A few Middle East birds

We spent the first few days of November in Israel.  It wasn't a birding trip (though it would be a really good place to take one, especially in November) however we did meet a few lifers while we were there.  And saw a couple of old friends as well.

White-throated Kingfisher

and a Pied Kingfisher.

The picture above was only possible because I borrowed my daughter's camera with its 65x zoom. With the bare eye, that kingfisher was just a black and white spot on the shoreline.

Possibly the most exotic bird we were fortunate enough to see, the Eurasian Hoopoe.

At the same location as the above three birds, the excavated site of Caesarea, we also saw a Little Egret, very similar to the Snowy Egret on this side of the world.

Our other best accidental birding site was on the shores of the Dead Sea.  There we met several Tristram's Starlings.

 

A Blackstart

 A White Wagtail

And a Common Myna, a common bird where we travelled, but also apparently an introduced bird.

The bird we saw the most, and everywhere we went, was the House Sparrow.  The one here only varied because it had rather a lot of white on it. Because of the white on the beak, I wondered about paint, except that a few feathers toward the tail also show white.

A songbird that we saw and heard several times was the White-spectacled Bulbul.  It has a very pretty song.

Another exciting bird to meet was the Middle Eastern answer to the hummingbird.  A Palestine Sunbird.

And there was the every-where-present Hooded Crow.

 And on the Sea of Galilee (which is a lake, of course) a Pygmy Cormorant.

When Solomon wrote about the cooing of doves heard in the land he just may have been talking about the Laughing Dove.

And seen from the window of our bus, yes we were on a bus tour, was a flock of Great White Pelicans.

While on a walk outside our hotel in Jerusalem, several Rose-ringed Parakeets flew noisily by, landing in a tree near us. Also known as the Ring-necked Parakeet, we have previously seen this native of India and central Africa in London, England. Apparently they are doing better in parts of the world where escaped pets have colonized than they are doing in their native territory where farmers do not like them.

One of the old friends was the Black-crowned Night Heron, sitting here by the Sea of Galilee with a White-throated Kingfisher.

There were lots more birds around: cranes, gulls, kestrels, hawks, swallows, but we were unable to identify them or to photograph them.  Still, for a nonbirding trip with only a few minutes now and then to wander off on our own, we were pleased with what we were able to see.