2023-12

26th December 2023

On one of our recent walks along the coast near Netanya I photographed these plants and flowers. The beautiful yellow flower, growing on the sand dunes, is the evening primrose. And the bush with a rosette of large, thick, fleshy leaves is an aloe – American aloe also known as century plant. It sends up hugely long flower stalks, as you can see in one of the photos, reaching up to 8m (26ft). It looks similar to a cactus, but it isn’t a cactus, and despite one of its names it isn’t actually an aloe. It gets its name century plant, because it is semelparous, that is it only flowers once, at the end of its life. It doesn’t actually live to be a hundred years, but still has a good long life of up to thirty years.

I saw on Facebook an amusing post – see the photo. Two elderly British ladies greet each other – “aloe Vera” says one, to which the other replies “evening Primrose”. My version seems to be an American lady and a British lady greeting each other - “aloe American” says the British lady, to which the American replies “evening Primrose”.

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21st December 2023

From time to time when we’re out and about we see (and sometimes we just hear) wild boar – wild pigs. Not so long ago we were lucky enough to watch a large sounder of boars cross the road in front of us – there may have been 20 or more adult females and perhaps 20 or more boarlets. Of course, I stopped the car quickly, got out my camera and headed towards them. Drivers of other cars passing by started honking loudly and the sound o’ their horns was enough of a signal to the boars to run away at quite some speed – leaving me without a single photograph – but I was alive, thanks to the quick-thinking motorists.

So, just how dangerous are wild boar? If they feel threatened or if they think their young are under threat, they will charge and each year a few people lose their lives as a result. If only they knew that in Israel with a Jewish and Muslim population there is no chance, they’re going to end up on someone’s dinner plate, then I would probably be able to photograph them more frequently.

I don’t want to bore you with tales of my heroics but a few years ago, while out on a country walk near Rosh Pinna we came face to face with a boar and her young. The young ran to safety quickly, but the sow stood her ground, snorting and growling, and I (being a bit pig-headed) stood mine, despite Miriam’s near-hysterics. If I had been holding a 12-bore shotgun, the pig would perhaps have been under real danger, but my Canon was considerably less of a threat. After ‘shooting’ the boar, I retreated slowly, and she went off too. Here’s my ‘trophy’.

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18th December 2023

Yesterday, on our way to Netanya to do our grandparenting duty, we stopped for a coffee and a walk in the Nature Park at Ramat Hanadiv. After just a few minutes a truck stopped next to us on one of the tracks and 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 earlier in the year about Griffon vultures.

The Eurasian vulture (Gyps fulvus) known as the Griffon vulture is a large bird of prey with a wingspan of more than 2½ metres. Not so long ago, there were numerous Griffon vultures in Israel, but in recent times they have become scarce. Various programs to help them re-establish themselves in Israel are in place, including at Gamla in the Golan. At Ramat Hanadiv, a few pairs of these vultures have been imported from Europe – they’re not able to survive in the wild, because of injuries they sustained, but they can be used to breed birds that can be released into the wild. Tzach explained that they only produce one egg a year, but if they remove that egg (and incubate it artificially), the vulture will lay another to substitute for the lost egg. In that way they can double the number of chicks born in a year.

We didn’t see vultures at Ramat Hanadiv, though, we did see them on a recent trip to Hai Bar on Mount Carmel, near Haifa.

Yesterday we saw a butterfly that is not nearly as common, as some that we see. It was the Archon apollinus, the false Apollo, with a conservation status of ‘near threatened’. I’m not sure why it deserves the acclaim false Apollo, but I guess it’s because although it is fast, it isn’t really a rocket.

We also saw a beautiful jay and some wild crocuses.

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14th December 2023

We had a very pleasant afternoon in Zichron Yaakov one day last week. We had lunch in the café at Ramat Hanadiv and then a walk in the park/gardens. I found a friendly frog to chat to – it was sitting on a lily pad (not on a toadstool). I also photographed various flowers and at about 15:20 an old and tired lady gazing into space.

Over the last few years Ramat Hanadiv has become one of our favourite places in Israel. Miriam has written a piece of music to accompany some of my photos. If you have 3 minutes 40 seconds you can watch/listen here:

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11th December 2023

Yesterday, Miriam and I spent the day looking after our little grandson (18-months-old) who had the day off kindergarten. We thought he might like to go to a ‘gymboree’ but decided he’d probably prefer a visit to the Viker Lookout (near Netanya) to see the pelicans that flock to the lake there.

