Miscellaneous

27 th December 9-17 degrees C, ~4 p.m. 13.2 degrees C and falling. Humidity 39% and rising.
Wind ESE and very light.

Birds heard from house during the day: House sparrows, hooded crows, white spectacled bulbul, white wagtail, jackdaws, brief great tit.

Laughing dove, Feral pigeons up on roofs, graceful warbler heard

Great tit scolding at us in acacia and on fence (repeated 'see crrr!') on our shortcut down from buildings to valley road. Looks like he's already ear marked that area as his territory.

Eurasian Jay in lower acacia. Called and flew into east valley pines but otherwise jays silent today.

Rock hyrax active on the hillside west of valley road near the pumping station. Stonechat on rocks and scrub around there, foraging.

Falcon flew from windsurfer hill across valley to top of hill to west, probably common kestrel as they traditionally use the buildings up there.

Linnet perched on top of cypress just by valley road. It was pretty much in silhouette when we first saw him so had to climb up the bank to the west to get it against Hizmeh hill and make out any colouration. Roving band of finches, probably chaffinches or linnets.

We made our way down a short cut to the stream (now not flowing but damp) and to some ruins in the middle of east valley woods. Heard a black redstart call in the vicinity but he was keeping out of view in lower canopy. He probably uses those ruins as foraging grounds and was anxious to return to them. He fell silent when a raptor appeared from the south, flying just below canopy level, from what we could make out, an adult Eurasian sparrowhawk. A minute or so later the redstart was piping again.

By that time the light was getting dim and we reconnected with central trail near the glade, met up with a group of boys heading home. I couldn't resist sharing with them news of the long eared owl that lived there:)

It's funny that in Hebrew there is traditionally no one word for 'owl' but separate names are given to different kinds. Barn owl is 'tinshemet', the scops owl group, 'sa'ir' , little owl is 'cos' , tawny owl group is 'lilit', long and short eared (or rather ear-tufted) owls are called 'yanshuf' and an eagle owl is an 'o'ach' . Quite a few of these names also traditionally belonged to demonic spirits!