2024-05

12th May 2024

Israel has a national bird, the hoopoe, a national flower, the crown anemone (kalanit in Hebrew), a national tree, the olive, and now it has a national butterfly. Last year the Israeli public selected the common blue butterfly to be its national butterfly. It wouldn’t have been my choice – I love swallowtails – but nevertheless it is a rather attractive, if somewhat small, butterfly.

It’s a sexually dimorphic butterfly; that is the male and female look quite dissimilar. The male is an iridescent blue with a white edge while the female is a less attractive browny colour. The undersides of the wings, in both male and female are grey with orange and black spots, which provides good camouflage.

The bright blue of the male gives it a distinct disadvantage – it’s easily spotted by predators. But the brighter the blue, the more attractive it is to females. So, the more attractive it is to females, the more noticeable it is to predators – a bit of catch-22 situation for the poor male butterfly. This phenomenon is known as the ‘handicap principle’, a hypothesis proposed by the Israeli biologist, Professor Amotz Zahavi. He suggests that to show its physical prowess, which makes it more attractive to a female, the male will put itself in danger, a sort of message to the female that it’s strong enough not to have to worry about predator threats. A high-risk policy indeed!

---

8th May 2024

I’ve written before about how vulnerable the griffon vultures are in Israel – there are just 200 or so. And unfortunately, from time to time, some of them eat poisoned meat and die. So, it was a particular pleasure to see five of them fly over us during our recent visit to Gamla. They really are magnificent birds and quite huge too – with a wingspan of almost three meters. So much under threat are they that last year, Israel’s biggest beer producer, ran a special campaign to raise awareness of their plight. Nesher beer, one of its brands, has an image of a vulture on its label. And it’s quite fitting to do so, as nesher is the Hebrew word for vulture. Last year, the company removed the vulture from the label, leaving a blank space instead. The campaign was hugely successful, and the Government allocated several million dollars to help the vultures.

---

7th May 2024

It’s been many months since we were last at Gamla in the Golan Heights. Because of the ongoing war, we haven’t ventured so close to the borders. But earlier this week, we travelled the 45-minute journey there. From the Nature Reserve, the uninterrupted view down to the Kinneret lake (some seven miles or so as the crow flies, with a drop of about five hundred and forty metres) is glorious and includes the Gamla hill itself with its old fortress. It’s called Gamla because it looks just like a camel’s hump – and camel in Hebrew is gamal and in Aramaic gamla. Here it was that the Jewish population in the year 66 held out under siege by the Romans for seven months, before being wiped out. The sides of the Gamla ridgeback are tremendously steep, and it seems incredible that semi-permanent dwellings could have clung to such precarious inclines. It makes you dizzy just to look at the ruins.

We walked across the nature reserve to the waterfall - which, with a 51-meter drop is the highest in the country. The route there took us across open land, which was still sporting some spring flowers, including the tall, purple round-headed garlic, which we haven’t seen before. The weather was perfect; warm sunshine with a strong fresh breeze, which griffon and Egyptian vultures were making good use of, to soar above us from time to time. There is a small stream to cross, in which I was hoping there might be some turtles. There weren’t any at all, but a water snake darted for cover when it saw me and two frogs were enjoying the sunshine, one on one side of the bridge, the other on the other, neither of whom were croaking to each other or anything else. Turtles we didn’t see, but on the way back to the car, there were two turtle doves. I have to say that they didn’t look like turtles in any way, which made me wonder why they’re known as turtle doves. A simple answer – their call is turtle-like – which is not to say they coo like turtles, rather their coo is like “tur-tur”. Turtle doves are summer visitors to the North and Centre of Israel. They’re such beautiful birds, but sadly their numbers are in decline, and they are classified as a threatened species. One reason for the decline is change in farming methods but another is that unfortunately birds are shot out of the sky as they pass through some countries. According to a 2001 report of the European Commission, two to four million birds are poached each year in Malta, Cyprus, France, Italy, Spain and Greece – with the Maltese being particularly bad offenders. How sad!! Turtle doves are not to be sent as gifts, as the famous song suggests. They and partridges, French hens, calling birds, geese, swans, and all other wild birds, should be left to fly freely, wherever they choose.