Anyway, our grandson enjoyed very much, riding his bimba up and down the ramps at the Viker Lookout. Incidentally bimba is a Hebrew word (I think from Arabic) for a trike without pedals, propelled by a child’s feet. And his Saba (Hebrew for grandfather) enjoyed very much, observing pelicans flying in by the score and landing on the lake.

It was interesting to watch the pelicans glide across the lake, near the surface of the water, benefitting from the ground effect. As any pilot or aeronautical engineer will tell you, when flying near the ground or water surface there is reduced drag and more uplift, so the flyer, be it a bird or a plane (or even Superman) expends less energy.

These two photos are from this week.

You might also like to take a look at a photo essay I wrote last year about pelicans that was published at the Times of Israel – see https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/pelican-migration-a-photo-essay/.

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A week or two ago I wrote about geckos, including the house gecko. When we returned from Netanya late yesterday evening, and walked into our apartment, I saw what I thought was a cockroach scurry under the sideboard. I shone my phone torch under the sideboard and a little 3-inch (7.5 cm) pink Mediterranean gecko (also known as the house gecko) ran quickly to a safer place. So, there are now three of us living in the apartment, Miriam and me and Gary Gecko. I hope it’s as good at catching mosquitos as it’s meant to be.

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7th December 2023

The Turtles and the Mallard

We had a short walk last week at the River Alexander near Netanya. This is one of the best places in Israel to see African softshell turtles. Sometimes they keep a low profile and are hard to spot, but we were lucky on this visit to see a group basking in the warm November sun. We spent quite some time watching one particular turtle which seemed to enjoy retracting its head into its soft shell, to the point that it was barely visible. Turtles and tortoises, (as well as turtoises and tortles as Nash would have it) retract their heads and withdraw into their shells to keep safe from predators. But these softshell turtles are so huge (about a meter long and weighing 40kg) that they’re rarely troubled by anything aside from perhaps crocodiles, which are not found in Israel other than in zoos. It’s thought that some turtles hide their heads, so they’re not noticed by the fish and crustaceans on which they feed, then they surprise them by popping out of their shell rather quickly. And be careful! Although they don’t have teeth they could take your finger off with their powerful jaws – so don’t get too close. The biggest danger to the softshell turtles is actually children on school trips who love to throw them bits of their sandwiches, which the turtles eat but can’t digest.

Alongside the turtles was a sitting duck, a rather lovely male mallard. They seemed to ignore each other. The duck was a bit big for the turtles to make a meal of, and in any event, it’s an expert at ducking and diving.

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5th December 2023

Almost directly across the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) from Tiberias is a small fishing port-cum-kibbutz called Ein Gev, which we visited yesterday. We opted for the scenic route, that is the 25km drive round the South side of the lake rather than the most direct route, a 5km swim, straight across. En-route Miriam asked me what I hoped to see – paraphrasing Basil Fawlty, I said I would like to see the Sydney Opera House and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and particularly herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain. I wasn’t disappointed – the houses are nice; the gardens are beautiful; and the egrets flying across the harbour were certainly majestic.

The egrets took a keen interest in the fishing boats hoping to be thrown unwanted fish rather than have to work hard for their catch. I spent quite some time observing one bird that stood patiently at the edge of harbour, for much of the time on one leg.

While I was watching I did a quick bit of research:

- The world record for a man to stand on one leg is a staggering 76 hours and 40 minutes

- Standing on one leg improves posture, reduces back pain, keeps your circulation going and burns calories.

- A person in their 50s should be able to stand on one leg for 40 seconds, someone in their 60s for about 20 seconds and someone in their 70s for around 10 seconds – I think I might be younger than my birth certificate indicates.

But more importantly, I discovered that there are two main reasons why birds stand on one leg. Primarily, tucking one of its unfeathered legs into its feathered regions reduces heat loss. Tucking up both legs would further reduce heat loss but any bird doing this would probably become a sitting duck. This week the temperature was about 28 Centigrade, and even though that’s on the cool side for our region (though not at this time of year), the egret shouldn’t have felt the need to conserve heat. The other reason that birds opt for a single-legged position is to rest the other leg. Personally, I find it better to sit in an armchair with both feet raised.

The three photos show the bird on both legs, on its right leg and on its left leg.

