EILAT & environs
ISRAEL
Region (Compass)
00o00´S/00o00´W ha topography msl
NOTE: ACCOUNT IN PREPARATION; MUCH MORE TO BE ADDED WHEN I CAN GET HOLD OF MY NOTES BACK IN ENGLAND!
Best Time for visit (March 1993 and November 1996)
Birding Site Guide
BEACH
At the beach migrants are sometimes found and often over-fly, some seabirds to look for are White-eyed Gull, Sooty Gull and Brown Booby, as well as other species more familiar to northern birders. A visit to the cemetery may produce House Bunting, Tristram’s Starling and sometimes a rarer species.
NORTH FIELDS
Open scrub with a well known water pumphouse behind the football field, which is also worth a look, that the Litchenstein’s Sandgrouse come to drink at nearly every evening.
SALT PANS
This area is a great place for water and marsh birds, though the palm plantations and scrub frequently get altered with new palm plantations, irrigated agriculture and building developments there should still be some good birds to be found. In small ditches crakes of various kinds can be found, with patience, skulking about the reed bases. Egrets and herons are common, as are several marsh inhabiting warblers.
WADI SHLOMO and WADI MAPALIN
On the outskirts of Eilat offer opportunities to see Eastern Orphean Warbler, Streaked Scrub Warbler, Hooded Wheatear, Blue Rock-Thrush, Eurasian Crag Martin and Cyprus Warbler (November).
MOON VALLEY MOUNTAINS, Mt. YO’ASH
Raptor watch site at Mt. Yo’ash a short way n of Eilat in the Moon Valley Mountains, there is a steep bare hill which can be driven up, preferably with 4-wheel drive. Near the summit is a small parking area and around here offers a good vantage point from which to observe the passage of raptors in spring and autumn.
YOT VATA RESERVE
This small reserve is one of the best places to look for Arabian Babbler, and a trip here can be combined with a visit to the desert area around KM33, which is particularly productive for such species as Bar-tailed Lark, Desert Warbler, Desert Wheatear and Greater Hoopoe Lark. A little further north stops at try KM 40 for Bimaculated Lark and KM50 for Great Spotted Cuckoo and Arabian Babbler.
Species Notes
In all --- species of bird have so far been recorded.
Other Fauna
A total of -- species of mammals.
There are -- recorded species of amphibians and reptiles.
Flora
Author: BSG
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