Birds of a feather, counted together
By Noga Martin
Israel is famous worldwide for its wide variety of bird life, especially during the spring and fall, when an astonishing array of migratory birds pass through on their way to and from Europe and Africa.
For the past 20 years, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Tel Aviv University’s Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and Israel Center for Citizen Science, and the Israeli Center for Yardbirds have all teamed up to operate an annual national bird count—a citizen science initiative to track the types and numbers of bird species in the country and map changes over time.
The spring and fall migrations bring a highly transitory bird population that does not provide an accurate picture of avian species living in Israel year-round. The bird population is at its most stable in summer and winter, but in summer, birds, like people, feel the heat and are most active in the early morning, meaning that counters would have to be up with the birds. So the tally takes place on a Friday at the end of January, allowing people to start at their leisure.
On January 31, members of the Weizmann Institute Ornithology Club and a few guests gathered in front of the Stone Building near the main entrance to the campus to take part in the 2025 bird count and learn about the species that spend at least part of the year in Israel.
Uri-Benjamin Moran, the head of the Weizmann Ornithology Club and a data scientist in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, gave a short presentation and explained how the project works.
Like most things these days, it runs on an app—every person or group participating in the count downloads the eBird app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University. The free app offers a “menu” of bird species, and users pick a spot and spend 10 minutes recording the birds they observe. Participants can record counts from multiple locations, and the app provides the date, time, and GPS location.
Names and numbers
One of the most prevalent birds on the Weizmann campus, and across the country, is the common myna, which is not indigenous to Israel. The myna topped the day’s tally, with 21 individuals logged.
Uri told the group that around 25 years ago, a few mynas kept as pets in Israel escaped from their cage and spread “like wildfire,” now numbering somewhere between 400,000 and 1 million nationwide.
He described the myna, which competes with indigenous birds for food, as “fearless and intelligent.” They are also an ecological threat, destroying nests and eating the chicks of native species.
One native bird that suffers from the myna is the Palestine sunbird, which the group spotted outside the Michael Sela Auditorium. The sunbird is found in Lebanon and Israel down to as far south as Saudi Arabia and sub-Saharan Africa. Male sunbirds are notable for their striking blue‑green iridescent coloring, which is the result not of pigments, but the angle at which the sun hits its feathers, giving the bird its English name. In Hebrew, the sunbird is known as “tzufit,” from the word for nectar. The sunbird is a pollinator, spreading the pollen and nectar that collect on its beak as it flies from flower to flower.
As the group crossed the grass to find a spot for the second 10-minute count, Uri pointed out a nesting box for the great tit, which he noted is one of the many birds that flourished after Zionist pioneers turned the landscape green by planting trees and bushes.
“They don’t lack for food—they’re clever, active, and inquisitive. What they need are holes in which to nest,” he explained. In a pinch, great tits will nest in the hollow centers of signposts, but at Weizmann they are provided with nesting boxes positioned in trees, about nine feet off the ground.
Uri also pointed out a common chaffinch. Despite being birds of a feather, they do not flock together—chaffinches from central and eastern Europe migrate to Israel for winter in sex-segregated flocks, a behavior that inspired their Hebrew name, “parush matzui,” parush meaning “separate.”
Where is Israel’s national bird?
During the club’s second 10-minute count, members spotted sparrows, the Sardinian warbler, the greenfinch, the white-throated kingfisher (whose Hebrew name, “shaldag,” was coined by Israeli national poet, Hayim Nahman Bialik), and parakeets—two varieties of which call Israel home, rose-ringed parakeets and monk parakeets. Both were originally imported as cage birds but escaped and, like the myna, are now an invasive species.
Rose-ringed parakeets nest in crevices and holes and occupy other birds’ nests. “They drive woodpeckers nuts,” Uri explained—the woodpeckers work hard drilling holes in tree trunks only for these parakeets to show up and harass the woodpeckers until they give in and surrender the hole. Parakeets are also known to damage crops.
While rose-ringed parakeets prefer to let woodpeckers do the heavy lifting, the monk parakeet is the only bird that nests communally, building mega-structures—some “the size of a small Volkswagen”—for multiple pairs. Several of these nests are dotted around the campus, including one in a pine tree outside the San Martin Faculty Clubhouse.
All in all, the Ornithology Club logged 18 species of birds in two 10-minute counts. The most prevalent were the common myna (21), white-spectacled bulbul (14), rose-ringed parakeet (7), and white‑throated kingfisher (4).
One species that failed to make an appearance was the hoopoe, selected by popular vote in 2008 as the national bird as part of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations. Hoopoes can frequently be spotted on the lawn in front of The David Lopatie Conference Centre, but on this day, they were not down with the count.
Year-round tracking
The national bird count is an annual event, but thanks to a new initiative from the Office of Campus Sustainability, birdlife at Weizmann will be tracked throughout the year, along with mammals, insects, reptiles, and flora.
This campus-wide nature survey is open to everyone in the community, and was initiated to help the Institute leadership make ecologically responsible development decisions. Like the bird count, the system is smartphone-based: participants download the iNaturalist app and log the mammals, reptiles, insects, birds, plants, trees, and flowers they identify. The survey is continuously updated and can be viewed by anyone on the Weizmann Institute’s project page on the iNaturalist website.
The national stats
In April, the Israel Center for Citizen Science published the 2025 bird count data, compiled from 1,400 reports. This marks an 11% increase compared to 2024, which may be attributable to notably pleasant winter weather, ceasefires with Hamas and Hezbollah, and a new website.
Communities participating nationwide: 204
Participating schools and kindergartens: 134
Birds counted: 51,863
Species counted: 144
Five most common birds: gray crow (reported on 63% of lists), myna, domestic pigeon, palm dove, parakeet