The 2th of April we had quite a good ringing mourning with 116 birds at the JBO including a male Ruppels warbler, a female Masked shrike and a Wryneck (see the pictures in the post below). Other sightings were some migrating Storks, Lesser spotted eagles, Alpine swifts, Pailled swift, Masked shrike, Wryneck and all the local stuff in the city parks.

I was a bit sick and cold so we didn't ring yesterday mourning. We just visited the Old City and some parks in the afternoon and found a new hostel. The Citadel hostel in the Old City is a very nice one with a roof terrace with a really nice view over the whole city, the mountain of olives, the desert North of the Dead Sea and the Jordan Mountains. We sleep ousite on the terrace and even at night it's really nice!

I felt a lot better today so we join ringing at the JBO. We had not so many birds but we caught two Wrynecks and a really beautiful male Palastine sunbird. We visited the Mountain of olives where we had a great view over Jerusalem and the desert vally North of the Dead Sea.

Tomorrow we will go to Bethlehem!

Chillings

Today we did some ringing at the JBO with Sylvia warblers including 6 Eastern orphean warblers and some other stuff like Common naghtingale and Eastern redstart. In the afternoon we did some birding. reptilling and chilling in the park and met two Jewish girls. We had a nice conversation about the Jewish religion. See the pictures below. We stay now at the Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem with live music, it's a really nice hostel! Good night.

Jerusalem

We spend our last day in Tel Aviv at the Carmel Market yesterday. It was just a market with all kind of food and other stuff. Then we went to the Central bus station for a bus tour to Jerusalem. From the bus we saw Short-toed eagle, hoopoe and a green landscape what we never saw before. The trip lasted only 40 minutes.

In Jerusalem it was quite cold and we had to walk to the New palm hostel near the Old City half an hour away from the bus station but it took us the double time with our baggage.

In the Old City we had a quick look at the Western Wall. Every Friday evening it’s Sabbath party for the Jewish people. It’s not a party with alcohol and other things that you can use like we have in The Netherlands but it was quite impressive with some hundreds of Orthodox Jewish people singing in front of the Wall.

In the hostel we have a dormitory room with ten other people from all over the world. When I was in bed I thought that there was an earthquake but it proved to be a snoring man… First it was only one man but after some sleepless time the second and third man began also. It

sounded like a competition between them, it was really terrible but we had a lot of fun about it.

Today was our first ringing day at the Jerusalem Bird Observatory in the big park in the middle of the city. We were a bit late because of the snoring night. When we arrived we saw Carmel Zitronblat photographing a very nice 2nd CY male Cyprus warbler! A ringing tick for us, good begin, but we missed already a Common Rosefinch.

Carmel showed us the ringingstation. It’s a really nice education center and I’m happy that we can stay here for a week. The rest of the mourning we caught some Sylvia’s. Most of them were Lesser whitethroats but a Eastern orphean warbler as well. Near one of the nets I saw a Nightjar chilling on a branch. We tried to flush it in one of the nest but we failed.

After ringing we spend some birding time in the park. The park was quite full with migrants, most Sylvia warblers including a male Ruppell’s warbler and a Eastern oprhean warbler. Also a Masked shrike, Hawfinches, Nightingales, Redstarts and a Serin were present. We had five Israeli ticks today. Now we will visit the Old City, bye.

The first Israeli tick

We walked a half marathon trough Tel Aviv yesterday. We walked more than 20 km to the park in the Northern part of the city. The quality of the girls was better than the birds with less migrants but still we saw some nice things. We saw all the three species of kingfishers that you can see in Israel; Pied, White-breasted and common. Also Little egret, Cattle egret, Night heron, Glossy ibis, quite a few hoopoes, yellow-legged gulls, spur-winged plover, a ringed Crestmars bunting, a Cetti’s warbler, Spanish sparrows, some Chiffchaffs, White wagtails, Blackcaps and a Lesser whitethroat were present. A singing male Blackbird was a real Israeli tick for us, the first one! In the afternoon we walked back through busy streets full of people with machineguns and very interesting smells everywhere. Most of them were not really nice.

we ended the day with a photo shoot of Tel Aviv’s skyline.

We arrived at Tel Aviv!

The 27^th of March Teun van Kessel and I flew to Tel Aviv with Jetairfly from Liège Airport in Belgium. The control at the airport wasn’t very strong and everything went very smoothly unlike last spring. At 23:00 we arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv and around 01:00 in the night we were on the central station.

We have created the tradition to stay awake the entire night when we arrive to Tel Aviv. Also this night was a long night. We walked through almost the whole city with 25 kilo of baggage, met some very friendly people but we didn’t find a sleeping place. Finally we found a very nice hostel around five in the morning close to Old Jaffa , the most beautiful part of the city but that isn’t very hard because the rest of the city is more like a garbage dump.

04:00 in the night, searching for a sleeping place...

After a night without sleep, we went for a walk and some birding in Old Jaffa. There wasn’t any migration but we saw some nice locals including Palestine sunbird, Pied kingfisher, Syrian woodpecker, Laughing dove, Sardinian warbler, White-spectacled bulbul and our first swallows and swifts of the year.

We are now very tired on the nice roof terrace of the Old Jaffa Hostel with a beer and quite a nice overview over the Mediterranean sea and the city!