BIRDING WITH YOUR GROUP LEADER 

 Hello everyone,  

Welcome to 2012 — your group’s 40^th year.  I suppose when the idea of local groups came about, RSPB staff never thought that they would be still operating 40 years later!  We still are going strong and taking over and running more events for their staff.  We hope to make this year a great opportunity to be active and to enjoy birdwatching or learning more about nature in our area and further afield.

As one of the Society’s oldest groups, we have decided to try and make this a really different year and try and celebrate our special birthday in as many ways as we can.  The big event will be help on Saturday 15^th September; that’s the night we have the cake!  We will also be using the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral as a migration watch tower and have organised walks around the grounds.  The evening will see Jeff Clarke delivering the celebration lecture.

I have organised a four day birding trip to Hungary in May, which will be the group’s first foreign outing for over 20 years.  There has been lots of interest in the holiday and we have managed to get our December speaker, Ged Gorman, to be our guide around the country in which he now lives

                      Keep birding,

JANUARY – MAY 11

We started the year off with a short walk around Childwall Woods and Fields.  This small wooded site is great for woodland birds.  The increase in Stock Doves is evident here but you never manage great views of this shy dove.  The Great Spotted Woodpeckers always put on a show thanks to the amount of rotting timber there.

The last day of January saw Howard leading the trip around Calderstones Park.  A fairly cold winter’s day was warmed up by lots of colour from Goldfinch and Goldcrest to Redwings.  Good views of the upside-down Siskins always cheer up a day out.  A Shoveler on the lake was a unusual find but after the cold December it was happy on the open unfrozen water.

Continuing with the local theme, February was the start of four visits to Speke Garston Coastal Park.  I came across this place whilst leading ‘bird watching by bike’ trips for Liverpool City Council’s cycling officer.  Why four visits?  Well, I thought it would be good to see a site through the seasons.  The reserve is a variety of mixed habitats.  We were rewarded with the only two Stonechats in the northwest, the others having disappeared due to the terrible cold snap we had.  Waders such as Ringed Plover were found on the mud and, even better, a Shoveler at the end of the causeway.

Llanfairfechan is always a great place to look to for sea-ducks and divers, and we weren't disappointed.  Black-throated Diver is always the hardest of the UK divers to see but one in with the Red-throated Dives allowed for some good comparison.  The waders on the rocks next to where the river joins the sea also offered some opportunities to look through them.  This is a great area to wander around bird watching but when a young Shag landed on a tide pole it allowed close views to see the differences between it and the Liverbird!

Rivacre Valley is a new venue for us but used to be a good place for finding rare birds.  The highlights of the trip were Sparrowhawk, Buzzard, Green Woodpecker and a flock of 17 Waxwings.  Seven different butterflies were seen as well.

Although we arranged the Rivacre Valley walk and the second Speke-Garston of the year on the same day, it allowed for different options and birds.  We started with migrants passing through at Garston: Sand Martins, Swallows, lots of Meadow Pipits, Wheatear and then a Tree Pipit sat, appropriately enough, in a tree.  How great is it to have breeding Grey Partridge and Lapwings in Liverpool? These species like to nest up near the large warehouse unit in an area that normally keeps some water all year.

The Leeds Liverpool canal at the Old Roan offers a good walk along the towpath and that’s what we had.  On the walk we had to be careful not to stand on the young Mallard chicks that used to towpath; although they were entertaining to watch!  Many species of birds use the canal as a corridor to move from one area to another.  Whitethroats were singing away as we walked by and later on, when we got to some reedbeds, we came across a Sedge Warbler.  The spring migrants had definitely arrived.

After a three hour delay thanks to pea-soup fog at Heathrow and a two-hour drive from Tel Aviv to the Hula Valley in northern Israel, we the ‘UK group‘ arrived at the Kfar Blum Pastoral Hotel in the early hours of the morning on Monday 21st November. Blurry-eyed and in need of some sleep, the others headed off to bed; not one to turn down the chance of some birding for something as trivial as a night with zero hours of sleep, I opted to stay awake for the couple of hours that remained between our arrival and the scheduled departure of the first Hula Valley Bird Festival trip out.

For many birders planning a trip to Israel, the destination of choice is Eilat in spring. The Eilat Bird Festival, now heading into its sixth year, has given many birders the opportunity of experiencing the phenomenal birding on offer in the south of the country; but Israeli birders are keen to ensure the north of the country doesn't get overlooked. Despite being only 200 miles north of Eilat, the landscape couldn't be more different; and with the differing landscape comes a whole different set of birds different but just as good.

