2025-07

14th July 2025

It was great to visit the Hula Reserve for the first time in about three months. Being halfway between the spring migration and the autumn migration, it’s not the busiest time as far as birds are concerned – but I still managed to see kingfishers, herons, pelicans, cormorants, bee-eaters, raptors and other birds too, as well as mongooses, coypu and lizards.

I was particularly lucky to be able to get quite close to a rough tail rock agama that was standing almost upright on a rock face. This upright stance is one of the ways that it tells all the other agamas in the vicinity that they’re in the presence of the ‘king of the castle’. It also allows air to circulate around its body, which helps cool it down on very hot days. A few minutes later I saw another agama that was a little paler than had been that first king of the castle. I think it was in a bit of a mood. Just as chameleons can change colour, the rock agama can too – though the colour change is not nearly so pronounced. And like the chameleon, the colour change reflects its mood – it’s not nowadays thought to be an attempt to blend in with the environment, which it does very well anyway.

The purple heron isn’t really purple but more of a burnt-chestnut and slate grey mixture, and also blends in nicely with its environment. It’s quite hard for photographers to spot them in the reeds but more important for the heron is, that its prey doesn’t see it either as it stands perfectly still mimicking the reeds around it. This mimicking behaviour is known as bitterning, a trait that is perfected by bitterns. When we were in Britain recently, we knew we were in the vicinity of bitterns when we heard their booming, but try as we might, we couldn’t spot them at all.

On the lake at the Hula were a dozen or more pelicans and a number of terns. I watched a pelican glide across the lake with terns circling above it. As they came near, the pelican got quite agitated and opened its huge bill to frighten them off. The terns were clearly harassing the pelican trying to steal an easy meal – a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism. The pelican won the day, and the lazy terns had to go off and do some ‘honest’ fishing.

2025-06

8th June 2025 

The Handicap Principle

We’ve just returned from a ten-week trip to the UK. It’s so good to be home – but while we were away, I did manage a couple of short excursions with my camera (and Miriam).

I was lucky enough to photograph two of the most beautiful brightly coloured birds that we see in the UK. In both cases the birds are the male of the species, while their missus is considerably less colourful, perhaps even dully coloured. The mandarin drake is, thought by many to be, the most exquisitely coloured duck in the world, while Mrs Mandarin, though beautiful in her own way, has plumage that nicely blends in with the riversides and edges of lakes that she frequents. Similarly, Mrs Pheasant pales into insignificance when compared to the vibrant colours of her bloke, the cock pheasant. But not all female birds are less flamboyant than their male counterparts – take the kingfisher for example, the male’s stunning electric blue and orange is matched almost exactly by his consort’s, the ‘queenfisher’.

One might ask why any birds have eye-catching plumage – wouldn’t all birds be safer with dull colours providing camouflage to make them less noticeable to those that would lunch on them? And if there is a good reason for some birds to be so colourful, why particularly the males and why are some, but not all, females brightly coloured too?

All birds (male and female) are interested in self-preservation, as indeed are all animals and people. And so, the starting point is for birds to be coloured in a way that doesn’t attract attention. But birds and animals have an inbuilt desire to reproduce to maintain their species. And to do this, males or females have to pursue a mate.

For most bird types it’s the females that are in charge of rearing chicks and they want to choose the ‘best’ mates. They look for the most virile male they can find, hoping that their chicks will be strong and therefore more likely to survive. So, males have to make sure they look good and that the females will find them attractive. With this in mind, many males evolve into colourful birds. But the brightness of the plumage gives the bird a distinct disadvantage – it’s easily spotted by predators. So, the more attractive it is to females, the more noticeable it is to predators – a bit of a catch-22 situation for the poor male birds. 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 he’s strong enough not to have to worry about predator threats. It’s a bit like the birds are playing ‘chicken’ - a high-risk policy indeed!

Meanwhile for Mrs Pheasant to rear her brood it is much safer for her to stay out of the spotlight. If she were more flamboyant, she’d be easy meat for a fox. Likewise, Mrs Mandarin would be a sitting duck if she were easily noticeable in her nest.

