New blood

On the 22^nd 3 new volunteers joined us- Roni Vaisanen who came back for the second spring in a row, and Fabian&Tammo Meijer from Holland.

The reed nets keep on producing the goods with 24 swallows caught on the 22^nd evening, and of course many  Sedge&Savi's Warblers…hopefully the crakes will follow ;-)

Guys, you look better with every photo!

The Dutch team had a nice afternoon yesterday with lifers count still going strong.

2  males Ruppell's  Warbler at the Holland park, Pallas's Gull flying around and the whole north beach pack.

Raptors passage is still slow. A very unusual record from yesterday was a Honey Buzzard- the earliest ever spring record in Israel! 

This afternoon, while opening nets for swallows, Roni picked up a wader's call which he identified as an Oystercatcher! We couldn't locate the bird as it flew south. Some scaning of the nearby salt pans provided nice views of some 200 Black Headed gulls, some tens of Ruffs , Black Winged Stilts & some Tringa species. Oystercatcher is a scarce passage migrant at Eilat during spring, probably some more of these beauties will show up later the season.

Maintenance works are going strong with the large working force at the park. Looks like all the traps will be fixed and ready for a great spring in a week or two.

I'm up north for the weekend- hope nothing too rare shows up while I'm gone…anyway, Itai will inform you with any interesting news.