The stars must have aligned like nobody’s business over the last twenty hours because both of our flights and all our taxi rides went off without hitches, and we arrived on the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan right on schedule early this morning. Anne did the sensible thing and immediately hit the sack to catch up on some quality sleep, but I had a date with some critters who just wouldn’t wait.
The first of several pleasant surprises was finally finding that Eurasian hoopoe I teased you with just over a week ago. WordPress isn’t doing too bad a job with this image, but I’m especially pleased with how it came out, so give it a click if you’d like a closer look at this gorgeous creature.
The next surprise was discovering that in addition to common redstarts and black redstarts, there are also just plain blackstarts (Oenanthe melanura), and this little cutie is the first one I’ve ever seen of the latter.
Similarly, it turns out that in addition to common bulbuls and Malagasy bulbuls, there are also white-spectacled bulbuls (Pycnonotus xanthopygos). Who knows how they got that name, right?
Not everything comes in neat threes, and I’ve had the good luck to see a few different sunbirds, including a scarlet-chested and a few variable, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to see one more, but that doesn’t make it any less of a treat when I get to see such a magnificent pair as these Palestine sunbirds (Cinnyris osea). Here’s the sensibly-dressed female, …
and here’s the iridescent male, looking quite similar to the Malagasy sunbird males we saw on Comoros back in 2024.
Finally, birds were not the only class putting on a show today, and here’s a spectacular crimson-speckled flunkey moth (Utetheisa pulchella) representin’ for the insects.
By then the sun was getting pretty hot, Anne and I had to determine just how buoyant the Dead Sea was, which turns out to be quite a bit, I needed a little sleep booster shot myself, and I had some writing to do, so those are the critters for today. The good news is that I’ll get to rinse and repeat tomorrow morning, and I can’t wait to see who I’ll find next.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 
That Eurasian Hoopoe might be my new favorite. Thanks for sharing. Safe travels.
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