Weird weather and Cute Stuff

11 May



Weather has been so strange! Some lightning and thunder last night and more drizzling rain. This morning visibility was way down due to fine dust and sand in the air.. the air was yellow and we could barely see to the middle of the valley from our house. By early afternoon the wind had cleared most of that but it was still overcast, but not cold.

Heading south along the valley road we noticed a lone kit hyrax, (about 7, 8 ins long) scampering across the road where a hooded crow was mooching around. The crow pecked at juniour hyrax viciously just before he disappeared into the scrub, and missed. The hoodie didn't want to give up so easily.. he hopped up the hill, trying to stab at the kit but I got the impression he wasn't really trying very hard and just trusting to luck, or the prickles in the scrub were putting him off, at any rate he was obviously unsuccessful till he came face to face with a jackrabbit sized adult hyrax glaring at him with that grim impassive face only a hyrax can manage. 'Ummm, hi! me?, no I wasn't bothering your kid...' The hoodie took off.

We headed around the loop by the pumping station, back north up the dry creek path, noting collared doves, the calls of great tit chicks, Syrian woodpeckers and collared doves, a singing blackbird, a turtle dove till we came to the abandonned orchard and beyond that, the bunker ruins and a field.

That scrub field has always turned out to be a great place to look around on our walks. We stay in the cover of the eucalyptus and check it out every time. There is a system of old dry stone walls across part of it that may have been sheep and goat pens some time in the past, and a few scattered small but densely foliaged trees which provide cover for birds and good hunting for shrikes, rollers and falcons. There's lots of low scrub for a range of small birds and doves, cover for foxes and at the far end, near the southern slopes of the hill, good grazing for *mountain gazelle*. There were four here today, all females and mostly grown young, no bucks.. peacefully chomping the grasses.

Another bird that we hear every day that I shall finally get around to mentioning now is the graceful warbler Prinia gracilis. This bird fills the 'wren niche' .. small with a perky long tail and with a voice twenty times its own size. Also called pashosh in Hebrew, these birds are obvious for their cell phone and alarm clock imitations (not intentional I'm sure, just their style) but they're usually deep in the grasses and scrub and you have to have quick eyes and reflexes to get them in the binocular view. These are very loud and active now, no doubt busy with their families and asserting their territories at every possible excuse. Little charmers.