March 2017 - Hula
We finished our list of things to see in Israel with one day left. So we spent that day in the Hula valley bird watching and checking out other wildlife! There were so many exciting moments, but two real highlights. The first was coming across nutria in the wild. I knew the word nutria from one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes but didn't realize it was an actual animal! The second exciting thing was bike-bird-watching. You ride bikes around and look at birds. It was totally awesome. We also saw turtles mating (see the collage in the gallery).
We finished our list of things to see in Israel with one day left. So we spent that day in the Hula valley bird watching and checking out other wildlife! There were so many exciting moments, but two real highlights. The first was coming across nutria in the wild. I knew the word nutria from one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes but didn't realize it was an actual animal! The second exciting thing was bike-bird-watching. You ride bikes around and look at birds. It was totally awesome. We also saw turtles mating (see the collage in the gallery).
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| The Hula valley | A nasty catfish looking like a water alien | Our first interesting bird of the day, a little egret |
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| A beautiful glossy ibis | The first of many Caspian turtles that we spotted | Like a creature out of mythology, the Nutria. Before this I had only known it as the name of a rat hat, not as an actual animal. |
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| A pair of young nutria | In the water they're pretty gross | Showing off his webbed feet |
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| A colorful little crake | A mom swimming with her babies | |
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| We caught the whole sequence of a pair of turtles mating. The entirety of the event took about 30 seconds. | Turtle mound | |
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| A very dinosaury bird | An observation boardwalk | |
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| A eurasian coot | Water buffalo | |
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| Never get tired of seeing the nutria | A nutria walking on by | |
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| A common moorhen | Spur-winged Lapwing | |
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| Cranes circling overhead | A crested lark | |
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| This little guy might be a bluethroat | The crane-viewing tractor | Cranes! |
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| A hooded crow. Seen all over the country in urban areas, but shot through the branches it looks like a rare find. | A group of great white pelicans | |
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| A tractor was plowing a field right next to the bird park. The part of the field that had been plowed was full of white storks, stopping off on their way from Africa to Europe. If you zoom in and look closely you will also see several hooded crows and 5 black kites (I think?) on the ground. | This shot features 8 raptors on the ground, with another 8 on the sprinkler. They blend into the ground _really_ well, they were almost impossible to see until they flew off. | A black kite looking for dinner in the field |
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| Black kite (I think) | A common kestrel | |
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| A pair of nutria making out | A common kingfisher | The sun setting on the Hula cranes |
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| Riding off into the sunset | ||
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| This is what a migration looks like. There are about 1000 birds in this shot, they appear to be pelicans or something related. |