Doves

May 8

The forest was hopping today with Collared doves, blackbirds, great tits and Syrian woodpeckers especially. It seems the Streptopelia genus doves have agreed to divide my haunts between themselves amicably. The woods are the province of the larger cream coloured *Collared dove* and the buildings are pretty much exclusively *Senegal dove*

Though the most obvious dove in the woods is the collared dove, turtle doves are heard here and there in summer, usually calling from the midst of the canopy but occasionally venturing out into view.

Senegal doves are smaller, cinnamon and slate grey coloured and like to walk on pavements and roads in twos, looking for all the world like an elderly couple searching the tarmac and paving stones for something they dropped. They will happily breed close to man on the unlikeliest of nesting sites.. we had a pair raise several chicks on top of a small electricity box on our front porch. Another pair raised a chick successfully on top of a 5 inch diameter paint can on our bathroom windowsill. Forget nest, I think there were a few fibres of dried grass there as token nesting material but the chick didn't care and grew to full sized, perched all the while on that paint can.

Apart from their size and much darker colouring the Senegal doves can easily be told from the Collared doves by their coo. Collared doves, as I mentioned yesterday, have a three note coo. Senegal doves like to be a bit fancier and go into an elaborate rising and falling 4 to 6 + note coo. These birds were originally native to Africa. Over several centuries Muslims introduced them all over the Middle East because their coo is reminiscent of an Arabic phrase used in their prayers. They're one of the earliest birds I hear in the morning, after the sparrows and about the same time as bulbuls' querulous tones and distant hoodie conversations.

It seemed that the hooded crows had a lot to talk about today, and probably quite a bit of it had to do with their age old enemies, the big brown jobs, the raptors. We noticed two Buteo types perched quietly on different boulders on the lower slopes of the hill to the north and another broke out of a pine as we passed in the middle of the forest. Another Buteo was flying north at a leisurely pace over the valley but the hoodies were too hot and lazy to go after that one this time.

Two nice mammals today.. We noticed lately the hyrax have been awfully quiet though we did spot one in the rocks just below the valley road, scampering to its den beneath the boulders. They're called "shafanei hasela' " in Hebrew. [The Shafan (hyrax) and Arnevet (rabbits) are mentioned in the Bible as two of the animals forbidden to eat in Jewish law. ]

The other was a graceful female gazelle, grazing by herself out in the open beyond the north east end of the forest, not far from where the Buteos were sitting out on the boulders. She was aware of us but not spooked by us.. we were a couple of hundred feet away and she's probably noticed us before. Sad to see one alone but it was only 5.30 p.m. and still quite hot, the rest of them were probably still in the shade.