En Gedi Nature Reserve, Israel

It's Georgian blog, but here's my first post in English, it's for a reason...

While Israel is at war again, I would like to remember a little place of peace in the middle of a desert, right by Dead Sea shore. It's En Gedi Reserve, and I said before that I would post on it in detail.

Bird-eye view of almost whole En Gedi you see above. It's a relatively small area with bare rocks and a small creek with couple of waterfalls. Well, waterfalls are full of crazy people...

But there is much more to see. Let's start with what you see on a way to En Gedi.

If you are not lazy and will have a walk away from main road you might see this kind of landscape: 

 And Dead Sea itself is a miracle...

But as you might know my main subject is wildlife, so... First of all park welcomes you with variety of birds:

Yellow-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus goiavier)

Tristram's starling  (Onychognathus tristramii)

Blackstart (Cercomela melanura)

  Fan-tailed raven (Corvus rhipidurus):

But actually it's not really birds that made me so eager to get there. From my childhood's inspiration - Gerald Durrell's books, read some 25 years ago, I always wanted to see Rock hyrax (Procavia capensis), an animal often mistakenly referred as "rock rabbits", even in guidebooks... Same books call Nubian ibex an gazelle, so... 

Looks like rabbit, ha? Well, surprisingly it's not even a rodent and closest (leaving) relatives are elephants and sea cows (dugongs)!

Hyrax can easily run on almost vertical rocks and trees as their "feet" are equipped with kind of muscular "suction cups". In En Gedi they are very tame and most of photos I took even without telephoto lens. Tourists that mistake them for rabbits often feed animals and get bitten sometimes. Which is not cool at all as they might infect you with whole lot of unpleasant things, including rabies...

Next impressive mammal out there is Nubian ibex:

There is also Leopard and Hyena, but I couldn't get them on camera this time, so let's wrap it up with some landscapes... And hope that land of Israel soon will be at peace and for a long this time! To all my friends out there: survive, stay tall, stay strong and let worst your trouble be to forget a bottle of water for a day's hike in En Gedi!