On Mount Terbol in northern Lebanon, shell casings scatter across meadows, marking a grim scene for the millions of migratory birds traveling one of the busiest routes between Africa and Eurasia. This natural corridor, shaped by harsh winds, forces birds to fly low, making them easy targets for local poachers. Michel Sawan, director of the […]
Tag: birdlife international
Haradh is Heating Up! Prime Fall Birding in Saudi’s Eastern Province
Yesterday Adam Harris and I made the two-hour run from Al Ahsa to one of the best areas in the Eastern Province for finding an interesting array of desert, grassland, and migratory birds. We arrived to Haradh just past seven and headed directly to the pivot field where last year we had seen our primary […]
Massacre on Cyprus. Researchers call for a crack down on poachers who lure millions of birds to their deaths on the Mediterranean island with recordings of their own songs.
Millions of birds like the Sardinian warbler (above) and the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) have been migrating through the region for a long time. And, each year for many years, poachers on Cyprus have been trapping and killing them illegally. The slaughter is now said to have reached “industrial levels.” A study just published by The […]
Help Needed in Saudi: The Saudi Birding Community’s Effort to Track Down a Tagged Egyptian Vulture
The weekend before last, Yoav Perlman forwarded the following email from Ron Efrat, a researcher in the wider region studying Egyptian Vultures, to Jem Babbington and me and asked if we might use our contacts here in Saudi to track down the missing vulture. I opened the link in Google Maps and realized that the […]
Champions of the Flyway – final days
After all COTF teams handed in their lists and we got everything sorted for the awards ceremony, I had time for few hours of sleep. But I could not sleep in on my last morning in Eilat, especially with so many sites I had no time to visit this week. Dawn found me in Holland […]
Meet the man who is biking across the Andes to save birds
You’ve probably heard of a ‘Big Year’. That’s when birdwatchers go out and try to see as many birds as they can in one year. What you probably haven’t heard of is a Big Green Big Year, or BIGBY. That’s when a birder tries to see as many birds as they can by Green Birding […]