Herons at Dawn

In a rare occurrence on Friday my husband took a day-off. A great opportunity for us to lie-in and have rest, right? Well no. The alarm went off at 4am and we staggered out the door a few minutes later armed with sandwiches and my husband’s camera.

A group from my husband’s work had arranged a sunrise photography trip to the Hula Nature Reserve. Israel is located on the Syrian African rift valley and is the land passage for birds migrating from Europe to Africa. Many of these birds make a pit-stop on the lake in the Hula Valley. And we went to photograph them.

The mobile hide pulled by a tractor

The trailer was packed with amateur photographers all waving around gi-normous lenses. For the first 10 minutes most of them wrestled with their tripods but Eyal is blessed with a very steady arm and was glad he had decided to leave his tripod at home.

As the sun rose the birds took to the air, circling above the lake with the hazy hills of the Upper Galilee in the background.

After awhile we moved around to get a closer look at some of the wildlife gathering in the smaller pools and in the surrounding fields.

an otter - a South American immigrant

see the otter in the foreground?

a kingfisher

kingfisher close-up

heron

I felt a thrill of familiarity at the view having spent many mornings during my first 2 years in Israel gazing blearily at this pre-dawn landscape as I walked to work in the factory or while some kibbutznik explained to me how to pick persimmons. The most pleasant (only pleasant?) part of working in the kibbutz dining-room was the post-dawn panorama of the surrounding hills.

It was still early morning by the time the photographers had captured our avian tourists from every possible angle and we weren’t in the mood to drive straight home so we headed upto the Golan. We had intended to visit the Golan Winery in Katzrin but we found a quiet, twisty side-road on which to test the Mito’s handling and ended up at Qidmat Tzvi.

When we were doing our military service on the Golan Qidmat Tzvi consisted of half a dozen houses in the middle of a field. Now it is a thriving community with several boutique wineries.

The Bazelet Winery is located just before the entrace to the moshav. As we opened the winery office door we were greeted with faint bubbling sounds and the strong aroma of fermenting wine that reminded me of our amateur wine-making when I was a child.So we went off to search for a picnic area to eat our breakfast sandwiches but it was too blowy and cold and we ended up slurping our chocolate milk parked in a lonely lay-by.
On our return to the winery the owner showed us to the entrance to cellar and down there we were greeted by a charming young lady who proved most knowledgeable; an excellent guide to the winery's offerings.

Because it is a small boutique winery there is no minimum requirement of visitors and we were treated to our own private tasting. After a generous and enlightening tasting of white wines and red, including both their ordinary and reserve collections we bought bottles of Chardonnay and Cabernet for immediate consumption as well as a 2011 Cabernet that she recommended we keep for a couple of years - we shall see!