The 4th Eilat Birds Festival, 18th-25th of March, 2010

In mid March birders from around the world got together at Eilat, Israel, for the 4th Birds Festival organised by The Israel Ornithological Center and The International Birding and Research Centre Eilat. Year by year the event grows stronger, with more and more people participating, and this year the participants were greeted by a green desert and a good selection of resident and migrant birds.

The evening activities took place at the Isrotel Hotel Agamim, where also the festival office was to be found. During the day the festival participants could choose to go on guided tours, especially designed for the Festival, or to spend the time on their own. There were different types of organised tours to choose from, with some venturing as far as Nizzana on the Egyptian border in the far northwest, for sandgrouse, McQueen’s Bustard and Cream-coloured Courser, or to the Dead Sea to enjoy the raptor migration and the local specialties. Other guided tours focused on the birding sites closer to Eilat, taking in the K20 pools, the Yotvata fields, the Shizzafon and Neot Semadar areas including nearby desert wadis, and various localities in the Arava Valley. There were also special night tours for owls, nightjars and mammals, which all proved to be well-booked and highly successful. All in all, the total Festival Bird List was pretty impressive, with just under 250 species seen by the participants during the week. This certainly gives you an idea about the huge birding potential Eilat has got.
Just to mention some of the highlights encountered during the week, Hume’s Owls and Pharaoh Eagle Owls were seen and heard on many of the night trips as well as to four Egyptian Nightjars, while the tours for the Nubian Nightjars south of the Dead Sea were also highly successful. Around the Yotvata fields Caspian Plovers, Cyprus Pied and Pied Wheatears, Menetries’s Warbler and Pallid Harriers performed nicely all week, with several Citrine Wagtails and two White-tailed Plovers showing near Eilat. In the date palms just north of the Jordanian border crossing a Crested Honey-buzzard was spending its third consecutive winter, but was as ever hard to twitch. Siberian Stonechats (both maurus and variegatus-types) were surprisingly numerous throughout the Arava during the Festival week. In the blooming desert large flocks of Short-toed Larks and smaller groups of Bimaculateds could easily be seen, while searching the grounds for the sought-after Thick-billed, Temminck’s Horned and Bar-tailed Larks, which all occurred in above-average numbers. Especially the Thick-billed Lark is a rare and irregular bird in Israel, and this year’s major influx created a lot of interest. From Eilat’s North Beach a Brown Booby was seen regularly, as was a flock of White-eyed Gulls, with an odd White-cheeked Tern appearing there on one day, and at dusk a Striated Heron frequented the marina.

After the Festival week I had a few days on my own, visiting first the Nizzana-area, on the Egyptian border not that far inland from the Med coast. I rounded off my tour with a few days by the escarpment above the Dead Sea, hoping for some raptor movement. But again, the weather was very strange, with two days of lead-grey clouds and drizzle, and absolutely no migration at all. Rain by the Dead Sea is very unusual anyway, and the few drops per year that fall here, usually come in winter. But persistent rain in late March is something most unusual. By Sunday morning, on the 28th of March, the skies had cleared and the sun was shining brightly. Everything was boding for a great day, and so it turned out to be. However, in the almost still conditions the flocks of hundreds of raptors flew very high already from the early morning, and by 10am, when I had to leave for the airport, they could be seen as mere specks in the sky, Steppe and Long-legged Buzzards, Steppe and Lesser Spotted Eagles, Short-toed Eagles, Booted Eagles, Pallid Harriers, Sparrowhawks and Kestrels, all rushing back to their breeding grounds.

Thanks once more to the organisers of the 4th Eilat Birds Festival for making it such a pleasant and friendly event. Personally I would like to thank Dan Alon, Jonathan Meyrav, Itai Shanni, Oz Horine, Yoav Perlman, Eyal Shochat, Noam Weiss, Paul Doherty, James P. Smith and others for good chats in the field and for their help with various matters, whether it be a flat car battery (after watching a Pallid Harrier from the car for two hours in bright sunshine with your lights on!), or a car on its way to slide sideways into a salt-pan! If the car rental companies only new…!