2025-09

21st September 2025

Tomorrow is the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. We hope and pray for a year of peace for all the world.

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On a country walk, not so long ago, I watched a jay for quite a number of minutes. The old bird perched on a low branch in an old oak tree, but my view was a little obscured. Seemingly unaware of my presence it jumped down to the ground showing its distinctive and distinguished-looking pinkish brown plumage with black bar stripe on each side bright blue checkerboard panel on the upper wing. As it hopped around somewhat erratically, I recalled that a year or two ago I was cautioned by the police for jaywalking – just like this bird was. I crossed a road in the city – there were no cars around, bar a police car that drove up to me, and the police officer asked to see my ID card. He then proceeded to ask me why I hadn’t used the zebra crossing when crossing the road. Truth is that I hadn’t seen the zebra crossing, or I probably would have used it. I tried to explain this in my best Hebrew (which is not very good at all). The policeman then cautioned me in his best English (which wasn’t very good at all). I was lucky, I could have been fined. Or I could have got a spell of ‘bird’ in jaywalking jail. More recently, I was stopped by the police again – this time for crossing a continuous white line in the centre of the road, to turn left into a car park. I guess this offence is known as jaydriving. I was lucky – another caution when I could have been fined. I don’t know why they always seem to spot my very minor road offences when tens of thousands of other dudes get away with more high-profile traffic violations.

Jays are particularly known for being garrulous and for liking acorns, hence the Latin name - Garrulus glandarius – glandarius means ‘pertaining to acorns’. And they’re known in English as jays because jay means a chatterer or of low intelligence. Hence jaywalking is someone who is stupid on the road – that’s told me!

Jays don’t just like acorns – they love acorns (or should I say jaycorns?), almost as much as Pooh’s friend Piglet loves haycorns. Being part of the crow family, jays are actually very intelligent, as we’ve discussed before (despite their name). They know that there’s a plentiful supply of acorns in the autumn and that by the winter they’re no longer to be found. So, during the autumn they bury lots of acorns in the ground, for future consumption. They’ve got really good memories and in winter when food is hard to come by, they dig up the acorns that they had secreted. Good as their memory is, it’s not perfect and inevitably some get left behind. So planted by jays, mighty oaks from little acorns grow – and great jokes from little jaycorns grow!

The photos of the jays (some of them looking a little jaded) are mine. The painting of the two jays is by Ferdinand von Wright.

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18th September 2025

Laughing Dave

I noted in a recent post that we see a fair number of laughing doves in our neighbourhood. We never saw them in the UK, so it’s a treat to see such lovely, happy birds here – indeed, they are indigenous to Israel. They have a pinkish-brown body and a distinctive patch of black spots on the throat. This slender dove, whose scientific (Latin) name is Spilopelia senegalensis, is known as the palm dove, Senegal dove, or little brown dove – and in Hebrew as the city dove – but by far its finest name, the laughing dove, comes from its cooing, which sounds a wee bit like a human chuckle.

Pigeons and doves are considered among the most intelligent of birds, which perhaps explains why Noah sent out a dove to check the land after the Flood. It returned to Noah with an olive branch – and ever since, a dove with an olive branch has been a symbol of peace. Being clever birds, the laughing dove has much to enjoy. And I’m sure laughing doves are extra happy that they’re not pigeons, which are known in some places as “rats with wings” – much better to be a dove; a ‘symbol of peace’.

Doves and pigeons, which are generally monogamous, belong to the same bird family, Columbidae. In English, we tend to call the smaller, slender species ‘doves’ and the larger, heavier ones ‘pigeons’. The laughing dove is among the smallest of all doves – it weighs about 90–130 grams, roughly the same as two medium chicken eggs, and measures about 25–27 cm from bill to tail. Compare this to the wood pigeons we saw in the UK recently. They weigh about 400–600 grams and measure 38–44 cm in length. So, the wood pigeon is four to five times the weight of a laughing dove and becomes a much more attractive proposition for hunters than small doves like ours. There’s a lot for the laughing dove to be glad about.

The word “dove” comes from an Old English word meaning “diver,” named for the flight paths they follow – shooting up and diving down. With that in mind, a year or two ago I had a lot of fun writing a poem about a laughing dove who liked to dive – I named him Dave. I’m sure the laughing doves around here would have a good hoot.

