Bunch of photos from February and March below the cuts!

...Starting with photos of cranes I took on a trip up north in the beginning of February. It was an organized photography tour I joined with a friend, leaving Tel Aviv at 3AM with the hopes of arriving at the Hula Reservation (=pond and crane haven) in time for the sunrise. Unfortunately it ended up being a stormy weekend, and there was no real sunrise, just a cloudy sky growing lighter shades of gray and showering the occasional drizzle.

But there were thousands and thousand of cranes and they were pretty:






















The feeding tractor! This guy scatters a few tons of corn for the birds twice a day, so they converge at the lake instead of damage agricultural fields in the area.


...the cranes really do like their food a lot








Cormorants!








White herod


I got a new macro lens for my birthday, I don't think I mentioned!


I'm still working out the kinks, but it's great :-)


Random shot of the north from a different occasion, 1-2 weeks later. This is the area just east of the Carmel. I... think.

A few weeks later I went to the Herodium, Herod's palace in the Judean desert. It's only 15 minutes from Jerusalem but technically in the territories, where I virtually never venture. It was interesting, more for the geography than for the actual site itself, which was a little disappointing. The guided tour was worse than bad - sometimes inaccurate, and painfully biased. But let's just focus on a few pics:




View of the lower city from the Herodium, populated mostly by Roman bureaucrats (according to our, seriously, take with a grain of salt guide)


Close up!


The view from the top; feels so foreign and strange


View from the top again. I love how you can just see the exact place where fertile ground just turns into desert, like, there's a line and it is right there. This would be the Judean Desert. It's amazing how close it is to Jerusalem.


Close up on the desert mountains in the distance


Underground tunnels! It's not a big palace, but there are lots of tunnels, most of them deepened and fortified during various revolts over the years.


Water cisterns; you can see where water level reached by where the wall changes color


Bwahaha stones! To kill your enemies with. Let's roll.

And finally, some Tel Aviv photos from two separate occasions: first, walking around the Yarkon river and peeking into the weird wildlife den in the middle of the park, and second, the Tel Aviv marathon two weeks ago, where I went to cheer on a friend and my dad who were running the half-marathon each.


Bambi!


Bambi and buds. My favorite thing about this was toxic_hedgehog pointing out that because it's still young, its antlers are all fuzzy. It's so freaking cute.








Marathon! Basically they shut down the city center between 5AM-10AM for the runners. It's a whole big event, and it was the first time I ever went (to observe, ha) and it was really great! ...except for the part where it was unusually hot and dry that morning and a bunch of people were severely hurt and one runner died *shifty eyes*


Lots of drink stations along the way





...and I am done, until next time, which will be ski photos whoo.