 

 

 

 

2024-04

30th April 2024

Last week, during a brief visit to Jerusalem, I managed to have a short walk in Gazelle Valley. Of course, I was hoping to see galloping gazelles, but they all appeared to be taking a siesta, and none were to be seen. I saw nothing swifter than a spur-thighed tortoise ambling along in the undergrowth, seemingly oblivious to all about it. No gazelles, one tortoise, but there were many thousands of purple milk thistles. And amongst the sea of purple were just a few milk-white milk thistles, which are a sort of albino version of the purple norm. Honey bees were buzzing around the thistles, or perhaps they were killer bees. Africanized honey bees, also known as "killer bees”, are a hybrid of western honey bees, East African honey bees and European honey bees, and are more aggressive than standard honey bees by far. They have earned their name, as a result of more than a thousand human deaths. I thought it best not to get close enough to check out which variety these actually were.

The last few days have been unseasonably hot – more than 40 degrees, so we kept a low profile, just as the gazelles did last week. When we’d had enough of the cool indoor temperatures we ventured out into the heat for a tortoise-paced walk in the Switzerland Forest. Artichoke thistles (cardoons), which look similar to and are just as purple as milk thistles, were in abundance. Artichoke thistles are a wild artichoke and are less likely to be on your dinner plate than cultivated artichokes. The purple milk thistles in the fields were losing their purpleness and were turning white with age, as we do, but this is not the same process as causes the albinos of Gazelle Valley. A mynah bird at the edge of the fields was having a field day, at the expense of a couple of grasshoppers, who hopped out into just the wrong place. Before long we returned to our air-conditioned home and left the thistles and mynahs to enjoy the sunshine and sizzle in the heat.

---

18th April 2024

There were not many birds out and about on Mount Arbel yesterday but there were very many lovely pink flowers, and pairs of butterflies at every step. These flowers, blush centaury thistles (Centaurea crocodylium), are found in Northern Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Despite their Latin name they’re not crocodilian, though their ‘bite’ is quite sharp. They seemed like a magnet for butterflies and bees. The pictures here are:

1. A clouded yellow butterfly that resembles a leaf when it folds its wings up. The white wing spots look like an insect has bitten through a bit of the leaf leaving a hole to tell predators that it’s foliage rather than a butterfly. That’s fine unless a predator just happened to like eating leaves!
2. A not-so-white, Bath white butterfly – called thus after the City of Bath in England, which is itself named after the Roman-built baths there.
3. A buff-tailed bumblebee, which, funnily enough has a buff-coloured tail. There’s a popular myth that given the shape and weight and wing size of the bumblebee it should be aerodynamically impossible for it to fly. Clearly, it’s a myth, as it can and does fly – though, in a very erratic sort of way, as no doubt, Rimsky-Korsakov would have confirmed. In a fight with a hornet, a much more adept flyer, the bumblebee would easily be outmanoeuvred. But scientists have recently noticed that in such a fight the bumblebee drops like a lead weight to the ground, taking the hornet with it, and the impact is sufficient to allow the bee to escape.

---

12th April 2024

At Ramat Hanadiv, recently, we ran into a fritillary butterfly, with a lovely chess or checkerboard pattern on its wings. It flitted from flower to flower and didn’t settle for long at all – and when it did settle it kept its wings upwards. Then it ‘frittered’ away! At the gift shop there was a book called ‘Butterflies of Ramat Hanadiv’ - and a rather lovely book it is, with colour illustrations and descriptions of the butterflies and their caterpillars in Hebrew and English. We bought it, of course – it wasn’t expensive. The author, Dr Rachel Schwartz-Tzacher, explains that Israel is home to eight different (but all similar-looking) species of fritillary, but only two of them are seen at Ramat Hanadiv – the lesser spotted fritillary and the Jerusalem fritillary – ‘lesser spotted’, not necessarily being a description of how often it is seen. After much deliberating I worked out that the fritillary we had spotted was a female Jerusalem fritillary (Melitaea telona).

