Israeli Bathing Beauties - not!
By Charlie • September 10, 2007 • 5 commentsEspecially for a Monday morning, I present two of 10,000 Birds’ (apparently) most popular themes in one post: messing with the heads of web surfers looking for smutty thrills; and yet more “manky mallards” - those genetically-garbled, mitochondrially-muddled mongrels that confuse and confound birders all over the world. These particular ‘mankies’ were taken just yesterday on a pond in a Tel Aviv park, and are particularly unrepresentative of Mallards - which are in fact rather lovely birds of course. Why, now that I’ve just mentioned I’ve been to Israel in September, would I not be writing about the special birds I saw (eg Cretzschmar’s Bunting, Thrush Nightingale, Spur-winged Plover, Masked Shrike, European Bee-eater) rather than these scruffy ducks? Simply because I haven’t had time to write anything proper yet - and because I couldn’t resist getting the inappropriate title online as soon as possible (yes, it’s shallow, but - hey - even us birders like to have fun…)
Four manky ducks (or perhaps ‘geesucks’) and one rather embarrassed Muscovy Duck
trying to sneak out of the photo. Tel Aviv, Sept 07.
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Geesucks? I’d hate to be hung with that name.
[...] Differently from Eilat, on the West Bank I will not see a batallion of birdwatchers with telescopes, Atrash says beforehand. “The Israeli army does not allow us to use binoculars for watching bird migration”, he says. “They see that as espionage. So, we cannot always recognize species while counting migratory birds”. Barn owls (see also here) in Israel-Jordan border region: here. [...]
Dear Charlie,
it’s been long since we’ve had communication (Nairobi Pipit discussion). is that right? you came to Israel without saying?!
next time you are around drop me an e-mail so i can take you around birding…
don’t forget about the Eilat Bird Festival 2008, March 24-31 http://eilatbirdsfestival.com/index.html
if it would be like last year, than it is going to be a huge success with many birds lectures and other events.
I’m looking forward to the “good” birds, which I figure is what the Muscovy was heading off to see.
I came looking for smut, but found something better - birds!
Great photos and info.!