Warning: if you're not into enjoying images of sexy species in the hand then skip this post.
This morning I joined Yotam and Itai from the IBRCE for an adventurous ringing session in the Uvda Valley, Eilat Mts. A good team that included Yosef, Ron, Meidad and poor Rafi & Avishai that don't have their own websites, assembled very early (I left home at 01:00 to arrive on site at 04:00). Check their respective websites for their stories and images.
We set the nets up in the freezing dark and finished right on time. At first it was very quiet but later on large numbers of seed-eaters started to arrive in the wadi. The main attraction was of course Temminck's Larks - about 80-100 birds in groups of 20-40. We caught 9 birds, each one more beautiful than the other. They are such fantastic birds in the hand - so elegant and pretty. Unfortunately, like all larks they don't behave well in the hand and look very sad. The males have these amazing horns - this guy had horns of 25 mm!
Temminck's Lark - male






Temminck's Lark - female



Regards from Hants

Bar-tailed Lark


Mourning Wheatear Oenanthe l. lugens - 2cy



Trumpeter Finch - 3cy+ male
Many thanks especially to Yotam and to all the rest of the team.
Yoav, yes we read things in Australia! :-) Love reading your blog and when I first saw your photo of the Temminks Lark I was expecting a huge bird, and got quite a shock when I saw the size of it compared to a hand. We don't get these in Australia. Interesting to read how you catch, tag and release. Great stuff, keep posting. Cheers, Richard
ReplyDeleteThanks Richard!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff Yoav, thanks a lot!
ReplyDelete