I went back to HaYarkon Park with a group of CITES delegates on September 1, 2015, for a crack-of-dawn, pre-meeting guided birding trip, turned up (not surprisingly) still more birds, and got back early enough to avoid the heat.
Golden Jackals (Canis aureus) are surely the highlight for foreign nature-lovers visiting the park, but apparently they are not beloved by the Israelis themselves. They have become extremely abundant in the country, and have been subjected to government culling programs in consequence. The jackals in HaYarkon Park are apparently recent arrivals, but they are doing well. Short of putting out baits laced with rabies vaccine, the authorities seem to be leaving them to their own devices.
Our early morning visit found the jackals still active. Members of the pack (there are apparently two established packs in the park) played games of chase along the water's edge...
...and although they apparently get most of their sustenance from the contents of trash cans, I did see this animal return from a successful hunting expedition among the park's waterfowl.
Here are a couple of bits of video.
The birders, of course, were more interested in birds. The gentleman in shorts in the lower photograph, by the way, is Øystein Størkersen of Norway, former chair of the CITES Standing Committee and a devoted birder.
The birds were there in quite satisfactory numbers, including common species such as this White-spectacled Bulbul (Pycnonotus xanthopygos).
Some of the commonest birds in the park, are, however, exotics. Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), natives of temperate South America, fill the crowns of trees with their enormous communal nests (they are called Monk Parakeets because of the supposed resemblance of a communal colony to a crowded monastery). They do the same in parts of Europe and North America. In Israel, where the climate may be ideal and there is a lot of fruit farming, their population has grown exponentially, at a faster rate than in other countries.
Other parrots in the park may simply be escapees. This appear to be a hybrid between two species of Australian rosella (Platycercus), presumably the white-cheeked Eastern (P. eximius) and the largely red Crimson (P. elegans). Needless to say, hybridizing these birds is not a good idea!
Egyptian Geese (Alopochen aegyptiacus) bred in Israel up to the 1930s, but these birds probably represent (like the parrots) escapees from aviculture.
As on my last visit, birds like this Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) were common along the Yarkon River and around the park’s ponds.
The amount of waterside habitat makes HaYarkon a good place to find kingfishers. We found all three of Israel’s resident species, and seeing them together provided a good illustration of Israel’s position at the epicentre of three continental faunas. The White-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis), the common kingfisher of West Malaysia and Singapore, is here at the other edge of its range, which extends across Asia from Turkey to the Philippines.
The Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis), on the other hand, is a common African species, ranging throughout the continent south of the Sahara and along the Nile Valley to Egypt. It apparently colonized Asia from Africa, and is common from India to China, but it does not reach Malaysia.
Finally, the Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is the kingfisher of Britain and Europe (and the species to which the name “kingfisher” was first applied). Like the others, it has a broad range - in fact, the broadest of all, not only extending throughout Asia but south and east as far as New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
In short, HaYarkon Park is a good place to start for any naturalist visiting Israel - and, as this photo shows, it is also a good place to be a balloonist. That, however, is something I have no desire to try!
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.