Here’s my poem (and there’s a photo of Dave):

Laughing Dave

The laughing dove, perched high above,
was having a chuckle, was having a laugh.
And what was so funny that caused such mirth?
He said to himself in his own pidgin English,
if I were to dive from such a great height,
the people below would recount to each other,
of how the dove dived, or should that be dove?
As he thought of these words, ‘it dived’ or ‘it dove’,
oh, how did he giggle, oh, how did he titter.
He thought to himself in his own pidgin English,
isn’t it apt that my name is Dave,
and isn’t it apt that I live in Dover.
Everyone will know me as laughing Dave,
the great diver of Dover
or should that be, the dover of Dover?
As he thought of these words, ‘the dover of Dover’,
oh, how he did chortle, oh, how he did snicker.
He thought to himself in his own pidgin English,
of his sister, oh how she loved to sing,
she should be known as the diva of Dover,
or should that be the diver of Dover?
As he thought of these words, ‘the diva of Dover’,
oh, how he did chuckle, oh, how he did laugh.
He thought to himself,
doves do love the English of pigeons,
and with that
he dove down to the dive that he lived in.

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15th September 2025

Having been in Haifa for the morning a week or two ago, we took a little detour on our return journey, and stopped at a nature reserve called Ein Afek, right on the edge of the city. Here we usually get to see water buffalo, but not this time. Here we usually get to see raptors, egrets and plovers, but not on this occasion. But on this particular Wednesday, we did manage to disturb a regal-looking purple heron that was having a siesta after a fish-and-frog lunch. On detecting our presence, it flew off into the sun in a huff. The highlight of the visit, though, was to be accompanied on our walk by male plane tiger butterflies. With humans, it’s typically the female of the species that wears perfume. With some butterflies, it’s the males that ‘wear’ the fragrance. They have a scent gland on the hind wing that emits pheromones, an aroma that attracts females during courtship. The scent gland is the big black wing spot with a white blob within.

The plain tiger is closely related to the favourite butterfly of Americans, the monarch. And its majestic tiger colours make it quite distinctive and indicate to predators that it’s not for eating. It’s often the case that orange and red colourings warn off would-be attackers, who only have to take one bite to learn not to mess again. And other butterflies, knowing of the ‘protected species’ nature of the plain tiger do what they can to mimic it (by putting a tiger in their tank) and likewise get protection by proxy. This technique is known as ‘Batesian’ mimicry, named after the English naturalist, who observed this phenomena, Henry Walter Bates. Here in Israel, there aren’t any butterflies similar enough to the plain tiger to employ this strategy, so if you see a plain tiger, you can be sure it’s the real McCoy, the king of the butterflies.

The photo of the heron (in its regal purple) is one from a recent trip to the Hula Valley, one that didn’t fly off disgruntled.

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9th September 2025

The Lazy Birdwatcher

A year or two ago I read Simon Barnes’ book ‘How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher’. It’s a humorous introduction to birdwatching and was fun to read. During the last few months, I haven’t had a great time with photographing birds, so perhaps I’ve become a ‘bad’ birdwatcher. Maybe I have, but for sure during the past few days, I’ve been a lazy birdwatcher. Without even leaving home, I’ve been watching raptors flying above the lake and then heading in our direction. I was alerted to this aerial treat by the local pigeons. One day, while working at my computer, I noticed a flurry of pigeon activity. One thing we’re not short of where we live, is pigeons. We have lots and lots of them that rest and roost on the windowsills of our apartment block, and many more that live in the vicinity. As you can imagine they’re quite a nuisance – they have little idea about cleaning up after themselves. It’s sometimes tempting to employ the services of a hawk, which would certainly put the cat among the pigeons. No hawk was necessary on this occasion; the raptors had frightened the pigeons silly. The raptors were very high, but not too high for the pigeons to see, and they (the pigeons) clearly had no desire to become a pigeon pie (also known as a pied pigeon). I took my camera and zoomed in on the distant birds. I was able to see black kites and European honey buzzards gracefully riding the thermals.

I used to think honey buzzards were given that name because of their colouring. I was wrong – it’s because their preferred delicacy is a delicious feast of bees’ and wasps’ larvae, which they get by poking around in honeycombs. They also like hornets’ larvae, I’m pleased to say. It’s quite a dangerous business messing with bees and wasps and particularly hornets, so the honey buzzards have built-in protection – a chemical insect repellent in their feathers.

