Jackdaws and Others. 21st May

Jackdaw pair copyright Ruti Schueler w permission

Warm, (mid 20s degrees C),pleasant and clear skies today, under 30% humidity. We went out about 6 p.m. First I dropped off a plastic bottle at the recycling cage on the corner. A jackdaw standing on the wall nearby watched us curiously. Maybe it was the way the light shone on all those plastic bottles but he seemed fascinated. He let me get within ten feet of him, which is the closest I've ever come to one of these curious crows. They're called simply 'Kaak' in Hebrew, a name which expresses their slightly nasal call quite well.

Forest was quite active, singing blackbirds, some collared dove activity, turtle dove cooing in several locations, Hooded crows foraging on the street, greenfinches quite active in calls and song, bulbuls foraging and vocal, some graceful warbler activity, the usual feral pigeons and hooded crows, flying over and foraging in a variety of locations. In the orchard we saw syrian woodpeckers low on the trunks and the whole great tit family today, the young pretty well grown and almost adult plumage already, parents with their 'hands full', still finding food for them. Hobbies silent and no gazelles in the field:( we scanned several times. Ah well, another day. stone curlews very vocal and tantalisingly just beyond the peripheries of our visual range beyond the forest.

As we made our way up the creek path to the south we met our old 'pals', a family of feral dogs. Medium sized Canaani dogs , these, tail curved over the back and living totally off the land. Dad is polar bear coloured and led the group. When he saw us he stopped, and paused to urinate, then he led his family up the slope to his right. Mom and junior (both offwhite patched with sandy brown) walked several paces behind, and she looked like she still had milk though junior was quite well grown. We'd seen them in the valley before, when junior was stashed in a den near the pumping station and mom tried to distract us by heading off down by the new saplings and it looked like she was willing us to follow her, while dad crouched down near the den doing an impersonation of a rock and no doubt believing we hadn't noticed him.

Now they just flopped down on some convenient rocks on the east slopes and rested, watching us with that 'please don't kick me' look dogs can do so well. Sometimes we see whole packs of these dogs roving the valley, sometimes coming up to the neighbourhood at night to forage. Many of our neighbours are terrified of them but we've been dog owners for years and have reached an attitude of mutual respect for these fine predators. Even when we've met a whole pack on the creek path the leader will usually decide to lead his band off the track to one side or another, they don't care to tangle with humans. I don't know how they make a living down here.. I've seen them nosing in at the hyrax dens and perhaps they manage to catch an unwary hyrax above ground.

(It has happened that neighbourhood boys found dens of feral pups and tried to adopt them. We had not always approved of their methods and had intervened. We raised three of the pups, Angel, Porthos and Tiger, got inoculations and licenses for them and found them to be fantastic pets, loyal, affectionnate and quite strong. Sadly were were unable to keep them all in our tiny place and a new home had to be found but we'll always love them. )

Further along the creek path we found a little Chukar family. One chick.. ONE?? We wondered where all the others were.. was that cat, or the foxes, or even those dogs caused that much attrition, or were there other chicks under cover? I hoped so. Well this one was grey and fluffy and somewhat scrawny looking and had a long way to go to reach his parents mass but he was beyond the adorable stripey stage.. into more the 'preteen' partridge stage you could say.

On the way back we saw a pair of house sparrows eh, how can I put this delicately?.. strengthening their pair bond, noticed a team of common swifts above the valley.. it was about 7 pm and I knew we needed to get back to the kids or we would have stayed to confirm bee-eaters.. as it was we both thought we heard calls in the north valley, just barely enough. Time to call it a day..

Ah except the sunbirds in the bauhinia tree earlier in the afternoon, quite vocal today.. saw a female from this very chair I'm sitting on.. she was right outside, had a nice view of her long decurved bill, like one of those surgical suturing needles, no doubt hunting insects amongst the bauhinia pods that already look like string beans, and another bird, probably her mate, was also in there somewhere.