---

Now that I have found a butterfly expert in Israel I wrote to Rachel with a question, and she was gracious enough to reply.

I asked Rachel why the caterpillars (Ocnogyna loewii - Ocnogyna tiger moth) that I filmed in February at Nachal Tzippori, thrashed about so much. I had thought it was a defence mechanism against predators, but she told me that they are making silk – they secrete from their lower lip a sort of liquid silk which dries and solidifies when it meets the air. They do it to manufacture a silk tent to shelter them from predators. Man uses such moth caterpillars to produce silk – so next time you buy a silk scarf or a silk tie, you’ll know where it comes from.

---

Animals have four legs, or in our case just two; insects have six legs, spiders have eight and centipedes and millipedes have many more (but not quite as many as it says on the box). Animals, though, never have more than four legs – not even spider man. But last month a six-legged gazelle was spotted (and photographed) in Southern Israel. It has four normal legs, which it uses in the usual manner, and an extra two growing out of its back, and these rest on its back as it goes about its day-to-day activities. These extra legs are the result of a rare genetic disorder, known as polymelia.  Israel’s gazelle (the Mountain gazelle - Gazella gazella) is an endangered species – there are just 5000 individuals presently in Israel and very few anywhere else. Perhaps this genetic aberration comes about because inbreeding is a consequence of very small populations.

---

---

11th April 2024

Apparently the least frequently seen herons are the black-capped (or black-crowned) night herons (hereon I’ll just call them night herons). The night heron is also known as the quark bird. It doesn’t get this name because it’s made up of billions of subatomic particles, though it certainly is, but because its quack or squawk sounds a bit like ‘quark’. It’s no great surprise that they’re not seen so often, as they are nocturnal birds and are out and about in the dark. That said, the herons I see most often are in fact night herons, which seem to like to spend their mornings by the lakeside in Tiberias.

They’re short and stocky and would lose out competing with larger more agile herons.  So, instead of battling with the bigger birds for limited supplies of food, they hunt at night. Their huge red eyes help them see better in poor light, and their plumage is good for night work – dark feathers on top so that they’re not seen by nighttime predators and light feathers underneath which helps them to avoid being seen by the fish on which they prey.

Like all herons, they’re expert “still fishers” waiting patiently for long periods for their catch. And so, if they do come out during the day, you don’t have to be too quick to get a good still photo. This bird kindly posed for me a couple of days ago.

---

4th April 2024

This week we’ve been soaking up the sunshine – it’s been about 32 degrees for the last few days. Ramat Hanadiv was looking resplendent in yellow when we visited on Sunday and yellow trees and shrubs are much in evidence in the Switzerland Forest too. Particularly spectacular are the yellow mimosa trees with their fluffy yellow honey-scented balls, looking like static yellow fountains.

So, I was somewhat surprised to discover that yellow doesn’t actually exist. Well, if I’m being more accurate, I should say that I discovered that scientists have discovered that yellow doesn’t exist. This is a little strange because we all see yellow, all the time – which is better than seeing red all the time. The science is far beyond my proper understanding, but with my simplistic mind I think it’s a bit like this: – the colour we see is reflected light that appears to us as yellow but isn’t actually yellow. I must be awfully clever to see things that don’t exist – a pigment of my imagination!

Isn’t it strange that the mimosa tree, Acacia saligna, is known as blue-leafed wattle. But then again, if yellow doesn’t exist, I suppose it’s not so bizarre to think of green leaves as blue leaves.

2024-03

31st March 2024

Last week Miriam and I were invited to give a presentation about the Nature of Israel to our local ESRA Group - Miriam’s music accompanying some of my photographs – and we talked about the fascinating flora and fauna that we see. I showed a photo of the rather beautiful coastal iris that I took recently in Netanya. One of the participants asked if we had seen the equally beautiful Gilboa iris, which we hadn’t. So a couple of days later we set off to Mount Gilboa in search of these irises. Mount Gilboa, at almost 500 meters above sea level, towers over the surrounding countryside and can be seen from miles away. It was the scene of King Saul’s last battle, which didn’t have a happy result for him and his three sons, and ultimately led to King David’s succession. Much later in history Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, was also involved in a battle there. Although he wasn’t victorious, he fared better than Saul, and was able to return home to his Sultanas (and probably his sultanas too).