So, what of the kingfisher’s ‘queen’? How can she afford the risk of being so startling?  She hunts for fish and small critters just like the king himself, but when it comes to nesting, she’s not at all noticeable in her bankside burrow and so can afford the luxury of being the rainbow queen – as WH Auden wrote ‘It was the Rainbow gave thee birth/ And left thee all her lovely hues’. But we still need to understand what benefit she gets from her vivid colouring. It’s hard to believe but actually the bright colours act as camouflage as kingfishers fly above rivers, they blend in with the foliage and are not as noticeable to the fish below the surface of the water. So there she has it – her catch of twenty-two!

2025-03

12th March 2025

One of my favourite Van Gogh paintings is his lovely depiction of deep blue and violet irises in Provence, France. Van Gogh painted this scene during the last year of his life while confined in an asylum. Despite the mental trauma he was experiencing he still had a good eye and as you look at the painting you can almost see the sweet perfumy scent of the flowers. Amongst all the blues and violets there is a lone white – perhaps this was the ‘Vincent’ iris – the failure that didn’t quite fit the mould. He might have thought himself a failure, but history has judged him otherwise and this one painting was bought in 1987 by the Getty Museum of California for more than $50million. [The painting is reproduced here with thanks to Wikipedia]

Wonderful as Van Gogh’s painting is, it’s not quite the same as seeing real-life irises. For no cost at all, one can visit the iris reserve in South Netanya, close to the coast, during February/March (as we did) and see the stunning iridescent purple coastal iris (Iris atropurpurea) - a protected plant (critically endangered) that can only be found on the coastal plain of Israel.

These irises have three large outer petals, and three smaller inner petals, which fold over one another to form a kind of chamber. But not all irises have this type of structure. A day or two after we saw coastal irises, we found some rather beautiful irises of a different kind during an afternoon visit to Mount Arbel. The barbary nut (Gynandriris sisyrinchium) is a dwarf iris and has the Hebrew name - צהרון מצוי = the common tzaharon. At the end of their kindergarten day, our little grandchildren, each of whom is the apple of my (iris) eye, go to an afternoon after school club, known in Hebrew as a tzaharon. The word tzaharon takes its origin from the word tzaharayim - meaning ‘noon’. And the barbary nut – the common tzaharon is so called because its flowers are closed all morning and only open at noon.

Some days I think I too am a bit of a tzaharon.

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As well as the iris photos, I’ve included two birds, that we’re seeing a lot of at the moment. The rather handsome black-headed bird is a male stonechat, and the brown bird with red tail feathers is a female black redstart.

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3rd March 2025

In recent days we have been lucky enough to see two sorts of lupin (US spelling is lupine and Hebrew word is turmus possibly related to the word thermos [= warm, hot]). These two types are the deep blue lupin (Lupinus pilosus) with a white splodge in the middle of its blue petals, and the pale blue and white Israeli lupin (Lupinus  palaestinus). Beautiful as the flowers are, I particularly like to look at the lupin’s wonderful palmate leaves.

You might think me a little loopy, but I must tell you that when I see lupins growing, I do wonder what is lurking beneath them. The Midrash (Gen Rab 79:6) relates that the great second century sage, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, planted lupin seeds in Tiberias (our hometown) to determine whether the ground below was part of an ancient cemetery. Where there were skeletons below, lupins grew from the seeds – but lupins didn’t grow where there was an absence of bones. And, by the way, I’ve checked – there are no skeletons in my closet.

Lupins are edible and have been eaten for thousands of years – the Talmud (Beitzah 35) states that the leguminous beans are as bitter as can be, but if boiled in water seven times they become sweet and can be wolfed down along with the tastiest of desserts. Though I have to say, rather than turmus for dessert, I think I shall stick with tiramisu.

