Israel: HaYarkon Park (Part 1)

2015 gave me few chances to wander.  That was the year our grandson Royce and his family lived with us while he underwent treatment at SickKids Hospital in Toronto, and we were mostly tied to or home. However, I did attend the 2015 meeting of the CITES Animals Committee, which was held in Tel Aviv, Israel from August 30 to September 3.  I arrived on the 27th, in a blaze of sunshine and searing heat (low thirties Celsius, but it felt much hotter) and could do little but collapse in my hotel room and recover from jet lag.

I resolved, though, to make good use of the next morning before the meeting, when temperatures would be still in a bearable range for birding, dragonflying and general nature watching.  My goal was HaYarkon Park (or Yarkon Park - "Ha" means "the in Hebrew), an expanse of green space following the Yarkon River in the north of the city.  It is hardly wilderness (most of the trees are imported eucalypts), but it proved more productive than I had expected.

The park is a popular spot for walkers and photographers (including this gentleman) and I had a pleasant few hours being both. 

The park was quite good for birds, including the handsome and ubiquitous Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix). Ornithologists, after years of going back and forth on the subject, seem to have finally decided that this should be treated as a full species, separate from the all-black Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) of northwestern Europe. It’s certainly distinctive enough, especially the pale race found in Israel, C. c. pallescens. 

The Laughing Dove (Streptopelia senegalensis) is an extremely common species in both Africa and the Middle East, though it barely enters Europe at the Bosporus. 

The common European species in the genus was once the Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur), but it has been supplanted over much of its range by the Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia ), which underwent a huge range expansion in Europe in the last century. Turtle Doves have undergone severe declines and are now listed as Vulnerable by IUCN.  They can  be hard to come by, and this was the first one I had seen in many years. 

Wherever you go throughout Africa and much of Asia, you will almost always be greeted by at least one bulbul that has adapted to urban life. In Israel - indeed, all around the eastern Mediterranean from southern Turkey to the ashes Canal - the common species is the White-spectacled Bulbul (Pycnonotus xanthopygos). 

The Spotted Flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) is generally a passage migrant in the Middle East, but there is a breeding population in central Israel so perhaps this is a local bird. 

HaYarkon Park, besides follows the banks of the Yarkon River, is dotted with water holes and small, marshy ponds. All that water makes it a good place for water birds (and for dragonflies, which you will see further down in this post).

There are several flower-covered lily ponds...

...covered with water lilies were almost certainly cultivated varieties, but none the less beautiful for that. 

Where there are waterholes and lily ponds there are likely to be herons, and I found several species in the park. The Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) is less tied to water than its relations, but the ponds and the river still draw them in. 

Little Egrets (Egretta garzetta) appeared to be the commonest of the herons in the Park. 

Black-crowned Night-Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) are found almost everywhere in the world (the Australian region excepted), including Israel. 

As frequently happens to me, I found flowers growing here that were attractive and photogenic but resisted all my efforts to identify them. What is this?

The Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus), a butterfly with a huge range across Africa and Southern Asia, was the most noticeable butterfly in the park. 

I treated this colourful insect, an Oriental Hornet (Vespa orientalis), with considerably more circumspection. It has, among other things, a powerful sting that has caused human fatalities.

Rather to my surprise, I found a considerable variety of dragonflies in the park. All that standing water, I suppose. With one exception, they all belonged to genera that are also found in Malaysia, at the other end of the continent. This one I identified as an Epaulet Skimmer (Orthetrum chrysostigma), one of a number of similar-looking species of Orthetrum that occur in Israel. It is common in Africa, extending elsewhere into southern Europe and the Middle East.

The Banded Groundling (Brachythemis impartita) is, for once, a dragonfly with a descriptive and appropriate English name. The reason for the ‘banded’ part should be obvious, and it does seem to perch, by preference, on the ground. 

Males of Kirby's Dropwing (Trithemis kirbyi) are clad in the same psychedelic pink as their cousin Trithemis aurora in Malaysia. Like that species, they frequently perch in the ‘obelisk’ position (bottom photo). 

The Broad Scarlet (Crocothemis erythraea) is the western replacement for the Oriental Scarlet or Scarlet Skimmer (Crocothemis servilia) of Eastern Asia (they overlap in many areas). The two look very much alike, except for the noticeably broader abdomen on this species. 

I only saw one Black Percher (Diplacodes lefebvrii), another larely African species that ranges into southern Europe and Asia.

Sympetrum is a genus not found in Malaysia, but readers of this blog will have seen plenty of its representatives in my recent posts from North America. These are the primarily northern dragonflies we call meadowhawks back home. In Europe they are known as darters. This one is the Red-veined Darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii), a widespread migrant found, at various times of year, from Britain to South Africa. 

A city park, however large and wild, is not normally a place to find large mammals. HaYarkon Park, though, has a resident population of Golden Jackals (Canis aureus). They are certainly a highlight for wildlife-watchers - some of my colleagues were amazed that they were there, and that, as much as anything else, was to draw me back to the park - this time as part of an organized group.