Last week the mountainside was covered with giant fennel plants with lovely mustard-coloured flowerheads, purple milk thistles, which were equally tall, and the very much lower, but bright and cheerful-looking chamomile flowers, members of the daisy family. The giant fennel is a Triffid-like plant that grows quickly to a t’rific height (2 to 3 meters), and whose sturdy stalks were used in days gone by in Sweden and elsewhere, to inflict pain on misbehaving schoolchildren who fell out with their teachers. The thistles can also cause significant pain to anyone who falls in amongst them. The chamomile, though, isn’t the source of pain at all – it makes a nice tea (if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t). After being chased by Mr McGregor, whom he met at the end of a cucumber frame, Peter Rabbit managed to struggle home. In Beatrix Potter’s words - “Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed and made some chamomile tea: One tablespoonful to be taken at bedtime.”

Among the millions of fennels, thistles and chamomiles we did manage to find half a dozen or so Gilboa irises (Iris haynei). They’re a glorious bright purple colour and it’s well worth driving to the Gilboa to see them, specially at this time of year. Their flowering season is from the beginning of March to mid-April, so you’ll have to be quick to see them at their best, though. These flowers which are only found in this locale are classified as vulnerable, so they’re not for picking and indeed, as is usual in such circumstances, are protected by law.

--- 

28th March 2024

Butterflies and lizards are both cold-blooded, so spend a lot of time basking in the sun to gain sufficient warmth to function fully. That said, I had awful trouble keeping up with the swallowtails, red admirals and a gecko that I saw last week at Mount Arbel. The red admirals were far too quick for me – they didn’t stay still for more than a second and by the time I got anywhere near, they were flitting around, sometimes in pairs doing a rather elaborate courtship dance. A swallowtail did settle near for me about two seconds, and I had about two seconds to look at a gecko before it realised I was watching.

The gecko was an Israeli fan-fingered gecko (Ptyodactylus puiseuxi) - I’ve written before (23rd November 2023) about its amazing ability to walk upside down across a smooth ceiling or rock – take a look at the November post for more details. I was thinking about what an interesting sounding name a gecko has and actually it takes its name from the Tokay gecko whose chirping sounds a bit like ‘gecko’. If I have too much Tokay wine, which I’m quite fond of but haven’t had for years, I’ve also been known to make chirping sounds that sound like ‘gecko’.

---

26th March 2024

I had a walk last week at Nachal Amud – the Amud stream. The stream runs from Ramat Dalton, north of Safed and flows through a windy (that is, winding) and sometimes windy (that is, a bit breezy) route down to the Kinneret lake. The Amud, which gives its name to the stream, is a 20-metre-high limestone pillar. I joined the stream fairly close to the Amud but was disappointed to find that the route towards it was closed because of danger from falling rocks. So, I walked in the opposite direction alongside the stream. In several places I had to cross it without a bridge, and though there were rocks to walk across as steppingstones, it was still a challenge for me not to fall in. I got my shoes a bit wet, but nothing worse than that. Along the route there were flowers galore and in the stream thousands upon thousands of tadpoles. I could hear frogs croaking loudly but couldn’t see them. And there were sunbirds and bulbuls in nearby trees. After walking a few hundred meters I came across a huge rock growing out of nowhere and I could see a large cave high above (80m). There was a sign on the path that explained in Hebrew, Arabic and English that a skull had been found in this cave just lying there (lazy-bones) – the earliest human skull ever found in Israel. It wasn’t quite from a human as we know humans but from Archaic Homo sapiens. The skull is now in a Jerusalem Museum and what happened to the rest of the body, nobody knows.

