Israel 2019, day nine - fur and spikes

Our early morning pre-conference session on the 30th was headlined by this little beauty - a bandit-masked, super-fast Desert Hedgehog, which we bumped into on the trak on the way to K20, with the sun still tucked behind the Jordanian mountains .....

... while the aforementioned afternoon break in Wadi Shlomo (and its Partridge entertainment) in the Eilat mountains also involved a close encounter with a small roaming group of Nubian Ibex, a rapidly declining and localised species that is seen less and less in these, its traditional and natural environs.

Israel 2019, days nine & ten - Hot Stuff

The 30th and 31st were all about the conference, although a few hit-and-run sessions pre-kick off and during breaks were managed:. an early session at K20 on 30th with Ammie was notable not only for Dorca's Gazelles, Greater Sand Plover, Collared Pratincole and a good selection of birds, but also for a certain spiky bandit at the roadside (see next post). Later in the day, kidnapped by Amir and bundled into his 4x4 for an hour on the increasingly windy afternoon with Yoav and Annie, we crawled up the track through a nearby gorge and bumped into a pair of comedy-gold Sand Partridges in the heat of a whirlwind romance...

They cared not about our presence, being immersed instead in the nuances of sweet, sweet love, manifested in a courtship routine involving the female following the male closely, the male stopping, strutting and singing, the female alluringly giving the green light and blink-and-you'll-miss-it bouts of copulation. Hot stuff.

The follwing day, Ammie, Doug, Annie and I hit the desert road during the early afternoon, heading clockwise through the Eilat mountains and through the plains towards Neot Samadar. After gorging on (organic, free range) goat's milk ice cream and delicious coffee and juice there we checked out Grofit sewage farm - tons of birds (with a fall of warblers clearly having just occurred, including a 20-strong (!) flock of Balkan Warblers), the pick of which was this gingery beauty - a vocal and accommodating Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin.

Israel 2019, day eight - urban education, warbler-style

Hume's innit

 
The first full day of the International Bird Observatories Conference (#IBOC2019) was packed with talks and sessions, pretty much all of which were unmissable, and so the only birding of the day involved a quick 45 minutes or so break with Yoav to Shakhamon Park, an urban green-ish space in the middle of town.

We were into warblers as soon as we got out of the car, and soon came across the reported Yellow-browed Warbler of the previous day. Yoav immediately called it as a Hume's, despite the previous consensus and the arguably somewhat bright (and heavily worn) spring plumage - vindicated by the call, which the bird delivered many times, making it easy to track through the trees. A very educational bird and a lesson in variability....

The rest of the park was teaming with insectivores - Balkan, Eastern Olivaceous, Eastern Orphean, Chiffchaffs, Lesser Whitethroats, Wrynecks and more - classic urban birding, Eilat-style.

Tree Pipit 

 

The Sylvias just love the bottlebrush, as this Eastern Orphean demonstrates

 

Entertaining, tail-dipping Eastern Oliveceous Warblers 

 

Israel 2019, day seven - Champions ends & IBOC begins (and a little birding inbetween)

With Champions sadly but victoriously in the rear view mirror, it was time to focus on my comms and digital media role for the International Bird Observatories Conference for the next four days. Before then, we'd a few hours before changing hotels, and so we took a drive up into the Eilat mountains -

- a stark, barren, beautiful landscape rising up as soon as you hit the road leading south-west out of town, we took in the views before spending a while at the raptor viewpoint, where we enjoyed a decent trickle of Steppe Buzzard and Steppe Eagle migration, as well as White-crowned Wheatear and Desert Lark hopping around by our feet.

Back into town and over the canal between North Beach and the IBRCE, where an excellent assemblage of waders had gathered, including lots of the commoner sandpipers and a Temminck's Stint - and where, for a dramatic 10 minutes, we were treated to one of those classic out-of-nowhere Eilat raptor pulses - Egyptian Vulture, Short-toed, Booted and three Steppe Eagles, 60 Steppe Buzzards, 20 Black Kites, Lesser Kestrels and a Marsh Harrier.

