Southern Observations – Early April 2006

The action packed period of late March peaked with a report of an adult Demoiselle Crane reported by several European birders, seen migrating over the Eilat Mountains. on the 29th of March, with Common Cranes. The bird was seen again the next morning north of K33.

On April 2nd Several British birders visiting Israel spotted a Demoiselle Crane with 800 Common Cranes in the Hula Valley Nature reserve. After being relocated by Amir Ben Dov on the 3rd, the handsome bird hung around for a few days and was seen by many birders. Talk about a cross country bird, amazing.

Several quieter birding days followed as April crept in. By quiet I mean no major rarities, but with thousands of Raptors overhead and quite a few new arrivals.
Nearly all the good birds found around late march are still present. The Baillon's Crake is still showing well in Eilat as is the Brown Booby at the north beach, at least till April 6th. The Lesser Flamingo is still at K20 and there are still single Cinereous Buntings and Bimaculated Larks here and there. The long staying Sociable Plover from Lotan finally left on the 2nd of April, it delighted literally hundreds of birders and photographers during its stay.

I am happy to bring you a summary of the highlights from the first week of April.

April 2nd – A relatively quiet day, I had good views of 10 Lesser Kestrels hunting at K76, but the recent rainfall and subsequent flooding affected the landscape and must have driven away the birds. I still managed to find a Lesser Short-toed Lark with 45 Short-toed Larks and several newly arrived E. Olivaceous Warbler.
On Lotan I had good views of a 1st summer male Semi-collared Flycatcher, but the bird of the day was an adult male Rose-coloured Starling seen briefly feeding in the high Tamarisk trees in the Grofit agricultural area. This is quite an early record for this species.

April 3rd – I spent some time in the Negev and found a Single Temminck's Lark and several Desert Wheatears at the Meishar and a single Cinereous Bunting at the Mitzpe Ramon football pitch.

That evening Per Lif and his fellow Swedish birders had a brief encounter with an adult Red-billed Tropicbird at Eilat's North beach. This was the 3rd sighting in less than a month (James Smith on March 13th and several foreign birders and myself on the 25th). All the sightings involved a single adult, seen flying inland, in late afternoon, circling over the bay and returning south towards the sea. All the sightings were rather brief. The difference with this sighting is that Per Lif managed to get a few images of the bird, to clinch the record.

Barak Granit, Tomer Landsberger and Roni Livne were at the North beach the whole afternoon on April 5th. The conditions were ideal for an Eilat seawatch with a good south wind blowing. Besides the usual stuff they had good views of Arctic and Pomarine Skuas (8 of each) and a single adult Long-tailed Skua, further offshore were 4 Sooty Shearwaters, but the hoped for Tropicbird was a no show…

The 6th was a rather quiet day, a significant cold front engulfed most of Israel and nearly no migration was evident, in the afternoon strong west winds raised clouds of dust and that was it for the day.

On the 7th A few newly arrived Turtle Doves were feeding on the road as I drove out of Lotan. I headed north to K76; I had good views of an Eastern Orphean Warbler and several Nightingales. In the green patches I found several dozen Short-toed Larks, Ortolan Buntings, Desert and Trumpeter Finch, Tawny and Tree Pipits and other birds. As the air heated more and more Steppe Buzzards gathered and a decent stream of birds was forming. I concentrated on counting for a while and in an hour I logged 1800 Steppe Buzzards, and small numbers of Black Kites, Steppe and Short-toed Eagles, 25 Black Storks and more.

As I was heading to the car I heard a distant call of Larks. I scanned around and quickly located a flock of 22 Temminck's Horned Larks flying low over the desert. The birds landed briefly far away and even before I had a chance to scope the birds, they carried on northwards. This is quite a late record for the species and a good sized group.

Near Yahel I found an adult Common Cuckoo and several Masked Shrikes.

Many more interesting species are yet to come and with the rise in temperatures in the next few days we are looking forward to the upcoming week, stay posted.

Jonathan Meyrav

Contact info

Daphna Abell
Program Coordinator
lotan-programs@lotan.ardom.co.il
Tel: +972 8 6356935;
Toll Free: 1800 2000 75 (when in Israel)