Thursday 28 March 2013

Category C: it's the place to be

Common Myna



Vinous-breasted Starlings

One of the great joys about being keen on your Western Palearctic list is the unique opportunity it gives you to spend large quantities of time searching for introduced, self-sustaining populations of alien bird species. These populations are often quite small, making them difficult and challenging to locate and, to cap it all off, the general close proximity of these populations to human settlement means that you regularly get to visit places that you'd never normally go to - in many cases quite rightly so. However, our Cat C hunt in Israel took us to some genuinely pleasant places: though we didn't see the Nanday Parakeets (over two visits!) we found Pardes Hanna a quaint little town with plenty of other birdlife (think White-throated Kingfishers, Syrian Woodpeckers and Palestine Sunbirds), and watching Common Mynas and Vinous-breasted Starlings in Hayakron Park, Tel Aviv was almost like being back in Bangkok - were it not for the Monk and Ring-necked Parakeets zooming around the place!

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