Turkish Delight

in May i trapped my first ever foreign ringed bird. a garden warbler JA98286 which was first caught on the 23 august 2010 at the Kızılırmak Cernek Ringing Station, Kızılırmak Delta, Samsun Turkey. A distance of  1195 km, although we know it had travelled much further as  i caught it on its way back to europe after wintering in southern africa. This was also the first ever garden warbler control for Israel.
I also recently had my first ever control of one of my ringed birds. a 2cy reed warbler was caught in lake Yerocham the grand total of 22km away, where it most likely went to breed and maybe originated from there. the lake is directly east of my site, so how did this bird know how to get there! migration is a fascinating subject and one we know so little about.

ibex problem!!!

What's the most unusual thing you have had in your nets? i've had numerous bats, a gerbil, a kid on a pushbike and during the ringing demo's this month ibex, fortunately i have not had to extract them as when one of these beasts hits the net, it makes a big hole! i cannot say i have enjoyed the past months ringing as i'm on edge constantly checking where the ibex are, but most the youngsters that have attended the sessions seemed to have gone away happy even if they did have to get out of their beds early. It has also given me a chance to ring quite a number of breeding species such as bulbul and bush robins and to ring a small number of blackstarts which we only catch occasionally in our usual ringing plot. I also caught only my second ever pale rock martin which flew into a net as it was being lowered.
the first migrants have also started to appear this month with a number of olivaceous warblers and a female eastern orphean warbler being caught, along with me seeing a phylloscopus warbler on my way to work this morning. If just those damned ibex would disappear this would be a terrific little location as it's one of the most scenic ringing spots in the world.

Wadi Zin

Ibex

New Site

with lots of demonstrations booked for july and no birds inside the pistacchio plot, i had to try somewhere new, but still inside the village. So it was off to Ben Gurions burial site, which has a nice little park attached to it. ringing used to be good here until all the tamarix was removed. along with eran we put up 6 nets, and relaxed to watch the sun rise over the Zin wilderness, well that was what we hoped but along came the ibex and we had to constantly watch the nets too make sure we didnt trap an unwanted species as i would imagine they would make a fine mess. birds here where still few and far between. but we did manage a couple of bush robins, one of which had recently fledged along with his dad, its mom was a bit wiser and sat on top of the net before flying off. Then when i was coming back from a net round i saw Meidad, who finally made it by 6.45 running to the nets where what i thought must be a blackbird was caught, but to my delight i was wrong and we had a Tristrams Grackle, which are fairly common around here now, but we dont seem to catch any, these being the first since 2007. we had just finished ringing the first, a adult male, when a second female crashed into the same net, which delighted the small crowd of sightseers that were passing. We had only 9 birds in total but this site will have to do for the next month until the migrants start to return.

Tristrams Grackles