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.
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.
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