, it's good to see that some place still have them in some number.

A search for tuesday's Cinereous Bunting drew a blank, but a few Cretzschamar's showed nicely.

Booted Eagle

Cretzschmar's Bunting

Montagu's Harrier

Pallid Harrier

Turtle Dove

The remainder of the day was spent at the kibbutz swimming pool, I even spotted a few migrating Honey Buzzards while I was doing backstroke.

Israel: Day 4

A quieter day today, with 'just' 62 Honey Buzzards on the watch for me  (followed by a further 130 later in the day), along with a few Booted Eagles and Harriers. Still plenty of other birds to keep one occupied though:

Booted Eagle
A slight improvement on yesterdays photo

The first Pallid Harrier of the count

Masked Shrike

Syrian Woodpecker

ISRAEL!!

So, after a few months of relative normality in Somerset, i'm back 'on the road' again. On monday I arrived in Israel where i'll be spending 5 weeks working on the Northern Valleys Raptor Count. i get patchy wi-fi here on the Kibbutz where i'm staying, so will do my best to upload some photos and sightings on to here periodically.

The birding has been flippin amazing so far, there are birds literally everywhere here, fields buzzing with larks and wagtails, buntings and warblers flipping between bushes and a sky full of raptors. After I  arrived a t stupid o'clock at the airport, Yoav Perlman picked me up and we had a few hours birding in the Bet Shean Valley before I joined the count team. I had 12 lifers in those few hours, the best birding i've had in a long time!

The big passage of Honey Buzzards is over, but I saw 1000+ yesterday and 500+ today. Lesser Spotted Eagles and Levant Sparrowhawks are the main focus of the count, and they are starting to dribble through now, with the big counts due in a week or so for the LS and a few weeks for LSE.

Anyways, a picture is worth a thousand words as they say:

Most of the raptors are reeeaalllly high up, and too far for photos

This is a standard view of a small part of a Honey Buzzard thermal

Blue-cheeked Bee Eater on the Jordanian border fence

Bird of the trip so far: Cinereous Bunting that I found after 'work' today.
Quite a rarity around these parts i'm told!

Booted Eagle

Lesser Spotted Eagle

Some come a bit lower though, like this juvenile Montagu's Harrier

Red-backed Shrike

Skomer

So, after a long while of birding only on the Avalon Marshes, which can be read about here, and a short while not birding at all, which can't be read about anywhere, I ventured out of county for a week on the island of Skomer, or Ynys Sgomer as it is known in Welsh. I was there mainly for a bit of a holiday to catch up with some good friends, but unsurprisingly, I saw a few birds too. The island is a seabird paradise, with Puffins and Manx Shearwaters being the stars. I took rather a lot of photos, heres a small selection, that busyness pending, I may add to over time:

Dazed and confused: This manxie really shouldn't have been out on dry land in daylight

A much more typical view

Juvenile Peregrine, the first confirmed Skomer fledger of the year

Puffin

Puffins

Raven

Why are you still here?

The Avalon Marshes are producing some fantastic birding at the moment. You shouldn't be reading about it on here though, you should be looking at my new website www.avalonwildlife.co.uk for all the latest.

Oh, and if you could add it as a link, that would be amaaaazing. cheers

I found two of these leggy beauts yesterday!!

Went looking for a Black Kite and bumped into this Osprey instead

Bitterns everywhere

Hobbies starting to arrive in numbers

Hoopoe

OK, I said I was going to post all Somerset stuff on the new website, but a couple of things......

First, I just had to show off this Hoopoe, found by my Dad just outside our village on some scrappy fields yesterday. I love how we're surrounded by top-class nature reserves and the birds just turn up on old farmland.

Secondly, I would really appreciate it if you could add the new website/blog www.avalonwildlife.co.uk to your links or blog lists. I'm trying to get the ball rolling so as much traffic as possible is really important right now. I'm currently trying to create a blog list like the one in the sidebar as a page for the new site but its a bit HTML-fiddly, so might be a while, but I will try and create reciprocals for any links.

Thanks a lot

New Website, New Life!

So, this is what i've been quietly working away on for the last month or so, my new business Avalon Wildlife
Over the last few years I've come to realise what a truly awesome place for birds and wildlife the Somerset Levels are, thanks to a huge effort from various conservation bodies. The 'Avalon Marshes' in particular forming a huge area of co-joined nature reserves packed with cool stuff. As the area is pretty much the closest I can get to a 'home', I've decided to set up shop as a guide, to help people get the very best out of a visit to the region.

The project is still very much in a developmental stage at the moment, and I hope to be able to build up my services to a much broader operation than currently advertised, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.
The new website will also function as a day-to-day diary of what i'm seeing on the Avalon Marshes, so will take over from this blog. I hope to use this new website and blog to promote the area as a wildlife destination as well as promoting my own business, and plan to update it frequently, i'll also have a proper go at this Twitter thing soon, so please check back regularly, even if you're not interested in the guided tour side of things.

I will still leave this old blog running for any excursions outside of Somerset, and because I think it's quite a useful resource for my foreign trip ramblings.

If you could add this site to your links pages that would be very much appreciated, let me know and i'll happily add a reciprocal on here.

Any feedback on the services i'm offering, and the website itself would be very much appreciated, as i'm pretty new to this sort of thing. I'm best contacted these days at joe@avalonwildlife.co.uk

Cheers!