26th & 29th November - On the morning of 26th I joined Ayala Wise from Ketura for our weekly census of Little Green Bee-eaters. We'd only made it to our first point count when I heard the distinctive 'rattling' call of a Red-breasted Flycatcher coming from some mature gardens in the Kibbutz (Ketura). As we walked towards the sound of the calling flycatcher, another potentially much more exciting call greeted us, a rather sharp 'che-weet'. It was the call of a Hume's Warbler. Although we had some poor views of the 'skittish' flycatcher, the Hume's Warbler couldn't be found and we had to be content with a 'heard only' record, as we continued our census route.

On the morning of the 29th I walked to Ketura from Lotan, determined to track down the Hume's Warbler. There are just fourteen accepted National records of this rare Asian species and I really felt obliged to document the record properly. After some time I located both the Hume's Warbler and the Red-breasted Flycatcher by their respective calls and enjoyed close views of them for much of the morning. Later that afternoon, both species were seen by Jonathan Meyrav who was visiting Lotan for the weekend.

Hume's Warbler breeds in the mountains of Central Asia and winters mostly in India and Burma. The first record in Israel was discovered as recently as 1981 (Shirihai 1996). This bird at Ketura is our second of the autumn to date (see also 4th Nov). However, this is still a very rare bird in Israel and has been recorded less than annually since 1981.

We hope you enjoy this mini-gallery of images of this rare Asian visitor.

Happy Birding,

James Smith & the Birding Israel team

Hume's Warbler Hume's Warbler Hume's Warbler Hume's Warbler Hume's Warbler Red-breasted Flycatcher