One of the most wonderful things about Israel is its position as a critical stopover site for hundreds of millions of migratory birds each year.
As eagles soar over Eilat and cormorant flocks set record numbers, Israel’s 2025 spring bird migration is currently taking flight.
And while the season kicked off with some challenges, the skies are filling with feathered visitors as thousands of birds make their annual journey through one of the world’s most spectacular migration routes.
If you’ve always been bird-curious but need a boost of motivation to kick off your birding journey, here are seven reasons to start birdwatching this migration season:
1. The war hasn’t stopped migration
According to Yoav Perlman, director of the BirdLife Israel program of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), despite the major turmoil caused by conflicts on Israel’s southwestern and northern borders since October 2023, the birds are relatively unflappable (or at least, as unflappable as you can be when you spend most of your time flapping).
“Because birds are mobile and their migration routes are imprinted in their genetics, any direct or indirect effects of the war were — I wouldn’t say negligible, but they weren’t massive,” Perlman tells ISRAEL21c.
“Israel is still one of the best places in the world to watch migration and appreciate the wonderful migratory birds.”
“Other, less mobile animals certainly suffered more, but birds have the flexibility and the ability to shift their stopover sites a few kilometers here, a few kilometers there,” he explains.“
This does mean that we need to protect these stopover sites for the birds so that they’re functioning and can provide the birds with the resources that they need when they stop over. But overall, we didn’t see any changes that could be directly connected with the war.”
2. Rewilding is awesome
To ensure that migrating birds have a place to stop and refuel in Israel on their journeys north and south, several key areas throughout the country are being built up, restored, enlarged and/or rewilded, such as the Kebara swamplands near Zichron Ya’akov and the Kfar Ruppin birding park and wetland reserve in the Beit She’an Valley.
“We’re starting to restore wetland stopover sites in the Hula Valley, and we’re hoping to start projects in the Hefer Valley, [Ariel Sharon Park] and potentially in other places as well,” says Perlman, noting that SPNI is reacting to “the increasing challenges that those migratory birds are facing regionally in Israel and globally.”
3. There’s a new birding park
As part of those efforts, a new birding park was opened this year at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, which neighbors the aforementioned Kebara swamplands.
“ We have a network of walking trails, birding blinds and information given there,” Perlman says. “It’s a wonderful place to visit and certainly during the coming migration season, there’ll be even more birds and even more beautiful sights and sounds to be seen and heard there.”
4. Count endangered eagles
One of the exceptional early birds of the spring migration season is the steppe eagle, an endangered species boasting a nearly two-meter wingspan and the title of Egypt’s national bird.
“They breed across the steppes of Asia, and they winter down in Africa. They pass through Eilat in quite large numbers,” Perlman explains.
Between February and mid-March, between 15,000 and 20,000 of the eagles are expected to pass over the Eilat mountain ranges.
“Because it’s a globally threatened species, we have the responsibility and commitment to count and monitor them, because their presence at migration bottlenecks, like in the Eilat mountains, is an important indicator for their global state.”
Other birds that make up the first wave of migrators include the great spotted cuckoo, common swifts and lesser kestrels.
5. Record-setting cormorant numbers
Speaking of counting birds, it seems like every year brings a new record in the birding world.
In January, about a month before the spring migration began, INPA conducted its annual cormorant census — a headcount of the fish-munching waterbirds wintering in Israel.
According to the organization, 2025 saw a record-setting turnout of cormorants in Israel, reporting the presence of 23,468 of the birds across the country. Experts believe that the population increase is due to increased breeding along the coast of the Black Sea, where cormorants spend their summer months.While it’s nice to see the birds are enjoying their winter stay, the cormorants are causing some trouble for fish farmers, whose aquaculture fields are hotbeds for hungry fowl.
As the migration season kicks off in full, there will surely be a decent number of opportunities to spot flying cormorants as they make their way north toward Ukraine.
6. Birds need advocacy
The migration season this year began sadly, with the deaths of 335 birds — black kites, spur-winged lapwings, hooded crows and “vulnerable” greater spotted eagles – poisoned in southern Israel by agricultural runoff of the organic phosphorous pesticide Nemacur 400.
Perlman says previous poisoning incidents in the last few decades have brought the Israeli breeding population of the nesher (the Eurasian griffon or griffon vulture) down to the verge of extinction.
BirdLife Israel and other relevant agencies, especially the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) and Ministry of Agriculture, are expending great efforts to end this “crazy threat to Israeli wildlife” once and for all.
“ What’s very frustrating is that nothing illegal or reckless happened there. The farmer used legal pesticides in the way that they were supposed to,” Perlman says. “The horrific result is a strong signal for us as a society about what kind of horrible pesticides are used to produce our food. Organic phosphorus pesticides have been banned in the USA, across Europe and in many other countries as well — but in Israel, they haven’t yet.”
7. It’s never been easier to birdwatch in Israel
BirdLife Israel offers a wide variety of tours, events and clubs for birdwatching.
If organized birding events are less your thing, you can simply buy a booklet of local and migratory birds and set off on your own with a pair of binoculars… or birdwatch in Israel from your couch by tuning into live nature camera feeds of the Hula Valley on YouTube.
“The next two and a half months are the reason to become a birder,” says Perlman. “We are so fortunate that, despite all the challenges and everything that’s going on, Israel is still one of the best places in the world to watch migration and appreciate the wonderful migratory birds.”
No matter how you decide to begin birding, it’s never been a better time to do so.
