Nestlings!! What more needs to be said? After ten days of cold and rain we have finally had some sunshine here in the north of Israel. The barn swallows have decided that it is time to start breeding after all. As of today, we have 6 nests with nestlings and the rest of the swallows who were sitting around in the rain have decided to get busy. We were quite amazed to see several new nests built in under 3 days. When these birds make up their mind they can really get to work! The rain has left them lots of mud to build with. We have also seen a whole new crop of eggs in the past few days. With all this activity Joey and I have a busy week in front of us. This seems to always be the way of field work, especially when you are abroad- you are either bored and looking for things to do, or everything is happening at once and you don't have time to sleep. Silly swallows.
 Male barn swallow enjoying the blue skies. |  Lots of building going on! |
Beautiful male sunbird. I have yet to get a good picture of the bird that perches on our window, but I will try. At this point, the swallows are two to three weeks late from where they usually are. We are going to just have enough nestlings to train our assistants and make it home on time, but it will be a crazy last four days. We were originally planning to spend a few days in Tel Aviv at the end of our trip and were scheduled to give a talk at the University, but the swallows had other plans and we have had to cancel our talk. Joey and I were both bummed about this, but field work comes first and this just means we will have to come back to Israel soon. I have made lots of great friends that I would like to come back and visit anyway.
To make things more hectic we have had some last minute drama with our field assistants. To remind you- we are working at three field sites (small villages), Kahal, Hoquq, and Amiad. We have an excellent field assistant at Hoquq named Inbal. The original plan was to have our field assistant who lives at Amiad cover both Amiad and Kahal (which is only 10min away), but he decided he could only do Amiad. We have spent the last week searching for a third field assistant at Kahal and finally found a good one (I hope) who lives there. I will begin training him tomorrow and I hope he is a fast learner. Just when I was about to breath a sigh of relief and feel like everything was finally set, our field assistant at Amiad unexpectedly quit yesterday because he has decided to move to Tel Aviv. Yoni summarized this news the best with a single word: Scheiße. We have spent weeks training this assistant and now have 6 days to find a replacement for our largest field site. My new plan is to have Inbal and our new assistant at Kahal (who does not yet know what he has gotten himself into) cover Amiad together as well as their own sites. Fingers crossed that this will work...
In other news the avocados are still abundant and the cats are as vocal as ever. We also have a male sunbird who has claimed our window as part of his territory. Almost every morning he lands on our screen and sings to us.
To make things more hectic we have had some last minute drama with our field assistants. To remind you- we are working at three field sites (small villages), Kahal, Hoquq, and Amiad. We have an excellent field assistant at Hoquq named Inbal. The original plan was to have our field assistant who lives at Amiad cover both Amiad and Kahal (which is only 10min away), but he decided he could only do Amiad. We have spent the last week searching for a third field assistant at Kahal and finally found a good one (I hope) who lives there. I will begin training him tomorrow and I hope he is a fast learner. Just when I was about to breath a sigh of relief and feel like everything was finally set, our field assistant at Amiad unexpectedly quit yesterday because he has decided to move to Tel Aviv. Yoni summarized this news the best with a single word: Scheiße. We have spent weeks training this assistant and now have 6 days to find a replacement for our largest field site. My new plan is to have Inbal and our new assistant at Kahal (who does not yet know what he has gotten himself into) cover Amiad together as well as their own sites. Fingers crossed that this will work...
In other news the avocados are still abundant and the cats are as vocal as ever. We also have a male sunbird who has claimed our window as part of his territory. Almost every morning he lands on our screen and sings to us.
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