Monday 28 January 2013

Asian Desert Warbler

I joined to Yoav Perlman twice to study moult of Asian Desert Warbler at Hameishar Plains in the Negev Desert. This winter is special for this species in Israel with unusually high numbers. The adults perform a complete post-breeding moult on their breeding grounds and juveniles perform partial in the same time. This moult includes normally all GC and varied number of alula, tertials and rectrices. In our second visit, in mid January, we found some individuals starting their pre-breeding partial moult.

Active prebreeding moult

I tried to photo also tails; this is an example of juv. Type tail; R5 on left side replaced, and the different pattern compared to juvenile type feathers is obvious.


This site is very productive for desert species; one of those interesting species was Temminck's Lark. Like all other lark species, Temminck's Larks, adult and juveniles, perform a complete moult after breeding season.

Temminck's Lark