We have closed the nets for the season at Lotan - what did we get?

So Jan Visser, our volunteer ringer who came from the Netherlands to run the ringing station, has left again, and we have taken down the nets, and closed the ringing station. Getting up every day well before dawn to open the nets and making our rounds to take the birds out of the nets in a timely fashion is over. This was the first year that we had a ringing station open for almost two months. We have had groups that came in to set up nets for a week or so in previous years, but this was a definite jump in our efforts.

The season was a lopsided one, I believe. Most remarkable was much smaller numbers of passerines that came through. There was a marked lack of wheatears, buntings, larks and shrikes. As I had reported earlier already, we had much more rainfall in February and March than our annual average. Around Lotan and further south towards Eilat we blasted through the annual average. The result was that for the first time the sand dunes in Jordan had a green hue on them, because of so many wild flowers that grew there. In the meantime the flowers have wilted, but they have spread a lot of seeds everywhere.

Booted Eagle

At our ringing station we had the following results (first captures, without the retraps):

In first place we had 562 Lesser Whitethroats (Sylvia curruca), followed by 314 Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla), 269 House Sparrows (Passer domesticus), 204 Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus), 179 Spanish Sparrows (Passer hispaniolensis),  and 159 Chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus collibyta).

This was to be expected, but the numbers were a less than we expected. This was borne out by the numbers in other ringing stations in the area, too, although there is no hard data from there yet.

Namaqua Dove

The surprises were the cool bit, though. One Booted Eagle (Aquila pennata) in the net that dove after a dove of some sort (the dove survived and the eagle was caught), one Black Bush Robin (Cercothrichas podobe) that was caught, and another that flew into the nets, but managed to extricate itself again. Also, one Squacco Heron (Ardeola ralloides), one Corncrake (Crex crex), one Namaqua Dove (Oena capensis), one Red-rumped Swallow (Hirundo daurica), one Little Green Bee-eater (Merops orientalis), one Grey Wagtail (Motacilla cinerea), one Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra), one Dead Sea Sparrow (Passer moabiticus) one Barred Warbler (Sylvia nisoria) and four Levant Sparrowhawks (Accipter brevipes). 

Black Bush Robin

Most of the retraps we got in the net were from our own ringing, but we did have one Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) that had been ringed in a previous year, and one House Sparrow that had been ringed last year.

The challenges we faced were first and foremost the number of stray cats that are around. Despite numerous pleas to the regional council, little was done about it. This is a problem not only here, but in the whole country. The other challenge was that we had nets in two locations for most of the time, which meant that we had to bike to the nets several times to check them. There were days where the temperatures far exceeded the 30 degree mark, so that took a little getting used to, but with very low humidity it was not a hardship.

Will we open next year? Well, that is still in the stars... We have to evaluate what we have done so far, and make a decision, as to what we will do in the future. We learned a whole lot, got some nice surprises in the nett, and got some response from the outside regarding Lotan as a birding hotspot.

All the ringing results can be seen on the website www.trektellen.nl.

Aside from the ringing the big story was the massive Steppe Buzzard (Buteo buteo vulpines)and other raptor migration at the end of March. Overall, we saw over 26,000 Steppe Buzzards and close to 6000 Black Kites (Milvus migrans).

Just a few of the hundreds of Steppe Buzzards overhead