Category Archives: Plovers

Winter Birding in Israel, Part III: Eilat and the Red Sea

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Our condolences to all those affected by the coronavirus—including those forced to cancel their well-earned vacations. We offer some small consolation by traveling to southern Israel to explore amazing birds of the desert and Red Sea. Enjoy, and don’t forget to share this with your birding buddies. Next week: Wadi Rum and Petra.

After our fabulous day in the Hula Valley, I rewarded myself by—you guessed it—catching the flu. Really. Not my first choice, but after a day in bed, Braden and I continued as planned and headed to Jerusalem for three days. The highlights were seeing a Eurasian Hoopoe on the walls of the Old City and grabbing a new Life Bird, Tristram’s Starling, literally on the Western Wall. Then, mostly recovered from my illness, we headed to more fertile birding territory: Eilat and the Red Sea.

The International Birding and Research Center (to the left of the closer salt ponds) and nearby Holland Park offer welcome relief to the hustle and bustle of Eilat.

For those who don’t know it, Eilat is on a major flyway between Africa and Asia and Europe. Some estimates place the number of birds flying through at half a billion per year, and it is especially known for raptor migration. Alas, Braden and I were not visiting during migration, but we still hoped to see some new and cool species. Our first full day there, we caught a cab to the International Birding and Research Center just north of town. The center is on the site of the former city dump and located next to expansive ponds used for salt manufacture. Since 1993, however, the sanctuary has been aggressively rehabilitating the site—something that was still very much in progress when we arrived.

Without a doubt one of our trip’s most spectacular birds, the Green Bee-eater had perched firmly atop our Must See bird list.

In short order we were rewarded with a double-handful of Life Birds, including Common Ringed Plover, a pair of Common Greenshanks, Blackstarts, Bluethroats, a Green Bee-eater, Marsh Sandpiper, Rock Martin, House Crow, Long-legged Buzzard, and Braden’s Bird of the Day, a Great Gray Shrike! As a bonus, four Greater Flamingos lounged in a salt pond in the distance.

While there, one of the center’s guides confidentially told us that even better birding might be had at a place called Holland Park, a short mile or so walk away. Braden and I set off through the desert—only to end up at a kibbutz nowhere near the park! Some nice kibbutzniks straightened us out, so we resumed our hot march south along the highway. And that turned out to be a great thing because right next to the road, we spotted our only Hooded Wheatears of the trip.

This Hooded Wheatear introduced us to a totally new group of delightful birds that we’d only been vaguely aware of before the trip.

Holland Park. What can I say? I think this may be my favorite birding location of the entire trip. Hiking up a dry wadi filled with interesting native plants, Braden and I quickly left the bustle of Eilat behind and felt like we were in authentic habitat. We found only two additional Lifers—Sand Partridge and Mourning Wheatear—but the Blackstarts, Palestinian Sunbirds, Sardinian Warblers and other birds kept us plenty entertained. And our day’s birding hadn’t quite finished.

Israel’s extensive development of its tiny Red Sea shoreline doesn’t leave much room for wildlife, but these shorebirds found refuge behind a fence in a shipping yard. Center are two Common Ringed Plovers. Lower and Upper Left are Kentish Plovers, with Little Stints in between.

That afternoon, Braden cajoled me into taking a walk from our hotel along the Red Sea so that we could look for White-eyed Gulls. We found them, but also happened upon a huge group of Kentish and Common Ringed Plovers, Little Stints, and Dunlins huddled down against a stiff afternoon wind blowing up from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. All in all, it was an amazing day of birding—and far from the last of our trip.

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Turkey Day Texas Adventures Part 1: Pursuing Plovers

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Join Braden and me at our last book signing of the year at The Well-Read Moose in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho this Friday, November 23 at 6 p.m. Also be sure to share this post and subscribe to our blog in the box down on the column to the right. Happy Thanksgiving!

I just returned from speaking on an author panel at the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English in Houston, Texas. It was a terrific event, but I confess that I looked forward to Texas birding possibilities even more!

As soon as I picked up my rental car, I headed toward Winnie, Texas, racing the sun so that I could have an hour or so at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge before bedding down for the night. I arrived a little later than desired, mainly because of a couple of irresistible caracaras and a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher that almost literally flagged me down. Still, I managed thirty minutes driving the Shoveler Pond Loop. I needed at least an hour but managed fun looks at White and White-faced Ibises, Common Gallinules, a Black-bellied Whistling Duck, and a surprise Common Yellowthroat.

Semipalmated Plovers greeted me at Rollover Pass on the Bolivar Peninsula.

The next morning, after a stop at Rollover Pass, I headed to the Houston Audubon Society refuge at the tip of the Bolivar Peninsula. Before the trip, Braden had been drilling me on plovers, and his work paid off. Plovers are well-known for their ability to distract potential predators by faking wing injuries or sitting on “false nests.” Except for the ubiquitous Killdeer, however, they were a group I’d never knuckled down and studied before and I hoped to see all of the Big Five on my list: Black-bellied, Snowy, Wilson’s, Piping, and Semipalmated. At Rollover Pass, I’d found a number of Semipalmated, so that left me only four more at the Bolivar sanctuary.

Unfortunately, the long beach of the sanctuary seemed bereft of the numbers of shorebirds I had hoped for and I struggled to ID many of the birds in their winter plumages. I patiently began picking away at them, though. “That’s a Willet. I know that one. Those are Sanderlings. Hm…is that a Dunlin? I’ll have to ask Braden about that one later.”

Winter-plumage Black-bellied Plovers were one of several shorebirds I at first couldn’t identify. Once I got them, though, I got ’em!

Then . . . jackpot. Suddenly, I was seeing plovers in all directions. The problem? Identifying them! The two kinds around me looked very similar. Both were tiny and had broken breastbands. Individuals of both also had leg bands. Still, one kind was definitely darker than the other and they had distinctly different-colored legs. When I showed my photos to Braden, he affirmed my thoughts: I had seen both Snowy and Piping Plovers. As a bonus, I saw numerous Black-bellied Plovers, too!

I didn’t realize until after my visit that Piping Plovers are an endangered species, with only an estimated 8000 individuals according to BirdLife International.

Four out of five plovers? I’d take it—especially because Piping and Snowy Plovers are both endangered species due to their preference for the same beach habitats that humans enjoy. These little, cool birds definitely made up for the shortage of gulls, whimbrels, jaegers, and other birds I’d also hoped to test myself against.

Even better, my Thanksgiving Texas birding adventures had just begun . . .

This Snowy Plover surprised me as I’d only seen them on the West Coast before. Note the darker facial markings and differently-colored legs than the Piping Plover in the previous photo.