Monday, December 12, 2011

Winter Ringing...

Winter Ringing...

The days are getting shorter and I am getting lazier writing about the bits and pieces that I do ring.  Anyway last Monday I had free time to try ringing at the White Wagtails roost, so after getting the needed permissions to set up nets on the rooftop Next to the palm trees where they roost I gave it a try. The roof itself was very nice, just a short walk around produced some 25 Tables, 400 Glass Plates 1 Supermarket Cart two pairs of Rubber BootsClothes racks are common flock of 5000 is my highest for the season, and many more of things alike.
In the junkyard beside were some 300 pre-roosting Wagtails and 4 Tristram Grackles, what disgust.
All in all I caught a semi satisfactory catch of 24 wagtails, but after all this is the largest roost around Eilat.
what a wondeful ringing site!
  
During the weekend we had some ringing Demo’s to carry out, Yael (my sister) and Ron Efrat came along to help, we had very productive days, noteworthy were 6 Dead Sea Sparrows two 1st year female Sparrowhawks and a single Little green Bee-eater.
1 2 3 and bye bye...



It is possible to Age males Dead Sea Sparrow even after their complete summer moult (both ad. And juv.) By the amount of black on the greater coverts, this is a 2009 recapture showing black on only two feathers, a typical adult pattern. 1st year would usually have 4-6 blackish greater coverts.

Also during the weekend I opened the wader traps for a 48 hours session; we had quite good results yet nothing special (new/retrap):
22/7 Little stint
18/1 Dunlins
5/3 Redshanks
Two Ruffs and two Ringed Plovers

On Sunday, Ron and I made another attempt to catch Desert Finches near the salt ponds, a flock of 120 birds showed up made a circle above the nets but flew on, leaving us with ‘only’ 9 Desert Finches in hand.

If you been wondering why I have nothing to write about from the last days of November and the first of week of December I won’t tell you the reason, I would just say that it is better not to mention the word Hypocolius in my presence.

Yotam

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