If you have four minutes, you might like to listen to some of Miriam’s music accompanying a slide show of my photos of egrets – it’s here:

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1st December 2023

In yesterday’s post, I included a picture of an olive tree that is more than 500 years old. My daughter, Naomi, asked how we can tell that it is 500 years old. There’s actually a little sign on it that reveals its age, but generally speaking how can you tell how old a tree is, if there isn’t a sign on it? It’s well known that you can count rings in the tree trunk to determine the age – but in a tree that’s still standing that presents a challenge. Dendrochronologists (that’s the posh word for those who count tree rings) use increment borers to age trees harmlessly by taking an extract from the tree (sounds a bit like a biopsy).

But there is an altogether simpler method that requires just very basic maths. The thickness of the trunk gives a very good indication to the trees age. The diameter of a cross section of the trunk increases each year by approximately 2mm – therefore its radius increases by 1mm each year. So, if you measure the girth of the trunk (that is the circumference) you can calculate the radius.

For a circle, Radius = (½ X Circumference) / π (Pi)

If the circumference of a tree is 3.14 metres the radius will be ½ metre = 500 mm

So, a tree with a girth of 3.14 metres will be approximately 500 years old.

Next time you’re hugging a tree, if you can’t get your arms all the way round, you can be sure it’s quite an old tree.

It occurs to me that given my waist girth (32 inches), if I were a tree, I’d be about 129 years old (twice as old as I am). Perhaps it’s time to branch out.

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Naomi also told me that they get geckos (which I wrote about last week) in their house from time to time. I think they’re probably Mediterranean house geckos. Can’t say I’d fancy one walking across my bedroom ceiling – but on the other hand they’re mosquito eaters, and mosquitos eat me, so maybe I should get a pet gecko.

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If elephants could fly …

While in Netanya earlier this week, a cattle egret flew over me – here it is. The cattle egret is also known as the ‘elephant bird’, though in my opinion it doesn’t look any more elephantine than the elephant’s ‘cousin’, the Syrian rock hyrax (that I photographed last week at Mount Arbel).

2023-11

30th November 2023

Tree Fellers

I don’t approve of jokes that make fun at the expense of others, and particularly of the supposed lack of intelligence of people from other counties, so I shall not relate the well-known joke about tree fellers.

That said, two fellers were arrested recently in England for felling a two-hundred-year-old sycamore tree in an act that the police described as “an act of vandalism” (no offence intended against the ancient Germanic people of Vandal). A sixteen-year-old youth and a man in his 60s have been arrested for felling what was an iconic tree near Hadrian’s Wall. And, by the way, Hadrian’s Wall was bult by Hadrian (who else?) to keep the barbaric Scots out of England – ‘barbaric’ is derived from the Latin word for foreigners.

In England it is most definitely a criminal offence to fell a tree that has a Tree Preservation Order, and it is also an offence to damage property that belongs to someone else – so one way or the other, the old feller and young feller will have to face the music for their wanton tree destruction.

Here too in Israel, trees are protected. One has to have a licence to cut down a tree, and this will only be granted for a very good reason. Where possible trees should be relocated and if this is not possible another tree should be planted elsewhere. On our visits to Ramat Handiv, we see a small grove of oak trees that had to be uprooted to make way for new residential housing in Bet Shemesh and were subsequently replanted. They’re now flourishing in the beautiful parkland at Ramat Hanadiv.

It is said that Israel is the only country in the world that had more trees at the end of the 20^th Century than ay the beginning. More than 250 million trees were planted in the last 50 years (one of them in honour of my cousin Stephen – hope you’re reading this Stephen – Stephen is still trying to find his tree).

Tree preservation in Israel is not a new fashion – more than 3,300 years ago, the Torah (Bible) demanded that fruit trees are not to be destroyed without good reason – a law that applies to this very day.

The two photos of trees in the woods are in the Switzerland Forest near Tiberias. I’ve written previously that the Switzerland Forest is named to mark the contribution made by the Swiss Jewish Community, to fund its landscaping. During rainy seasons there were, in times gone by, many instances of mudslides down the mountains here, the worst of which was in 1934 sadly causing the death of twenty-five people in Tiberias itself. Planting the mountain slopes with trees and bushes to prevent erosion, has ensured that no such disasters have happened since.

And there’s a photo of an olive tree in the centre of Tiberias, which is more than 500-years-old.

And a photo of a restaurant next to the lake in Tiberias that was built round two trees that were already well established.

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27th November 2023

We spent a few days in Netanya over the weekend visiting our children/grandchildren. After a nice breakfast sitting outside at a café in the countryside (it was about 22 Degrees Centigrade) we had a country walk and encountered a castor oil plant (also known as the castor bean plant), which is (believe it or not) the source of castor oil. Castor oil has a variety of uses including as a lubricant and as source of biodiesel and as a laxative.

