Birding Israel from North to South
This Passover vacation I planned to stick around with my family who lives nearby, then go up to my family in Kfar Tavor (Galilee area) and then come back. Spring migration was finally heating up, and so I decided on April 12 to do a birding run through Jerusalem, where many good birds were being seen. The first stop was Gazelle Valley, a small nature reserve in the southwest section of the city proper. Only one minute in I had an overdue lifer in Greater Whitethroat, and in the small pond were the long-awaited Ferruginous Ducks. No other interesting ducks were there and no hawks were flying overhead, so I walked through the scrubland encountering good numbers of blackcaps and Lesser Whitethroats, a Chukar enjoying the shade under a tree, and a Collared Flycatcher that wouldn’t pose for photos but was willing to do so for binoculars.
As I should have expected, the Jerusalem Botanical Garden would cost money to enter; but it has less habitat than Gazelle Valley so it didn’t matter that much. While continuing my walk to Wohl Rose Garden, I picked up a Eurasian Hoopoe and another expected lifer, Eurasian Crag-Martin. But looking on Google Maps, the garden also appeared to be closed, this time to all visitors presumably due to construction.
So with plenty of time to kill, I bought some delicious coffee at Sacher Park and spent some time at the Jerusalem Bird Observatory. Many more blackcaps, and a Common Reed Warbler, and suddenly, a bird that was not all on my radar in the form of a Barred Warbler.
The streak of goodies continued with a Eurasian Skylark and a pair of Collared Flycatcher back in the local patch on the 15th, but I was quickly running out of local targets. Thankfully, the Galilee brought new scenery and new habitat. I wasn’t able to seriously bird for nearly a week, but I made up for it by trekking in some fields to reach a sewage pond as the sun was just getting over the horizon. There weren’t any shorebirds besides Spur-winged Lapwings, but a Little Egret and a Glossy Ibis were waking up in a large tree and a couple of Black-winged Kites were flying around. With the help of Merlin, I was able to notice and see several Great Reed Warblers and a Sedge Warbler. The next day, I looked out of the balcony window and noticed a large raptor flying low in the fields immediately behind the house! I ran out and was able to get great views of my first Western Marsh Harrier, an excellent bird that I could’ve watched for hours. It flew north, however, so I looked to the south for more migrants but could only turn up two STSEs (Short-toed Snake-Eagles) and three likely local Eurasian Kestrels.
Upon return from my trip up north I decided that I had to do at least one birding trip to a mega hotspot in Israel this year. After a bit of deliberation I decided on Ma’agan Michael, a coastal collection of fishponds halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. It wasn’t so easy to get to by bus and I would only be getting there by midday, but the visions of shorebirds and rivers of herons kept me going. Walking to the fishponds north of the entrance, I immediately noticed the large flocks of Common Terns enjoying the free fish lunch menu. The only time I had previously seen this bird was at Montrose in 2019, which I have yet to enter into my eBird account. Of course, there were much better birds to be seen, as I notched Little Tern, Purple Heron, and Squacco Heron, but I was still looking for that shorebird habitat. Finally, I stumbled across a fishpond with an amount of mud that some Black-winged Stilts, Little Stints and Wood Sandpipers had deemed satisfactory. But after some of them took off and flew south of the main path, I decided to follow them in hopes of finding something more. And the “more” turned out to be “more awesome than any shorebird experience I’ve ever had.” On one hand, I love shorebirds at Montrose and at other coastal spots, where rarities occasionally drop in and they are easy to see, but they are always few in numbers. I hate shorebirds at Techny and other inland locations, as they always seem to be far away and below me, even though they can show up there in large flocks. At this one fishpond, I had the best of both.
The edges were teeming with dozens of Little Stints, plus a Ruff and Spotted Redshank. After a bit of examination, I was able to find 4 small birds that were a bit different than the Little Stint surrounding them - Broad-billed Sandpipers, a very uncommon bird worldwide and the first record for Israel in 2024 for this migratory bird away from Eilat! Many other birds of species too numerous to mention here also were gathered in this one area, and I happily soaked it in before all too soon it was time to catch the bus back. This was the first and last “real” birding trip I had in Israel this year, and I’ll definitely have to come back.
