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Almost The Greatest Story Ever Told (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Farnboro John
- Start date
excellent report
Great report and some excellent photos
Great report and some excellent photos
Steve Babbs
Well-known member
Farnboro John
Well-known member
I'm really sorry for the delay. I've been busy at work and I have to go to a conference this week so will be away from the laptop: knowing this was coming up I have been thrashing away at the photos and everything is now photoshopped and ready to go to the end of the trip. After the conference I will be full out on the report and I flatter myself there will be LOL moments as well as bird enjoyment. Steve is right about his photo.....
Not much longer now. Hang in there!
John
Not much longer now. Hang in there!
John
Steve Babbs
Well-known member
I'm awaiting the second coming!
wolfbirder
Well-known member
I hate these long conferences, but in fairness John did title the report appropriately - "Almost The Greatest Story Ever Told".........................:smoke:
Farnboro John
Well-known member
I apologise again. I am further behind than ever but I will pick this up today and that's a definite. After breakfast... yes I know what time it is, I was photographer at my brother-in-law's wedding yesterday and it was more gruelling than dipping Amur Falcon in Cornwall on Tuesday!
John
John
Farnboro John
Well-known member
6 April: Thursday 1
Up at stupid o clock we thrashed straight up to Milhan Well where halfway down the track we found a couple of birders coming back even though it was barely light. It transpired they were very sorry for themselves having ripped out their sump on a rock. Another point for the high clearance of the Duster, then.... they carried on with basically no oil in the car to get back to the road before it blew up so they could deny ever having left the tarmac to their hire company. The company must have been good because the sandgrouse still hadn't arrived by the time we distantly saw the recovery truck deliver them a new car and take the dead one away - they didn't attempt to rejoin us though.
At the sewage pools we had a thin trickle of migrants moving through: Yellow Wagtail, Green Sandpiper, a couple of Pallid Swifts - as well as four Trumpeter Finches and a Brown-necked Raven that both hung around for quite a while.
We had to wait for any sandgrouse action and I will admit that when we did get it, I at least was far too slow to recognise that they weren't happy with people out of cars. With the Lichtenstein's having not cared a hoot I wasn't predisposed to assume these would, and took far too long to retreat to inside. Between times we had flight views of up to 50 Crowned Sandgrouse: eventually we got reasonable views on the ground as well. Future visitors, my advice is stay in the car. This is supposed to be a site for Spotted Sandgrouse as well but we didn't see any, even in flight.
Eventually we moved on, revisiting the Ne'fin Plain where we failed to add new birds but had a nice encounter with a Desert Praying Mantis, and Maz took the chance to be photographed in a real desert, prompting a rather odd display from Steve!
After that it was back to Eilat for another visit to IBRCE, since we seemed to get different birds, and different views of the same birds, every visit. This time we had Broad-billed Sandpiper more or less in range of the camera, along with an immature Greater Flamingo pleasingly close, and eventually a mighty Caspian Tern that pounded in, circled a few times and settled in the shallows, watched warily by the waders.
More in a bit, breakfast is about to be served!
John
Up at stupid o clock we thrashed straight up to Milhan Well where halfway down the track we found a couple of birders coming back even though it was barely light. It transpired they were very sorry for themselves having ripped out their sump on a rock. Another point for the high clearance of the Duster, then.... they carried on with basically no oil in the car to get back to the road before it blew up so they could deny ever having left the tarmac to their hire company. The company must have been good because the sandgrouse still hadn't arrived by the time we distantly saw the recovery truck deliver them a new car and take the dead one away - they didn't attempt to rejoin us though.
At the sewage pools we had a thin trickle of migrants moving through: Yellow Wagtail, Green Sandpiper, a couple of Pallid Swifts - as well as four Trumpeter Finches and a Brown-necked Raven that both hung around for quite a while.
We had to wait for any sandgrouse action and I will admit that when we did get it, I at least was far too slow to recognise that they weren't happy with people out of cars. With the Lichtenstein's having not cared a hoot I wasn't predisposed to assume these would, and took far too long to retreat to inside. Between times we had flight views of up to 50 Crowned Sandgrouse: eventually we got reasonable views on the ground as well. Future visitors, my advice is stay in the car. This is supposed to be a site for Spotted Sandgrouse as well but we didn't see any, even in flight.
Eventually we moved on, revisiting the Ne'fin Plain where we failed to add new birds but had a nice encounter with a Desert Praying Mantis, and Maz took the chance to be photographed in a real desert, prompting a rather odd display from Steve!
After that it was back to Eilat for another visit to IBRCE, since we seemed to get different birds, and different views of the same birds, every visit. This time we had Broad-billed Sandpiper more or less in range of the camera, along with an immature Greater Flamingo pleasingly close, and eventually a mighty Caspian Tern that pounded in, circled a few times and settled in the shallows, watched warily by the waders.
More in a bit, breakfast is about to be served!
John
Last edited:
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Steve Babbs
Well-known member
Steve Babbs
Well-known member
A greatly abridged version can be found here:
http://www.stevebabbs.com/home/trip-reports/2017-israel
I'm sure John will be along soon to give a full version.
http://www.stevebabbs.com/home/trip-reports/2017-israel
I'm sure John will be along soon to give a full version.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
John is greatly frustrated and hoping to sneak a few hours worth in tomorrow, provided his wife doesn't notice he isn't working on her brother's wedding photos!
