Israel Bird Radar Project

The Israel Bird Radar Project is the work of Dr. Yossi Leshem and his staff at the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration in Latrun.

Latrun Radar - Night Migration and Clouds above central Israel

The radar in Latrun sends electromagnetic waves to the sky. When a body that contains water, like a bird, is hit by the wave it reflects back and is shown as a dot on the screen. During the migratory seasons (March to the end of May and August to the end of November), a 3 minute exposure of the radar image is taken every hour, in real time, to our Internet site.
The pictures show various ways of processing the data that were collected by the radar in a given time and at range of 50-Km radius around Latrun.

From the pictures one can estimate the direction, speed, amount, and height of the migrating birds and the cloud cover at the same time.

Peripheral picture

A peripheral picture of the migrating birds at a radius of 50 km around the Latrun radar. The distances between each circle surrounding Latrun is 10 km. The red arrow at the bottom right corner shows the average direction of the reflected radar echoes of the migrating birds.Above the arrow is the average speed in km/hour and the average direction in degrees of the migrating birds (north is the 0 degree).

Peripheral picture of clouds

This picture shows reflected echoes of clouds, mountain tops, tops of high buildings and large birds. In some of the pictures that were taken in the afternoon, in daylight, one can detect diurnal migration of large soaring birds such as storks, pelicans and birds of prey. Diurnal migration can be identified by one, or a few long dark lines spreading from north to south, parallel to the shore (along the slopes of the Judean Mountains). For example, look at the picture that was taken on 22/4/01 at 13.30 orat 14.33.

Number and altitude of birds at a given sector

The radar scans the sky at a given sector up to an altitude of 5 km for 3 minutes. The direction of the sector is written at the top of the picture. The arrows show the number of birds at each altitude. The red numbers at the tip of the arrows tells us the exact number of bird echos that were detected at a particular altitude and the percentage of that number from the sum of echoes at the sector.

Three-dimensional picture: The volume of bird migration above central Israel

The volume of birds is shown in relation to the topography around the Latrun Radar. The radar is positioned where x and y axis meet at 0 km (a red x marks Latrun).

The topographic elevation above sea level is shown in the different shades of green and brown.

The echoes of the migrating birds are marked in different colors according to their height in 500 meter sections (0.5 km) up to 5 km above sea level.

Contact info

Daphna Abell
Program Coordinator
lotan-programs@lotan.ardom.co.il
Tel: +972 8 6356935;
Toll Free: 1800 2000 75 (when in Israel)