March 7th, 2006. Eilat.
| Greater Sand Plover Charadrius leschenaultii crassirostris
| Rami
Mizirachi and I watched this bird at very close range on Eilat’s North
beach on March 7th. We both agreed that we’d never seen a Greater Sand
Plover in Israel with such a lengthy bill. This combined with the
(developing) breast band extending well down the breast sides onto the
flanks is a good indication that this bird is probably of the
subspecies ‘crassirostris’, a scarce migrant in Southern Israel.
This bird wasn’t present the following day, but further down the beach a newly arrived flock of ‘columbinus’ Greater Sand Plovers provided some very interesting comparisons with the photos and impressions of this bird. Crassirotris is a long distance migrant and breeds in Eastern Transcapia and Central Asia (Shirihai 1996 & 2000).
| Photo-notes (1:3) from the Birdfinders tour to Southern Israel 2006.
| | Images taken using Canon Powersjot A95 through Swarovski HD telescope. |
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