The biannual migration has certainly begun. During the next month or two, there’s every chance of seeing cranes, storks and pelicans flying up the valley past our home.

As I’m now a lazy birdwatcher and as we have such a propensity of pigeons, I’ve been watching them quite a lot. We also get a number of laughing doves nearby, but they’re not the problem. The problem-pigeons are the rock and feral pigeons. Rock pigeons favour cliffs as their natural habitat, but seem to find tall apartment buildings just as homely. They’re rather splendid birds and would be a firm favourite I’m sure, if they weren’t called pigeons. They look good, they’re intelligent, very fast and have a great ability to find their way home – I just wish it wasn’t my home. These qualities combined make them excellent messengers and racers. It’s thought that pigeons can recognise human faces, although I have to confess rock pigeons all look the same to me. But it’s not the case with feral pigeons. Feral pigeons are domestic birds that have returned to live in the wild. They’re often beautifully coloured - a result of selective breeding by pigeon fanciers - so it’s much easier to tell them apart.

Like everyone else in Israel, I’ve also been a lazy astronomer – watching the eclipse and red moon from the comfort of our balcony. People have been asking what impact the eclipse has on migrating birds, some of which rely on the moon for navigation. In actual fact, the raptors were not affected at all – they tend to travel during the day when they can benefit from the thermals. It’s the millions of small migrating birds that do travel at night, that will have noticed the strange behaviour of the moon. But given the eclipse didn’t last for more than a few hours, the birds will have coped by using alternative navigation techniques, as they must on a cloudy night.

The birds pictured are the European honey buzzard (high in the sky), a rock pigeon (peering down) and a feral pigeon (plumage grey and white pied, and orange-red iris with a black pupil).

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3rd September 2025

It’s now September; the days are a wee bit less hot and so my prolonged period of torpor is over. We have had a spell of quite warm weather recently, with temperatures in Tiberias peaking at 46 degrees Centigrade, which is about 115 Fahrenheit. It’s not surprising that we spent the last few months estivating. It wasn’t just us that kept a low profile – birds and animals didn’t show their faces and even the summer flowers cowered in the intense heat, while seeking out shade.

Last week we headed up into the mountains above Tiberias on the eastern side of the lake. Our favourite place there is Gamla and with school holidays more or less over, it was very quiet. Gamla is the site of an ancient fortress and is sometimes called the “Masada of the North”. Here it was that the Jewish stronghold held out for two months in the year 67 against the Romans (led by Vespasian), before ultimately falling, as recounted in Flavius Josephus’ great work of history – The Jewish War.

These days, Gamla is a place of tranquillity enjoyed by nature lovers, hikers and the local birds and animals. Within just a few minutes of arriving, we were treated to the fly past of a pair of magnificent griffon vultures. This huge bird (with wingspan of almost three metres) was all but extinct in Israel until recent decades but conservationists have worked hard to reintroduce them. One of the prime locations for this project has been the mountains around Gamla, where the birds benefit from the thermals that help them rise effortlessly in the afternoon sun.

Another major conservation project in Israel is to enable mountain gazelles to flourish. These gazelles were almost extinct too, but through the efforts of Israeli conservationists, the world population of mountain gazelles has now reached several hundred. We hit lucky – just a short way into our walk, a family of four gazelles trotted by. They were a bit too far away to get a good photo, but I did manage to get a shot of one of them through the trees. A few months ago, I got even luckier. We were about to cross a wooden bridge over the stream and encountered a gazelle wanting to cross the bridge too – in the opposite direction to us. Feeble old folk like us need to make use of such bridges, but one would have expected the gazelle to easily cope with descending the banks of the stream and coming up on the other side without resorting to this man-made contraption. But it was either a lazy gazelle, or perhaps a smart gazelle and figured it easier to use the bridge. I think it got a bit of a surprise when it saw us already there – and after eyeing us up for almost a full minute it decided to look for an alternative route.

If you’re interested in gazelle gazing, try Gamla – you might be lucky, as we were. But more likely by far, you’ll see them in Jerusalem’s Gazelle Valley. I wrote about this inner-city nature reserve a year or two ago – if you’d like to know more you can find my article here - https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/nature-of-israel-gazelle-valley/.