Thursday, June 2, 2011

There's nothing worse than bored ringers

A few days ago I got a report about tons of birds coming in to drink at a small waterhole in the hight Negev Mts. This reminded me of the fantastic drinking spot I monitored last summer, so I assembled a quality team and headed south early this morning (left home at 2 am!).
We did a beautiful job setting the nets up. Then it was light. Then the sun went up. Then we were standing around and waiting. It was very cold, so we said to each other: " It's too cold; as soon as it warms up millions of birds will come in to drink". And then it warmed up, and nothing came. So we had plenty of time to enjoy the breathtaking scenery, drink coffee and photograph each other.

Meidad
Meidad and Rony
Nadav
Rony
Why the birds didn't come I have no idea. I think that the report I received was a bit exaggerated, and my interpretation was overoptimistic too. Eventually we caught very few birds. The only bird of note was this 1cy Spectacled Warbler:



Great thanks to the patient and hardworking team: Nadav (from the Hula, who did about 60 km of driving per bird we ringed this morning), Eli, Rony, Meidad, Darren, Mark, Noa and Anat.

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