A Hawks day

Yesterday afternoon, Juan, Aron and Simon noted a few thousands Levant Sparrowhawks flying low…a big promise for today's morning!

Before sunrise, while erecting the nets, we realized that it's going to be a big day. For the first 2 hours f the day approx. 2000  Levant Sparrowhawks passed in tree tops high over the IBRCE, Of which 12 were caught.

Here is a female

And a handsome male…

Here is a comparison of the underparts

A nice 2^nd cy male Eurasian Sparrowhawk was trapped as well…

Passerines ringing was quit slow, but a very nice surprise was an adult Cuckoo!

This species is a regular migrant and breeder in Israel but is very seldom ringed…

After a good siesta we headed to Eilot's cemetery. No birds were seen in the well vegetated area, but just as we were about to enter the car, we noted some raptors, high up in the blue sky. Soon enough the first flock of levi's was located- estimated 3-4000! A few tens Steppe&Honey Buzzards passed, with some other common raptors. We decided to improve our location and moved to Eilat cemetery .  during an hour, we enjoyed terrific passage of 6-8000 Levants, more than a 1000 Honey Buzzards with 1 male Oriental Honey Buzzard among them, and a few hundred Steppe Buzzards. As usual we ended the day at the north beach, with few more hundreds of Honey Buzzards, 2 Sooty Shearwaters, 1  Arctic Skua and the rest of the usual guests...

Two interesting birds from the last two days were 2 Eleonora's Falcons seen around Eilat by the IBRCE's team.

While it seems that almost all of the migratory species are found in small numbers or completely absent so far this spring, the raptors are here to remind us what Eilat is all about! I guess that today we saw a descent portion of the world population of Levant Sparrowhawk- as far as we know, most of them pass through Eilat's Sky during the lat week of April every year…

For me this was one of the best raptors days ever, and we are all waiting for tomorrow…