I also photographed a grasshopper and a white hibiscus.

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23rd November 2023

Yesterday and the day before we walked on Mount Arbel and were pleased to see rock hyraxes, swallowtail butterflies and for the first time this season, we saw wild cyclamens.

But the highlight, without doubt, was to see, for the first time ever, a gecko. We’ve seen skinks, agamas and other lizards, but yesterday we saw an Israeli fan-fingered gecko (Ptyodactylus puiseuxi). It’s a little lizard – the one we saw was just 3 or 4 inches long (8cm to 10cm). They are rock-coloured so they are well camouflaged and, unusually for lizards, most geckos are nocturnal but some including the fan-fingered gecko will also venture out during the day.

The most interesting thing about geckos is their ability to walk up walls, however smooth they are, and they can even walk upside down across a smooth rock or ceiling. The ‘superhero’ Spiderman can apparently do this too, and so can spiders. Exactly how Spiderman manages to walk up walls is beyond the scope of this post – and actually the science behind geckos and spiders walking up smooth surfaces is also rather complicated. Very briefly at the end of each toe of the gecko is a pad with half a million hairs called setae. And at the end of each seta there are about a thousand nano hairs called spatulae. Inter-molecular forces enable the spatulae and surface to temporarily bond. And the clever gecko takes advantage of this ‘bonding’ to walk anywhere it wishes, apart from dry Teflon, which it can’t stick.

The photos show, a hyrax, a swallowtail butterfly front-view and rear-view, cyclamens and the gecko including a close-up of a foot.

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19th November 2023

I saw a post on Facebook last week that amused me. It read as follows:

‘Scientifically, a raven has 17 primary wing feathers, the big ones at the end of the wing. They are called pinion feathers. A crow has 16. So, the difference between a crow and a raven is only a matter of a pinion.’

It’s quite funny, but scientifically completely incorrect – crows and ravens both have ten pinions.

However, it is scientifically true that flamingos and storks have 12 pinions and ostriches have 16. So, it would be fair to say the difference between a flamingo and an ostrich is a matter of four pinions, but in my o-pinion that’s not very humorous.

While we’re discussing pinions, many birds in zoos and farms are pinioned to prevent them flying away. This practise is now considered cruelly painful for birds and can only be done in the UK by a qualified veterinary surgeon, with an anaesthetic. Likewise, Torah/Biblical law prohibits this and any other cruelty to animals or birds.

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15th November 2023

Each year we make two or three visits to Dor Habonim beach and nature reserve which is on the coast, about 30 km South of Haifa. We avoid visiting in the summer, as it’s just too hot. But a winter walk along the kurkar (quartz sandstone) ridge, adjacent to the sea is a very pleasant way to get some exercise and enjoy some winter sunshine.

Just a couple of kilometres to the South of Dor Habonim, is another National Park, Tel Dor, which unlike Dor Habonim, doesn’t have an admission charge. This is the site of an ancient port, some of the remains of which, can still be seen. The beach, just to the North of the port, also has a kurkar ridge, along which I spotted a group of ruddy turnstones, a mother bird together with three chicks. Last year, at Dor Habomim, at the same time of year, I also saw ruddy turnstones. They are waders, primarily winter visitors to Israel. They have orange legs, and white underparts. And as the name suggests, they leave no stone unturned in their quest for a good meal.

These photos are from our walk last week at Tel Dor.

There’s a ruddy turnstone walking by the edge of the sea. A male stonechat, red-breasted, perched on a twig, a plain tiger butterfly, and some camphorweed, that smells like Vicks VapoRub (camphor is one of the ingredients).

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13th November 2023

While we are enduring the war, here in Israel, and hoping and praying for the safe return of the hostages, we’re saddened to hear of the woes our friends are suffering in England, at the hand of antisemites. Isn’t it time for all people and peoples, wherever in the world they are, to live peacefully with each other?

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Fox News

Late yesterday afternoon, we had a short walk on Mount Arbel. We were the only ones there, apart from birds and flowers and a red fox. The fox was on its own – a bit of a lone wolf. It looked at me for a few seconds and then off it went at a foxtrot. But I got another chance to photograph it, as you can see.

The flower is a crocus, a Steven's meadow saffron – there were a few of them right at the top of the mountain sheltering between the rocky outcrops.