Sadly time was running out, and I headed back to North Beach to cover the first event of IBOC, a huge beach (and land) clean in collaboration with World Migratory Bird Day, involving various partners and a lot of very enthusiastic schoolkids - who timed their arrival at the sorting point perfectly with the arrival of a Striated Heron, which pitched up on the rocks just metres away and allowed everyone a closer look....

From there to the IBOC hotel at the southern end of town, and a reunion with many good friends from around the world...

Israel 2019, day six - Go Champions, Go Vultures

Glossy Ibises migrating over K20 with Aqaba and the Jordanian mountains as a backdrop

 
Much of the 27th was dedicated to the climax of #COTF19 (and what a campaign it was.. more of that when I get chance) which began with the traditional group photo on North Beach and was followed by the Awards Ceremony and dinner, this year in the open, bird-filled air at the IBRCE. All of which was as fun, celebratory and inspiring as always - so many good people, and so many friends, old and new.

All champs, all stars 

 

Oriental Honey-buzzard doing a celebrity flyover for the awards ceremony

 
With a couple of hours of light left, the Mrs and I meandered up to K20 saltpans, via K19 - where we had a very fortuitous run-in with a flock of migrating Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters, which proceeded to swoop around the car before eventually heading off on their way.

Blue-cheeked beauties

 

K19 held Squaccos, a Night-heron, Cattle and Little Egrets in the same clump of reeds, and a slow crawl around K20 was illuminated firstly by an incoming, low-flying dark morph Booted Eagle, then by a pair of Dorca's Gazelles, and finally by the rare sight of a migrating Egyptian Vulture (our first vulture of the trip) dropping down on a bund between the saltpans to rest briefly, right in front of us. A perfect, very appropriate end to another great day.

Night-heron 'hiding'

 

Booted Eagle over the saltpans....

 

... and an Egyptian Vulture dropping in

 

Israel 2019, day five - Race Day

Female Little Crake at the bird park - stunner!

 
I had a pretty simple choice on the morning of the 26th - rest up, recouperate and get well for the working week ahead, or plough headlong into the day, blitzing the COTF comms and social media channels and intercepting as many teams as possible at key points in their increasingly manic race day, to further ramp up the buzz for the campaign as the finish line beckoned....

Risky perhaps, but the latter won out, and not stopping for breath turned out to be a winning approach - we (Amity assisting invaluably) breezed around various locations in the southern area of the playing field, catching teams and their stories as they passed through, incorporating Holland Park, the IBRCE, city greenspaces, the pumpkin fields, K19, K20 and North Beach into our route. It worked a treat, and we were able to provide comprehensive, live and integrated coverage of the race on the ground from dawn til dusk and beyond.

IBRCE - or Israel Birding and Research Centre Eilat to give it it's full mouthful of a title (aka the bird park or just the park) - was a pleasure as always, and that's where this ridiculously confiding Little Crake strutted nonchalantly to and fro before us as the morning, and the race, heated up.

Other highlights here included Little Bitterns, plenty of waders, strong hirundine passage, and being interviewed for Haaretz - a national broadsheet known as the Israeli Guardian - about Champions and its increasingly important role in the international birding and conservation calendar. I'm told it's a very positive and well-informed piece (and not too unkind!) - if you can read Hebrew, here's the link to the online version.

Thankfully, the adrenalin never seemed to ebb away, and by the time the sun set on North Beach (with numerous teams trying to scratch out the last few diurnal species, including White-eyed Gull, Arctic Skua and Little Tern all offshore), the cold had miraculously peaked and left me with nothing worse than a comedy snotty nose for the evening at the finsih line in the hotel, welcoming teams back as the midnight curfew approached....

A Spoonbill jumps the queue at the IBRCE....

 
A fantastic and fenetic day, and a blessing to get away with just 48 hours under the weather when I was realistically preparing for a good week or so (and thus steeling myself for a difficult few days working ahead); but lord, did I sleep well that night.....

.... and then jumps a Little Egret

 

Spot the Little Bittern

 

White-eyed Gull, North Beach

 

Pied Kingfisher, North Beach