Y231115

After the excitement of the ringing demo for the president and with what is seemingly everywhere  in Israel  a very poor migration,  when i got out of bed and saw grey skies above, i couldn't resist cycling out to the patch and opening a few nets, and i was glad i did with the best day of the spring numbers wise. Although the catch was made up almost entirely of blackcaps 24 out of 31 new birds. Many species are most notable by their absence here, with hardly any thrush nightingales, redstarts, bluethroats, martins, swallows, wheatears, willow warblers and olivaceous warblers. i've probably caught around the same numbers of blackcaps and lesser whitethroats, but overall catching numbers are down by about 50% of what i would have expected from previous years (although i didnt ring here last year very much, so i dont have a lot of data to make comparisons with). anyways what is so special about ring Y231115? well it belongs to the 1000th blackcap that i have ringed in Sde Boker in 3 spring and 2 autumn migrations, not bad for a little patch of green (or burnt brown this year) in the middle of a desert