This is part two in a series of blog posts about the Champions of the Flyway event. A staggering 2,500,000 birds are illegally hunted, trapped and killed on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus each year. Birders from all over the globe are coming together to make a difference during Champions of the Flyway: a bird race that is making a difference. March 25, 2015 was the second annual Champions of the Flyway race. International teams of birders tried to see (or hear) as many species of birds as possible, all the while trying to find as many donors as they possibly could to enable BirdLife Cyprus to take the action needed to give the people of Cyprus the opportunity to turn the tide on criminality, stop illegal hunting and change the situation there once and for all. Read on as Jeff Bouton of Leica Sport Optics, and his team, The American Dippers, recounts his adventures in Israel.
Dipper – It’s not only a cool songbird that runs under water, but in British birding slang a „dipper“ is one who „dips“ or misses a bird they are looking for!
This is part two in a series of blog posts about the Champions of the Flyway event. A staggering 2,500,000 birds are illegally hunted, trapped and killed on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus each year. Birders from all over the globe are coming together to make a difference during Champions of the Flyway: a bird race that is making a difference. March 25, 2015 was the second annual Champions of the Flyway race. International teams of birders tried to see (or hear) as many species of birds as possible, all the while trying to find as many donors as they possibly could to enable BirdLife Cyprus to take the action needed to give the people of Cyprus the opportunity to turn the tide on criminality, stop illegal hunting and change the situation there once and for all. Read on as Jeff Bouton of Leica Sport Optics, and his team, The American Dippers, recounts his adventures in Israel.
Dipper – It’s not only a cool songbird that runs under water, but in British birding slang a „dipper“ is one who „dips“ or misses a bird they are looking for!
We began predawn the following AM and planned to work our way from Eilat all the way to Yeruham Park & Reservoir near the northern boundary of the COTF playing field (2.5 hours drive without birding), paying special attention to desert specialties at the Hameyshar Plains along the way. Doug had made an earlier visit here on a birding field trip and Michael had birded these plains last April, but neither had ever been to Yeruham (Michael’s 2014 team the „Way Off Coursers“ had only made it as far north as Sde Boker). So, we still had no real idea what we’d find where. Plagued by jet lag, we started slowly, searching out life saving coffee and arriving at Hameyshar up to an hour later than expected.
As you can see from the image above, when in the field the entire team was geared to the teeth, carrying not only binoculars, but spotting scopes to locate and assess distant birds and markings, and with cameras at the ready to get photos of birds as they passed or perched nearby. For us, with lesser familiarity with the bird species here, the photos were crucial to insure we were making accurate field identifications and it was not uncommon for our team to gather behind the LCD screens and discuss and compare fine points of ID. We did not take the extra time necessary to stalk subjects or to take high-quality images. All photos were from the hip and useful primarily for documentation purposes only (function over form in this case). So despite 5,000 plus personal images, I had a very low percentage of what I’d describe as real „keepers“.
Some birds like the Temminck’s Lark were so similar to our Horned Lark visually and by call that identification was easy through association.
While other birds like Sandgrouse were so incredibly different and large that there was no similar US species to liken these to. Still, these posed little ID challenge compared to other groups. There are five possible Sandgrouse species in the playing field, but these are distinctly marked and only two were expected at Hameyshar, Spotted & Crowned. We’d just seen the former in the more vegetated areas East of the road so these Crowned were easily separated (even without the cameras).
Other groups out here posed more difficult challenges. As example, we’d sorted through and identified 7 individual species of Larks (11 are on the COTF checklist) – Crested Lark & the superficially similar Eurasian Skylark, Greater Short-toed, and a single, impossibly-similar Lesser Short-toed Lark, Bimaculated Larks, the easily identified Temminck’s. Then you have the uber-similar Bar-tailed & Desert Larks both of which seem to be characterized by their pale appearance and general lack of obvious markings… just great! Need to see that tail well or know the vocalizations. In addition to the larks, were as many as seven different Pipit species to chose from. The bird above was identified as a Tawny Pipit by my more experienced team mates, but without any real previous experience it required some field guide page turning on my part to understand why! This was going to be hard, only half way through the morning and I thought my head might explode. So many new habitats, new place names, new birds, bird songs and more… couple this with severe jet lag and fatigue and I was a babbling idiot. We were all dragging.
Our plan at midnight the night before was to get to Yeruham Park by mid morning to scout it out, but it was already past mid-morning and we were only about 1/3 there. We had to put the blinders on and push past the birds and promising birding spots just noting the locations of Wheatears or Long-legged Buzzards and other notables perched at roadside, and noting the mileage of promising-looking wadis we wanted to check tomorrow or on race day. A „wadi“ is what we might refer to as a „desert wash“ in the southwestern US. In essence, a draw that got occasional moisture amounting to green in the desert. These areas were absolute gold for migrant and breeding birds alike. If the contrasting green was obvious to us, then it was extremely obvious to the migrating birds.
We finally arrived at Yeruham Park near noon. It was a gem of a place, a true oasis with large stands of trees which played host to Israel’s only resident woodpecker, the Syrian Woodpecker and Great Tits (a species of chickadee). Both of these are unusual throughout most of the COTF playing field which is mostly in Israel’s desert state. Greenfinches were everywhere in the pines here and we found other more typically northern European species here like European Robin, Goldfinch, and Blackbirds.
The trees here also played host to incredible birds like the Hoopoe – an utterly mind-blowing bird with one of the best scientific names going, Upupa epops (try saying that 5 times fast)! We also tracked down Stonechats, Tristram’s Starlings, Semi-collared Flycatchers, Graceful Prinias, Palestine Sunbirds, White-throated Kingfishers, Desert Finches… The little pond and main reservoir here provided even more habitat diversity with additional specialty birds: Cetti’s, Savi’s, Sedge & Reed Warblers, Rails, Crakes, Little Bittern… It was obvious that Yerahum would remain on our official itinerary, but also that it would be difficult to bird all of these productive habitats in a hurry and NOT fall behind on your route. It would take great discipline to leave this spot during an active morning chorus and would be easy to fall behind. Which reminded me, we were late now and needed to leave. It was already early evening and we needed to be back to Eilat for the Official COTF Opening Ceremony which began at 8 PM. So we put the blinders back on and shot south this time toward Eilat where our new friend „Gold Star“ would once again be waiting! 😉
One full scouting day down and only 1.5 remaining – we had only a rough route itinerary drafted, had only scouted a few spots, and still had much to learn about the local birds. It seemed an impossible task, but whether I admitted it or not, I had actually learned a great deal about the local birds after 2 full days afield and every minute I spent birding continued to add to my knowledge and understanding of the birds here. All crucial information I’d refer back to on race day.
– Jeff Bouton
Pledge your support for this worthy cause on behalf of the Leica / CMBO American Dippers: www.justgiving.com/cotf2015AD. You may also want to support Birdlife Cyprus in protecting the migrant birds migrating through Cyprus – the official 2015 COTF conservation cause here!