On Monday (April 1st) it was Champions of the Flyway again, for the 11th year. It was a strange one, all-Israeli, without the international component. Because of the war we didn't even try to engage with the international birding community - not easy to be an Israeli organisation or individual these days. Despite the ongoing war situation, we decided to go ahead with the Israeli race this year for several reasons. First, the conservation project, to support Nature Tanzania's work in tackling illegal killing of White Storks and other birds, is so important that we were determined to raise whate ..read more

Wow what a day. My morning started nicely with a visit to a flock of Cinereous Buntings on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Cinereous Bunting is a scarce migrant through Israel, mainly in spring, favouring open rocky slopes. Despite seeing quite many over the years, I have never managed a good photo. This morning I did. Kfar Adumim, where I visited, is a traditional site for them. The flock of five I had were quite mobile and a bit shy, but with some patience I managed a couple of decent photos. Not perfect, but certainly much better than those I had before. I find the subtle males very neat and at ..read more

This morning was one of those mornings that demonstrate best (to me at least) why I am a birder and how rewarding being a birder can be. I visited Mt. Amasa, at the southern tip of the Judean Mts. This is one of my favourite birding sites in March - the habitat is beautiful, the landscape is stunning, and birding is magnificent. The open, rocky slopes, now covered with flowers, attract juicy migrants, and support healthy populations of quality breeding species. For me, a mid-March visit to Mt. Amasa is really one of the highlights of my birding year in Israel. I know the sites there very well ..read more

Over the last few days I have been out and about a bit. It is such an exciting time of year to be out birding. The thrill of seeing fresh migrants, first for the season, keeps me going year after year. It never bores. On Saturday morning (March 2nd) I went birding with Piki to sniff some early migrants in Arsuf, north of Tel Aviv. The habitat was lovely, flowers aplenty. There's a patch of Coastal Iris there, which is endemic to Israel and Critically Endangered. Sexy.  There were quite many wheatears about, including an outstanding total of four Desert Wheatears. They are scarce or eve ..read more

In May-June 2019 (pre-covid, pre-war, another era) I led a Rockjumper tour to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (read the tour report here). Our first morning session was spent in the mountains above Tashkent. We drove up to Hotel Beldersay and birded the forested slopes above the hotel. It was a brilliant morning, the scenery was stunning with the backdrop of snow-capped mountains and lush valleys.  Birding was exciting, as expected for a first morning in a new destination, in fact a whirlwind of new and beautiful birds. Our excellent local guide Timur and I worked hard, picking up new birds co ..read more

On Wednesday I had a day at Ma'agan Michael with meetings and stuff. I had little time for birding before and between and after the meetings. I'm still hoping to get Great Shearwater this winter - my IL bogey bird (nine records...) therefore I spend any time I can scanning the sea. That early morning at MM the wind was blowing from the wrong direction and there was lots of rain, so seawatching conditions weren't good. But the sea and the skies and the rainbow were dramatic and beautiful. Because I had nothing better to do I spent my time checking gull legs. All I could find were two Slender-b ..read more

This morning I went seawatching with Piki, Rony, Yotam and Sharon. The wind maps looked promising, there was little rain in the forecast so our hopes were high. We arrived at the seawatching spot south of Jaffa, and very quickly realised that even though the wind was excellent, blowing from the correct direction in good force, the sea was quite empty. Well there were gulls, and some more gulls, but we were after proper pelagic species. After a long time we had our first and only Yelkouan Shearwater, then a Peregrine flew over, and we were getting a bit underwhekmed. But we kept on scanning, pe ..read more

Nice morning yesterday in Uvda Valley. The habitat looks promising - earlier rains produced a fresh, lush carpet of annuals. Surely this area will attract many migrants soon and support good breeding populations.  There were lots of mammals on the plains when I arrived in the half-dark. Dozens of Asian Will Ass and a few Dorcas Gazelle were enjoying the tasty grass. This is the start of the rutting season now, and the gazelles were active. These two males were playing around: Then everything went quiet - a majestic Arabian Wolf trotted across the plains. It was a beautiful male, in t ..read more

On October 7th a war broke between Israel and Hamas. I have refrained from writing directly about the war, here and on my social media channels. However, the war certainly affected my life, directly and as part of a national trauma. The horror is so deep that I struggle to remember life before the war. When I browsed through the images I took during 2023, selecting those that would be displayed in this traditional annual summary, distant memories of innocent birding came back to me. Memories of birding without being alert (the wrong kind of alert), without the sounds of sirens and explosion ..read more

Yesterday was a pretty big day for me. I celebrated five years of eBird checklist streak: for the past five years I have been out birding every day. 1825 consecutive days of eBirding, in which I went out birding every day. The last day that I didn't go birding was the 22nd of December 2018. eBird's rules for checklist streak are pretty fluid regarding the effort. I set myself a standard of daily meaningful birding, i.e. at least 30 minutes in proper birding mode, with binoculars around neck. I am pretty proud of this streak - during those five years my checklist streak was threatened by war, p ..read more