The accompanying photos show:

• Purple pea fields that were a sort of pea-purple colour
• Bright yellow downy restharrow (also from the pea family)
• Oleander seed pod
• The skull cave

---

20th March 2024

This is the best time of year to see Israel’s beautiful wildflowers. When we visited Ramat Hanadiv last week, the nature park was carpeted with wild mustard, pincushion scabious and kalaniot (the usually red crown anemones); we also hit a purple patch of flowers – it must have been our lucky day.

We enjoyed looking at a splendid pinkish-purple three-toothed orchid. Orchids can live up to 100 years! Though in our house they do well to last 100 days. Maybe if we gave them some water occasionally, they’d survive a bit longer.

There was a lot of purple clover - Trifolium purpureum - Trifolium, meaning three-leafed. So, I maintain that a four-leafed clover isn’t actually lucky, as it’s not really a clover at all.

And there were purple cornflowers also known as the Syrian cornflower - Centaurea cyanoides. Sounds a bit like half man, half horse, and not-half poisonous!

I also photographed a cattle egret, that seemed to have lost its cows – how careless! And in the gardens, a jay that wanted a bath.

---

17th March 2024

Last year on one of the tracks at Ramat Hanadiv, we saw a tortoise scurrying along at a snail’s pace. It was somewhat sluggish, indeed as slow as a sloth. It took a quick look at me and then tootled off, unperturbed by the camera I was pointing right at it. Tortoises carry their houses (that is their shells) along with them, but most creatures have to look for protection from predators a little further afield. Caterpillars, for example, which are easy prey for birds and beetles, often use other defense mechanisms, such as being poisonous or being covered in horrible little hairs. This week while I was looking for the mantis sac that we saw a couple of weeks ago, Miriam noticed a very small pile of twigs ‘walking’ across our path. I once saw a tree ‘walk’ across a motorway in front of me, on a particularly stormy day, but generally trees and twigs aren’t meant to take walks. As we looked carefully at the twigs, we could see a caterpillar’s head sticking out at the front. This was the caterpillar of a bagworm moth, which gathers little bits of twigs and grasses and covers itself in them, a sort of log cabin – to disguise the fact that it is there and to be a first layer of protection. How clever!

---

As we were walking along the track, a truck went past and stopped – there was Dr Tzach Glasser, the Nature Park manager. Tzach had been kind enough to give Miriam and me a guided tour of the park a few months ago. As we chatted, I recalled our conversation last year about Griffon vultures and the work that Tzach does to preserve them in Israel. Sadly, just a few days ago, three vultures were found dead in the South of Israel – it’s thought that they may have eaten a poisoned carcass.

 

---

14th March 2024

This week on our way to Netanya, we stopped at Ramat Hanadiv. After a coffee at the wonderful outdoor Mata’im café we had a short walk through the gardens. Of course, I always look at the frogs in the lily pond near the main gates. There were a few frogs – and before I reached the pond, they were croaking to each other. I was hoping to photograph frogs with their vocal sacs inflated but wasn’t lucky enough on this occasion.

I did get to see a rather lovely greenfinch, though, perched high up in a tree. I recalled Wordsworth’s poem The Green Linnet – green linnet, being a name that the greenfinch used to be known by. In Wordsworth’s words:

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring's unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year's friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

Even so long ago, Wordsworth knew, as we all know now, that time spent out enjoying nature is time well spent – it eases stress and generally improves one’s well-being. I was encouraged to read a few days ago in a Jerusalem Post article, that recent research has shown that time in nature can reduce the risk of osteoporosis. I’m one of those people who have this crumbly-bone condition, as does my sister (and my brother has a reduced form of it – osteopenia). We inherited it from our late father.

So, it’s great to know that the time I spend at Ramat Hanadiv and at other nature sites throughout Israel, is actually doing good things for both my mind and body.

---

12th March 2024

The sycomore fig is a fig, but the sour fig isn't. Go fig-ure that!