Cheers all
John
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Right. After our visit to IBRCE we had to take it easy for a while because the afternoon heat was just stupid, but early evening we were out and about again heading for Canada Park. To stop there we had to navigate the nightmare of Israeli parking restrictions, which in towns are signalled by different colour paving stones. As you can imagine, all the locals understand these but your hire car doesn't come with a field guide to the kerb stones of Eilat!! Its difficult not to suspect this has been done deliberately to place foreigners at a disadvantage, which is stupid if you want repeat business in a place dependent on tourism for its economy but understandable in the context of a fairly arrogant nation. Anyway by a lucky chance I'd browsed the internet before travelling out, and picked up the necessary information quite by accident: so we got parked without risking a fine.
We were a little impatient for dusk, as we had come here after Scops Owls, of which two species had recently been calling from the park: but dusk refused to come, so we wandered around to see what else was on offer. Sparrows, assorted: many House and some Spanish. A Hoopoe feeding on the lawns when not being disturbed by a positive pack of mismatched hounds being walked with no consideration for other park users. And a Ficedula flycatcher of the female persuasion. This took a lot of sorting out but we eventually concluded it was a Collared Flycatcher.
Three Tree Pipits seemed more out of place than anything else present, but proved quite amenable when the blasted dogs weren't flushing them into the trees.
Suddenly we were joined by the Chuckle Brothers! Full of doom as ever they dissed our chances of any owl action, but then gave us two bits of invaluable help, guiding us to a pizza kiosk round the corner and mentioning that on previous evening visits they'd seen numbers of Egyptian Fruit Bats feeding on flowers in various trees. We looked round. Various trees were still laden with flowers. Excellent.
The pizza kiosk was top notch, supplying big, hot pizzas with plenty of topping and even managing to produce a quarter of one (yes, that's right, three-quarters one type and a quarter the other) that suited Maz's difficult limitations. Very tasty, albeit we had to eat in the park with one party member constantly shooing greedy dogs away. While we were waiting we found a big Orthopteran on the pavement, maybe a locust.
As we ate it got fairly dark and almost immediately we began to see big bats hurtling about between the trees. They were no respecters of personal space but always just missed us! A quick search found the tree they were feeding in but the wind had got up hugely and the whole thing was lashing about like crazy. We found a bat that was completely casual about being torch lit, but had to wait for pauses in the gale to get any photos. It was worth the effort though - or maybe I'd better let the reader judge....
All in all it had been a good day. Our last day in Eilat. Tomorrow, into the Negev.
John
We were a little impatient for dusk, as we had come here after Scops Owls, of which two species had recently been calling from the park: but dusk refused to come, so we wandered around to see what else was on offer. Sparrows, assorted: many House and some Spanish. A Hoopoe feeding on the lawns when not being disturbed by a positive pack of mismatched hounds being walked with no consideration for other park users. And a Ficedula flycatcher of the female persuasion. This took a lot of sorting out but we eventually concluded it was a Collared Flycatcher.
Three Tree Pipits seemed more out of place than anything else present, but proved quite amenable when the blasted dogs weren't flushing them into the trees.
Suddenly we were joined by the Chuckle Brothers! Full of doom as ever they dissed our chances of any owl action, but then gave us two bits of invaluable help, guiding us to a pizza kiosk round the corner and mentioning that on previous evening visits they'd seen numbers of Egyptian Fruit Bats feeding on flowers in various trees. We looked round. Various trees were still laden with flowers. Excellent.
The pizza kiosk was top notch, supplying big, hot pizzas with plenty of topping and even managing to produce a quarter of one (yes, that's right, three-quarters one type and a quarter the other) that suited Maz's difficult limitations. Very tasty, albeit we had to eat in the park with one party member constantly shooing greedy dogs away. While we were waiting we found a big Orthopteran on the pavement, maybe a locust.
As we ate it got fairly dark and almost immediately we began to see big bats hurtling about between the trees. They were no respecters of personal space but always just missed us! A quick search found the tree they were feeding in but the wind had got up hugely and the whole thing was lashing about like crazy. We found a bat that was completely casual about being torch lit, but had to wait for pauses in the gale to get any photos. It was worth the effort though - or maybe I'd better let the reader judge....
All in all it had been a good day. Our last day in Eilat. Tomorrow, into the Negev.
John
Farnboro John
Well-known member
IBRCE afternoon pix:
Greater Flamingo immature
Black-winged Stilt
Steppe Buzzard
Spur-winged Plover (with ludicrous decoy)
Little Grebe
Greater Flamingo immature
Black-winged Stilt
Steppe Buzzard
Spur-winged Plover (with ludicrous decoy)
Little Grebe
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Farnboro John
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Farnboro John
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Farnboro John
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birdmeister
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Fabulous Hoopoe photos, John! Great action captures. The Hoopoe was one of my favorite birds seen on my trip to Greece earlier this year.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Thank you! I must say the Canada Park individual put its crest up more than any Hoopoe I've ever seen, which helps. I was really chuffed with the last one where it is tossing the prey item up though.
John
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