A break in the migration

This morning as I returned to our main border position, I was surprised to find the same birds I had seen two days ago in roughly the same places. The blue rock thrushes have adopted a stack of building supplies, the ruff seems to feel at home under the main antenna, the meadow pipits have only moved a few meters down the barbed wire fence, and the Menetrie's warbler was about one hundred meters from where I had first found it. I think this might be due to an overcast sky, and to the manna of little gray moths.

The only three new arrivals were an isabelline shrike, a black kite, and a few house martins. I managed to take a few interesting bird pictures, and I worked some more on those wheatears (I just revised the wheatear blog entry because of new problems I've been having in identifying the black-throated form of the black-eared wheatear).

I went looking for scorpions for an hour or so at night, but only found beetles and moths, and wheatears that were sleeping in sheltered spots. The most exciting discovery was an Anthia duodecimguttata beetle that was trying to kill a healthy beetle about half its size. Anthia duodecimguttata beetles are very common here. I see them running around both at night and in the daytime, although they seem to be most active at night. They look like the kind of agressive beetle I wouldn't want to handle without a stury pair of gloves. Given that they moved very fast and I was using artificial light, I had a really hard time taking a good picture. After about five minutes of watching the fight, neither beetle appeared to be significantly wounded so I moved on.