It was still dark when we the 'journalist group', the rest of whom had arrived the previous day and had caught up with their sleep Headed off to KKL Agamon Hula Park, where we boarded one of the famous 'mobile hides'. We could hear our target bird already: in the near distance, tens of thousands of Common Cranes were waking up. The situation couldn't have been better for a morning of crane watching. The sky was clear, the valley was blanketed by a layer of mist But not so much that viewing was impaired And the whole scene was bathed in a soft pink light as the sun broke over the Golan Plateau.

Up to 30,000 Common Cranes appear in the Hula Valley each November and most of them, it seems, were in front of us. Amongst the throngs of cranes were smaller numbers of Great White Pelicans, Great White Egrets and Spoonbills, along with flocks of Ruff, Avocets, Black-winged Stilts, and Marsh Sandpipers delicately picking their way around the lake margins. Above them Pied and White-throated Kingfishers were perched on exposed branches, while Siberian Stonechats, Moustached Warblers, Graceful Prinias and Penduline Tits flitted through the water-side vegetation, and a male Black Francolin scuttled along the track. Above our heads, Greater Spotted Eagles flapped by, a Peregrine hunted, and there was a constant stream of Pygmy Cormorants passing over. The whole experience was magical; any thought of sleep were now truly out of my mind!

That first morning trip set the standard for the rest of the week. We spent Monday afternoon exploring more of the Hula Valley. We saw White-headed and Marbled Duck, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Booted Eagle, White-tailed Eagle, Marsh Warbler, a family of Black-shouldered Kites (Israel's first breeding record), a Saker Falcon, Richard's Pipit, Syrian Woodpecker, Pallid Harrier, and the first of many Ospreys, Armenian Gulls and Long-legged Buzzards, all in addition to the common Israeli species that were constantly in view — Laughing Dove, Palestine Sunbird, Spectacled Bulbul and so on.

We spent Tuesday in the Golan Heights with Western Rock Nuthatch, Rock Bunting, Horned Lark and Sombre Tit up Mount Hermon, and Imperial Eagle on the Golan Plateau. On an evening visit to the Hula Lake nature reserve we watched watch in awe as dozens of raptors came into roost: 30 or so Hen Harriers, even higher numbers of Marsh Harriers, Pallid Harriers, and several Merlins that, to my surprise, roosted communally in the trees in front of the hide.

On Wednesday, we headed west to the Mediterranean coast, to Ma'agan Michael. Well over fifty Black Storks resting in a ploughed field as we arrived was a memorable sight, as was a male Citrine Wagtail and seven Temminck's Stints in the same scope view. Thursday saw us heading to the Bet She'an Valley, south of the Sea of Galilee. We were greeted on site by several thousand Black Kites; other birds seen in the area included Dead Sea and Spanish Sparrows, Whiskered Terns, Southern Grey Shrikes, Desert Finches and a beautiful dark-morph male Marsh Harrier.

Friday was spent back in the Golan with Finsch's Wheatear the star bird, while Saturday ended our week at the Hula Valley Bird Festival much as we had started it; with a dawn crane safari and some more time exploring Agamon Hula Park, where a fly-over Griffon Vulture and a smart male Namaqua Dove were both added to the trip list. The birding kept going until the very last minute with a Common Myna in Tel Aviv airport as we left at dawn on Sunday. The trip list finished just a whisker short of 200 species.

It wasn't just the birds that made the trip special; we also amassed a rather impressive selection of mammals during our stay at the festival. Wolf and a spate of Jungle Cat sightings were by far the most notable, with Golden Jackal, Egyptian Fruit Bat, Mountain Gazelle, Egyptian Mongoose and Fallow Deer also being spotted over the week.  And the people  the tour guides and the locals made the trip even more enjoyable.  Despite what you see on the news, Israel is a welcoming place with stunning scenery and amazing birdlife.

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90 CLUB NEWS 2011

For those of you who haven’t already heard, our “90 club” - formerly known as the 85 club; we know have five more numbers! - is a wonderful opportunity giving you the chance to win one of two cash prizes each month and with the added bonus that you know you’re helping the RSPB at the same time!  The 90 club is open to any member of the group and for a mere £12 a year you can pick a number from our board of 90 – that’s just £1 a month!  We’ll keep you updated with who’s winning what.

Remember, the more numbers you have, the more chance you have of winning a prize!  For details of joining our 90 club, see Ann or Brenda at the next indoor meeting.