This tree is in the heart of a residential area of Netanya, and is so old that it was there very many hundreds of years before the current apartment buildings and houses that surround it. Indeed it is thought that the tree is more than 1,000 years old and possibly even 1,500 years old. Its diameter is an incredible 24ft, and it is for sure one of the oldest trees in Israel. It's not a sycamore tree. It’s a sycomore fig (Ficus sycomoros) - note the slightly different spelling - and it is a member of the fig family of trees. When the bible, for example in I Kings 10:27, refers to sycomore trees (sikma) it refers to this tree rather than the sycamore, that we were familiar with in England. In the summer the tree produces large quantities of figs, which are not particularly human friendly, but bats go nuts about them. And you might not Adam and Eve it, but the leaves are definitely big enough to clothe fully-grown adults.

Last week at Caesarea, as I walked along the coast, there were lots of these yellow flowers – sour figs (Carpobrotus edulis). They’re a succulent with green and red foliage, and their fruit, which is edible and is used to make jam, resembles a fig. But it’s not actually related to the fig family.

The kind of fig tree that produces the figs we eat, whose primary purpose is for the production of the fig rolls that I’m particularly fond of, is a subject for another day.

---

8th March 2024

Until a hundred years ago or so, there were bears in Israel. The Syrian brown bear, happily lived here and there’s a record of one being seen near Mount Arbel, just a few miles from our home, about 150 years ago. Sadly, today, you have to visit the zoo to see bears in Israel, though I’m not sure I’d fancy meeting one on Mount Arbel.

Syrian brown bears we don’t see, but Syrian bear’s breeches we do. The rather interesting looking plant Acanthus syriacus is found in much of Northern Israel, including in the Switzerland Forest where I took this photograph yesterday.

The plant is interesting to look at, particularly in that the shape of the leaves inspired the design of the capital at the top of Corinthian columns. Just the day before yesterday, I photographed this capital at Caesarea. Two thousand years ago, King Herod built up the city and named it in honour of Augustus Caesar – and it was known as the cultural and commercial capital of Israel. 

The third photograph is also from yesterday - a mackerel sky over the trees of the Switzerland Forest, early in the morning.

While I was writing this post yesterday evening, our talented friend, Lisa Aigen, made a pencil drawing of me.

---

5th March 2024

Put out the flags – yesterday, for the first time ever, I photographed a corn bunting. We saw two at Mount Arbel, the first from quite some distance, and the second reasonably close by. I have to admit that I thought they were both sparrows – it was only after I’d ‘developed and printed’ the photos that I realised they were both buntings. Of course, I should have listened to Miriam, who immediately stated that they weren’t sparrows and were probably buntings.

Buntings look a bit finch-like, and indeed they are related – but they’re a distinct family themselves. The corn bunting has heavily streaked brown plumage and has a yellowish bill.

Yesterday was a bluebird day. Half an hour earlier I had snuck up, closer than I usually manage, to a blue rock thrush, precariously balancing on the cliff edge. In case you’re wondering, it was the bird balancing precariously, not me. Despite my old man’s walking pole, I keep well away from the edge, which has a drop of some 50 to 100 meters. I don’t think my crumbly old bones would fare well with a 1-meter fall, and certainly not such a huge one.

Quite some time ago, Vera Lynn sang:

There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
There'll be love and laughter
And peace ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free.

Every day, we pray for peace and a world of love and laughter.

---

3rd March 2024

Almonds and Lupines

 The almond trees are blossoming beautifully. Van Gogh would have had a field day. But to deliver nuts the flowers must be pollinated by bees, and then a few months later there will be almonds in the drupes (outer husks) that grow from the flowers.

As well as the almonds that are eaten as nuts, some are used to provide almond milk and most important of all, in my opinion, some are used to make marzipan.

Do take care, though, bitter almonds have so much cyanide in them that just a handful can cause death. Check with a nut-ritionist if you’re not sure.

---

In recent weeks we have seen quite a number of blue lupins (Lupinus pilosus) near to home, but in Jerusalem on Friday we saw a few hundred thousand at Givat Haturmusim (which translates as Lupin Hill).

It used to be thought that lupins ‘wolfed’ minerals from the soil, which is why they got their wolfish name. However, the truth is that they take nitrogen from the air and use it to provide nutrition for the soil - so not the big bad wolf after all.