Anyway, back to Israel.
A trip across Europe in 1978 was followed by a strong desire to get some more foreign birding in the next year. Late in the autumn an envelope dropped through the door containing a slim, grey Sunbird brochure with just a few tours and the odd black-and-white photo. One, of swirling raptors, caught my eye embedded in tour details for Israel. At 23 I'd never given Israel a thought, still considering all the opportunities for great birding closer to home. But then again the species list, sheer numbers and the realisation that Israel wasn't that far away was really exciting and luckily MM and NJL thought the same.
And so in the last week of March we set off on the five hour flight out of Heathrow and in to Tel Aviv. On the flight the passenger next to me told me he was a Sieff family member and settled down to get 'lubricated' although he did buy me a couple of brandies!! Whoever he was he declined my kind offer to let his chauffeur drive me Mark and Nigel to Eilat!! On arrival he zipped through immigration and was met by his driver while the rather scruffy three of us queued to get in and on our way to an overnight stop at a Youth Hostel near the Yarkon river.
Awake before first light the next day; the excitement of 'first birds' was fed by unusual bird calls and songs. Both large kingfishers were found quickly along the river plus our first Graceful Warblers and bulbuls.
We wandered through a market picking up the first of many felafel plus fresh fruit before the long bus journey down to Eilat with lots of noisy holiday-bound Israelis. On arrival local ladies were hawking accomodation and we found ourselves whisked off to a very pleasant three-bedded room with clean shower room and settled in for the next few days birding around the resort.
We spent plenty of time around Eilat but with a small hire car we were able to visit the furthest south, Nabq, Sharm and Ras Mohamed, the Negev and Dead Sea sites such as Massada and Ein Gedi. Sadly, we didn't have time for the northern sites such as Mount Hermon, Hula etc.
We eventually returned to Tel Aviv on the bus for the return flight home.
Just a few selective counts of some of the 189 species we saw with approximate bird/days.
White Stork (4000)
Steppe Buzzard (6000)
Black Kite (1150)
Steppe Eagle (360)
Pallid Harrier (9)
Sociable Plover (1)
Caspian Plover (7)
Lesser Crested Tern (45)
Lichtenstein's Sandgrouse (6)
Pin-tailed Sandgrouse (45)
Crowned Sandgrouse (200)
Black-bellied Sandgrouse (5) flushed by two Golden Eagles
Baillon's Crake (6)
Blue-cheeked Bee-eater (18)
Temminck's Lark (17)
Bimaculated Lark (1)
Another larger British 'crew' spent more time in the country, time in the north and split up to twitch a few hard to get specialties such as Sinai Rosefinch and Green Heron scoring about 60 species more than us.
