Over half of world’s lesser spotted eagle population set to fly over Israel

Some 50,000 lesser spotted eagles — half the world’s population — are due to fly over Israel today and tomorrow, according to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

The organization’s bird experts say that a recent spell of cool weather created a traffic jam along the bird migration highway just north of Israel, which is now easing.

Dr. Yoav Perelman, director of the SPNI’s Ornithology Center, explains that birds of prey like the lesser spotted eagle pause their journeys during cloudy and unstable weather.

“As the skies clear, the migration resumes. Convoys of thousands of eagles are entering Israel from Lebanon and crossing our skies in a southwesterly direction,” Perelman says.

The flight paths are concentrated over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area in central Israel, Perelman adds, before the birds continue southwards over the coastal plain to the Negev Desert and onto the Sinai Desert in Egypt.

The lesser spotted eagle has a wingspan of just under two meters (6.5 feet). It feeds on small mammals that it spots in open areas. It lives in old forests in eastern and central Europe, spending the winters in the forests of Africa south of the Sahara and down to South Africa.

It is intensively and illegally hunted in the countries neighboring Israel, especially in Lebanon, with many birds entering Israel with gunshot wounds.