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Have you ever read H.G Wells’ novel ‘The Invisible Man’? I wonder if he got the idea from the false Apollo butterfly that I wrote about last week. It wasn’t clear from last week’s photo that this amazing little butterfly can be almost as invisible as Wells’ eponymous character. As the butterfly ages its wings become more and more transparent. The elderly butterfly I saw a few days ago at Gamla was barely noticeable as it rested on a yellow flower. It does make you wonder why other critters don’t use this method of camouflage. Well, actually, a few do, including glass frogs, the glass octopus and some jelly fish. Watch out next time you’re swimming in tropical waters.

2025-02

24th February 2025

Ramat Hanadiv, which includes the Rothschild Memorial Gardens and Nature Park next to Zichron Yaakov, is a truly remarkable place for nature lovers. Its 470 hectares is home to 656 species of wild plants - about a quarter of Israel’s plant species - and about a third of all butterfly and mammal species of Israel. It’s certainly one of our favourite haunts and what a metamorphosis we’ve seen over the last couple of months. Not very long ago the fields were dull brown, showing little signs of life. Now they are covered in beautiful flowers, particularly red (and a few purple) crown anemone’s (Anemone coronaria = kalanit in Hebrew) and white Venus’ comb (Scandix verna), which is also known as shepherd’s needle – and one of my favourites, the spectacular Judean viper’s bugloss (Echium judaeum) a member of the borage family (see accompanying photo) – borage rhyming with porridge. The bugloss is named for its style – the tube supporting the stigma - resembling the forked tongue of a serpent.

Last week, on a lovely sunny and warm day, I saw lots and lots of very hungry caterpillars eating all before them. Then I had a brief encounter with a rather beautiful butterfly. The false apollo, which is classified as near-threatened, is so called because it looks a little like, and tries to mimic, the apollo butterfly. And the apollo butterfly is named to reflect its ‘worship’ of the sun – Apollo being the so-called god of the sun. It rests with wings splayed soaking up warmth from the sun. Just before it landed in front of me to do a bit of sunbathing, it hovered above the ground then descended like it was an Apollo Lunar Module floating on to the moon’s surface. A few seconds later it launched itself, orbited me twice and off it went – leaving me to think of its wonderful metamorphosis - egg, caterpillar, pupa and then butterfly.

After a coffee break in the café overlooking the olive grove, I visited one of my favourite froggeries – Ramat Hanadiv’s lily pond. There were lots and lots of little tadpoles, which were probably just as hungry as the caterpillars I had seen earlier. I managed to creep ever so carefully and quietly towards a sun-seeking frog. This little marsh frog, not even half the size of my hand, launched itself downwards to take cover below the lily pads as soon as it saw me – leaving me to think of its wonderful metamorphosis - egg, tadpole, froglet and then adult frog.

What a remarkable place Ramat Hanadiv is, and what a truly remarkable world we live in - a world that has allowed me to metamorphose from a desk-bound British high-tech consultant to a sun-loving Israeli nature-watcher.

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18th February 2025

For various reasons, I haven’t been able to write my blog posts for the last couple of months, but I hope to resume now. And what a lovely time it is to be out and about in the countryside of Israel. The fields are quite a bit greener, flowers are carpeting the hillsides and birds are happily singing. The war situation has changed somewhat too in the last few months and, thank Goodness, some of the hostages have been released from Gaza, albeit at a possibly considerable cost to the future safety of Israel. We hope and pray that all the hostages will be released soon and that our fears for the future will prove unfounded.

I photographed a bird during a winter visit to the Hula Valley – which leads me to ask the following question. Do birds have whiskers? I guess that many people would be surprised to know that indeed, some birds do have whiskers – they’re known as rictal bristles. These bristles or whiskers are thought to aid the bird in assessing its speed. The bird I saw was a tern, the whiskered tern, which is a common winter visitor to Israel, though not as common as the common tern.

In many ways terns are similar to gulls in appearance, but terns are smaller and more agile, having a sharper and more streamlined profile than the stockier gulls. They plunge into the water to capture fish which is their staple diet. Gulls, on the other hand, will eat anything and are particularly fond of ice cream, as my daughter will testify, having lost her ice cream, aged ten, to a large and ravenous gull, which swooped in over her head just as she was about to take the first lick.