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9th November 2023

Many thousands of people have had to leave their homes in Northern Israel and Southern Israel to keep out of range of the rockets that are still being fired at Israel by terrorists in Lebanon and Gaza. The hotels in Tiberias and many other cities are now full of displaced families. This is difficult for all those people, particularly the children, who are unable to go to school. So, temporary schools have been setup in the hotels and volunteer teachers are assisting the children to get some sort of schooling. Today, Miriam will be teaching English to groups of children in one of the local hotels.

We pray that they can all go home soon and resume their lives in a safe and normal way. And of course, we also pray that all the hostages will come home soon, safe and well.

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During our visit to Tirat Tzvi, near Bet She’an, a few weeks ago (before the start of the war), we saw lots of black kites. As Mary Poppins will affirm, kites go soaring, up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear, up to the highest height. It was a joy to watch them but quite a challenge to photograph them.

Black kites are scavengers, but they also hunt on the wing. This always makes me think of the rhyme (of unknown origin, I think) that Mum loves to recite:

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz
I wonder where the birdies is.
They say the bird is on the wing.
But that’s absurd,
The wing is on the bird.

On recent trips to nearby Mount Arbel we’ve seen black-winged kites sitting on telegraph/electric wires by the side of the road. They’re small raptors, much smaller than the black kite. Despite their name they’re actually predominantly a grey and white bird with black shoulders and wing tips and black eye stripe/patch. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get nearly close enough for a really good photo. As you can see, I got slightly closer to one on a tree last year. We see them quite frequently but birdwatchers in England got very excited a few months ago, as a black-winged kite was spotted in Norfolk, for only the second time on record.

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5th November 2023

These photos are from recent walks on Mount Arbel:

1. White-spectacled bulbul making a spectacle of itself, on the lookout for carobs.
2. A bluebird – a blue rock thrush.
3. A white dove or rock pigeon – we had a little chat, in pidgin English, of course.
4. A crested lark – having a lark.
5. A stonechat – so-called, apparently, because its call sounds like two stones knocked together.
   
6. Hundreds of cranes flying overhead.

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2nd November 2023

We use the Waze app as our satnav guide, which incidentally is an Israeli creation (subsequently bought by Google). As well as directing us to the right road, it informs us of traffic build-ups ahead. For the time being, this feature has been suspended, so that terrorists are not given information of where there is a heavy concentration of traffic.

It would be useful if Waze were to tell us if there are animals by the side of the road. We could slow down considerably, if we knew that they were around. As we drive from city to city along highways and country roads, we often come across ‘roadkill’, animals that had strayed onto the road unaware of the dangers of fast cars and wagons. We’ve encountered the remains of jackals, foxes, wild boar and more. Last week, as we were driving on a very busy intercity dual carriageway, a mongoose at the edge of the road was looking for a gap in the traffic so that it could cross the road. They’re fierce little animals, not afraid of snakes or lions, but however aggressive they can be and however sharp their teeth are, they’re not going to be any match for even a small car travelling at speed. Fortunately, it didn’t run out in front of us, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it didn’t end up somewhat squished by another car soon after we passed it.

Yesterday on our way to Netanya we broke our journey at Nachsholim, near the sea. As we arrived, a family of mongooses (three of them) were mongoose-stepping across the road. After we parked the car, we spotted one of the mongooses again – and this time I was quick enough to snatch a quick pic. We then walked between two small lakes, where birds, lots of them, were happily feeding. There were stilts and herons, but most spectacular of all, were the flamingos. Some were grey - they were the young ones - while many others were flaming flamingo pink - they were the adult birds. As we walked towards them, they goose-stepped away (or perhaps I should say, they flamenco danced away), keeping a safe distance from us. Elegant though their long-legged steps are, they can pick up quite a speed through the shallows, like a company of synchronised ballet dancers in florid pink tutus.

Last December, I wrote about flamingos, as follows:

One of the great things about living in Israel is I get to see exotic birds and animals. By exotic, I mean those that I wouldn’t have seen in England without going to the zoo. As a child, living in Leeds, a favourite treat was a trip to Flamingo Park Zoo near Pickering (now renamed as Flamingo Land) where there was a colony of flamingos. There are flamingos at Tel Dor at the moment – no trip to a zoo required - and these flamingos can fly, which I’m sure wasn’t the case for those in the zoo. Aside from looking somewhat unusual and certainly exotic, flamingos have a particularly unusual characteristic. As we all know mammals produce milk to feed their young and birds don’t. But flamingos do. They produce milk in their crop and feed it to their young. They are not alone in the bird world in having this ability – pigeons do as well, and so do emperor penguins.

The photos here of the mongoose and flamingos are from yesterday at Tel Dor/Nachsholim, as were the stilt and grey heron.