It was an early morning. The alarm went off at 6:31am. I snoozed. The alarm went off again at 6:35am. I snoozed again. 6:39. One more snooze - I gotta change this thing to more than 4 minutes. 6:43 and I'm outta bed. That's all the time I had for snoozing today considering a 7:30 departure. Breakfast, get dressed, pack up my bag, fill up my waterbottle, almost out the door, shoot I forgot to pack up lunch. Quickly try defrosting some pita, took my sliced cucumbers and already prepared egg salad, put together a sandwich, grab a snack, and all goes in the bag.
I head downstairs thinking I'm the last one to arrive, because I'm already running late. I get down there at 7:32 and find that I am the first one. I guess I could have been the last one but I knew that wasn't a possibility. Not with this group! Well the last person finally arrives at 7:45, putting me out 15 minutes sleep (which makes me cranky) and the group 15 minutes late to go watch birds. That IS the point of waking up in the 6:00 hour on what's essentially a weekend here (Fridays are like Sundays). Needless to say, we walk 3 minutes to the bus stop and wait for the right bus to come. Fortunately, we don't have to wait very long for the right one to come along.
We get off at the Central Bus Station and walk about 10 minutes to the bird observatory (in a "green" site in Jerusalem, with our tour guides Rivka and Ya'ara, Israeli girls who live in our building with us as a part of our program. We meet Micha'el (no, that's not a typo for Michael, it's Micha'el as in two syllables, ok, moving on) who welcomes us to the JBO and starts telling us how they track bird migration in Jerusalem. Israel is at the crux of 3 continents, one of the main reasons why so many birds come through this direction. They have bird nets which catch birds migrating through Jerusalem, and rings that they attach to their legs/feet in order to track them by number. They have found birds that came from all parts of Europe, and all parts of Africa, on their twice a year migration. If I remember correctly, 500,000,000 birds come through twice a year, making 1,000,000,000 birds flying over Israel each year. Micha'el, Rivka, and Ya'ara showed us the ringing and tracking process of these birds, which was really fantastic. They treated the birds with great care and respect, and after they were tracked, set them free to continue on their journey.
We also got to take an up close and personal look at the nets, which I don't think happens very often, but we were allowed to have some special treatment since Rivka and Ya'ara work there. We then watched a short film (about 20 minutes) which mostly just had footage of wildlife in Jerusalem and greater Israel. We saw all kinds of birds and land mammals - foxes, dogs, gazelles. It was footage taken of them in their natural environment, which I thought was very cool. Unfortunately some people were so tired from a late night to sleep and an early morning wake up (bad combination) so they took that time to nap.
We sat in the actual observatory part of the site for a few minutes, watching the various birds land in a pool of water, or drink from the fountain, or land on a tree, eat some peanuts, fly away, come back, and do it all over again. It was very relaxing, and kind of surprising to see such a natural site untouched by human intervention. I know that humans helped to make that site what it is now, but in the middle of such a big busy city, it was nice to have a nature escape even if just for a few minutes.
We concluded the day with a short nature walk through part of the "green" park in Jerusalem, actually walking pretty close to home. But it was Friday and we were all feeling the rush of Shabbat coming (I will write about Shabbat B'Yachad in another post) so we took buses and cabs home to prepare for a feast!
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