Me and blackcap

me and blackcap
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

This is me with the migratory bird that I was studying in Eilat with Michal. We caught a bunch of these blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) as they arrived in Eilat after migrating over the Sahara. Then we measured digestive function in them as they refed in the cages you can sort of see in the background.

Carpet viper

Carpet viper
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

This is the snake (Echis coloratus) that ate one of our blackcaps that had a transmitter on it. In the 2 weeks we were in Eilat, we caught 8 of these in our blackcap cage. And they each ate one of our blackcaps. Argh.

Tzadok with raptors

Tzadok with raptors
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Tzadok, the man who makes things happen at the ringing station in Eilat, with the result of the morning's raptor run with me and Michal. We caught 9 Levant's sparrowhawks, and 3 buzzards. The day before this, we saw a truly awesome sight of something like 15,000 Levant's sparrowhawks migrating. They literally covered the entire view of the Jordan mountains. Absolutely amazing.

Me with buzzard

Me with buzzard
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Me with one of the buzzards (Buteo buteo) that was ringed at the station in Eilat.

Uromastyx at his burrow

Uromastyx at his burrow
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

This is a male sitting at his burrow. Everything about this is typical - the burrow, the habitat, the lizard's posture, the 35 degree heat.

Uromastyx at it's burrow

Uromastyx at it's burrow
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Here is a female Uromastyx aegyptius at a burrow. This is one of the ones with a datalogger implanted. We caught her at this burrow, and then she posed for us. Not quite a natural pose, but close enough.

Crazy field trip

Today was quite a day. I went to the field in the Arava valley to try to catch lizards. It all started about 2 km from Sede Boqer, when a white stork decided to saunter across the road in front of me. I had to do some defensive driving to avoid hitting it. Crazy bird.

When I got to the field site, it was still relatively cool - 22C or so, but then it was only 9:30am. I looked around for the 3 Uromastyx we had marked, but didn't see them. I had seen a couple of other males out basking, so I went up to a burrow to set a trap. When I got there, I put down my stuff and got the trap ready. I looked over at the burrow and saw a large, spiny tail sticking out. Uromastyx usually disappear deep into their burrows, which can be a meter deep and 10m long, so I was pretty surprised. I quietly came up to the burrow and grabbed his tail. Now, when I was working with Sauromalus, I could grab the base of the tail, and pull for a while, and eventually the lizard would tire out. But these Uromastys are over 2kg. They're pretty strong, and the tail spines are sharp enough to shred bare hands (like the ones I was using to grab this lizard). After about 10 minutes of breathing dust, digging and pulling, I finally got the lizard out. Easy.

I managed to catch one other lizard, using the more conventional traps. When I went back to the car to drop it off, I noticed that the "easily caught" guy was pretty inactive in it's bag. Then I realized that was because there was no lizard in the bag. Apparently those sharp spines are sharp enough to rip open cotton bags, and he had escaped. So for the second lizard, I made a wire tether, stuffed his head into a bag, and tied him to the bottom of the car. No escape for this guy. Not much else happened the rest of the afternoon. Just a hot day (35C) of walking around in the desert sun, looking at lizards that disappeared when I was still 100m away.

On the way home, another strange thing happened. I was almost back to Sede Boqer when I had to slow down to avoid the camels crossing the road. Yup, camels. There were 5 of them crossing, and taking their time. There are big signs all over the place warning about camels on the road, but I hadn't come across any actually on the road before.

Weird day.

Transience

Life in Sede Boqer is rough on friendships. The problem is that it is a small, close community, so people tend to make good friends quickly. Its a bit of a survival mechanism - isolated community, strange country and culture, etc. Then people leave. The nature of the place if for people to be here for 1-4 years and then go back to their home country. Graduate school was a lot like that, but the difference is that there, all of my friends moved to other places in the same country. Here, people come from all corners of the earth, and then disappear back to those places. Tonight, another good friend, Michal, left here to return home. It is sad, but it is the nature of the place. In some cases, you know you'll never see the person again; in others, there is the hope that maybe you will. There are a few people here who I would like to meet again after we leave. Hopefully, I will have that chance one day.

Brief post from Eilat

I have been in Eilat for a little over a week now. It really is amazing here during the spring bird migration, and it isn't even in the peak yet. The last two days have been very nice - lots of interesting species flying through. Today, there were hundreds of raptors in the sky. It was really surreal - solitary raptors gliding in from the sea, but one after another all day. Looking through binoculars, everywhere I looked, I saw a raptor cruising in like some sort of invasion force. Amazing.

I've been learning a lot about the culture of bird banding. I'm staying with Michal and a couple of volunteers at the center. One is a serious Birdwatcher (note the capital letter). Apparently Birdwatching is serious business, with a great deal of prestige for people who are the first to record a species in an area, etc. There are a lot of those types here, and they really know their birds. I'm lucky if I can tell a duck from an eagle from a sparrow. At least now I can recognize a blackcap (the species we're working with).

The research is going well, but we could use another week. We won't get it, but we'll have a solid preliminary dataset. Next up will be the lizard work again with Uromastyx. We've also stumbled across a small project here with snakes. Apparently our enclosure with 50 blackcaps is irresistable to the local predators, and we have been finding carpet vipers (Echis coloratus) in our cage about every other day. We're talking about doing a foraging experiment on them. They are really pretty snakes, but quite poisonous. At least they seem to prefer blackcaps to human ankles.

Crazy week again

Sinai camel
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Okay, really really crazy week. Over the weekend a group of 5 of us went to the Sinai peninsula for a long weekend. Last night was Lina's farewell party, which went to 5am. Tonight at midnight, we will take her to the airport for her flight back to Colombia. Then tomorrow, I'll catch the bus to Eilat to start field work on digestion in migrating birds for a week. So, I'm a bit swamped, but thought I'd post this teaser of our trip to Sinai. This is Lina and me at the Bedouin camp in an oasis where we stopped for tea in the middle of our day trip by camel and foot to the desert mountains of Sinai. Wow that place is amazing. I'll have pretty bad access to internet while in Eilat, so I'll post more (and probably respond to e-mails) when I get back.