8/9/ 2003 - Kefar Ruppin, Bet Shean Valley

Mass migration of White Storks

A day off from counting migration on the survey found me in the turf fields of Kefar Ruppin once again. In a curious twist of fate, the highlight of the morning turned out to be an enormous migration of White Storks (Ciconia ciconia), the scale of which was almost beyond comprehension.

At about 09:10 hours I noticed several small flocks of White Storks leaving the fields north of Kefar Ruppin. Further north, two large columns of very distant storks began looking for thermals and gliding towards the south. These columns were joined by smaller flocks until, by 09:40 hours, a giant flock of 8500 storks began thermalling above Ein Hanatziv, south west of the turf fields.

Over the next hour, further low passing storks numbering 7000 birds passed over the fields, and then at 10:55 hours, another huge flock of 14500 appeared just east of Kibbutz Ruppin. Despite the relatively late hour, the birds were not high and I worked on a number of images, three of which are presented here. Each frame only contains a fraction of the actual flock size.

Click on the thumbnails to enlarge (+)

I could hardly believe my luck! The one day that I wasn't counting migration from a station would happen to be the best day of the season for White Stork passage and by 11:05 hours I'd logged a massive tally of 30,000 birds!! Most of this passage was so low and close that I felt truly humbled by the experience and then, just after 11:10 hours, I found a flock the scale of which I'd never experienced before. The birds, though distant and well inside Jordan, formed a 'cloud' just above the eastern horizon of the Jordanian hills. The 'cloud' was three layers deep, connected by columns and forming a continuous stream covering several kilometers. I was totally overwhelmed, but did my best to estimate the true size of this 'monster' flock. Counting first by tens, then by hundreds and eventually thousands, I estimated that at least 55,000 storks were present in this massive passage. They followed by a smaller stream of about 3,500.

Of course, accurate counting is always difficult when ever such huge numbers are involved. However, experience and a tendency to underestimate flock sizes would suggest that the true scale of the migration was even larger than the 88,000 White Storks that I logged at Kefar Ruppin this morning. Observers also reported a huge migration of White Storks over Jerusalem some two hours later.

These days I try not to speculate on why and how such migrations occur and just try and enjoy it as much as possible when it finally happens. It's days such as these that the potential of the Bet Shean Valley comes into a light all of its own. No wonder it's been nicknamed "the Eilat of the north"!

More from the Bet Shean Valley will follow.

Enjoy the images,

Good birding,

James P. Smith and the Birdingisrael Team

Contact info

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