A few days later, the highlight of the year arrived: The annual trip to Eilat. On the way, we stopped at several spots in the “Negev”, the rocky desert that makes up the vast majority of the southern half of the country. The first stop was a “Makhtesh”, a word with no English equivalent. It refers to a large crater-shaped valley not made by a crater, and it’s an incredible sight, almost like a circular Grand Canyon complete with standalone plateaus in the middle. At the beginning and end of the hike I was able to walk near and in a few riverbeds and enjoy the unique sight of migrating passerines feeding in the desert alongside the ones that belonged there. The best bird was a sharp-looking White-crowned Wheatear, and a Red-backed Shrike was hunting near it. At the rim of the makhtesh were some Desert Lark and Brown-necked Ravens offered fantastic looks, and a pair of Scrub Warblers gave fleeting views as they ran on the ground from one patch of cover to the next. Blackcaps, whitethroats, and Spotted Flycatchers were all in abundance as they searched for the necessary fuel to get them further north.
The next morning we woke up early to tackle one of the toughest hikes in Israel, Har Shlomo. For someone who grew up in Chicago with no mountaineering experience, I had to pay careful attention to what I was doing, but once again I was able to spot the range-restricted White-crowned Wheatear on the way in. As we were on a relatively easy spot on a ridge, I looked towards the desert below and saw a large flock of Common Buzzards circling at eye level, with more and more streaming from the south to join the kettle by the minute! But we had to head on, and there wasn’t much else to see for the rest of the exhausting trek.
Although it isn’t a very good idea to try to use binoculars while tubing, I was able to get good naked-eye views of a small flock of White Storks moving north while holding on for dear life. Definitely one of the funnest things I’ve ever done, birding while tubing, now if only the Yellow-billed Stork that showed up that morning had decided to arrive in the afternoon…unfortunately the Eilat Bird Observatory wasn’t a place that I had time to sneak off to.
Although early May is generally reliable for spectacular numbers of European Honey-Buzzards and Levant Sparrowhawks, they simply never showed up. Instead, the city underwent an invasion of European Bee-Eaters, which isn’t something I’ll ever get bored of seeing but I was hoping for something I wouldn’t easily be able to see further north.
We slept that night in a town called Coral Beach a few kilometers down the coast from Eilat. There were reliable reports of Lichtenstein's Sandgrouse nearby, but from what I saw there was no way to easily access that area. But I did have the chance to walk around a little before sunset, and standing near a small sandy park I got literally the best views of White-crowned Wheatears I could have asked for without one flying onto my shoe. One hopped onto a log less than five feet away from me, and they seemed to be mildly curious as to what I was doing near their home. Dozens of bee-eaters flew in to roost, and a pair of Tristram’s Starlings flew over.
The next morning I walked near the beach, but couldn’t even pick up a gull. But the wheatears repeated their performance with Blackstarts also showing no fear, and I was able to pick up my only decent migrant of the trip, a Barred Warbler.
Overall, the Eilat trip was a bit of a disappointment - great desert birds, but very little of the fantastic migration that makes it an international destination for birders. It was also one of my last birding trips for a while, as migration cooled down and the weather heated up to insane temperatures. But in the week after I got back the weather was slightly bearable, and I was able to finally hear a Wood Lark, saw large flocks of bee-eaters, and added an unexpected flyover Bank Swallow to the village list which finished at 78 with Israel closing out with 133.
With the, you know, war, birds weren’t really my focus this year. There were many obstacles to birding this year, with most places in the Hula Valley closed for example, but frankly I didn’t care compared to the other much more serious effects of the situation. Next year will likely result in more outings to places like Ma’agan Michael, but there still won’t be so many of them, which again is just a first-world problem.
I’m writing this back at home in Chicago, where I’m going to be for around 2 weeks. Then a month at a camp, this time on the northeastern side of Pennsylvania, and then back for another year in Israel. Whew!
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