Agamon Hula — The Cranes of the Hula Valley

The Hula Valley sits in the Syrian–African rift, the funnel through which birds moving between Europe, Asia and Africa are squeezed twice a year. An estimated 500 million migrating birds pass through the valley annually. There is nowhere else in Israel where the scale of migration is so plainly visible from a flat gravel path.

A lake drained, and partly given back. Lake Hula and its malarial marshes were drained between 1951 and 1958 — the Jordan deepened, canals cut, the peat opened to the air. It is remembered as one of the country’s founding engineering feats and, later, as one of its costliest ecological mistakes: the peat oxidised and burned, dust storms rose, nutrients washed down into the Sea of Galilee, and an endemic species, the Hula painted frog, was written off as extinct. A small reserve was set aside in 1963, and in the 1990s a further parcel was deliberately re-flooded. That reconstructed lake — about one square kilometre, with islands built for nesting — is the Agamon Hula. It is not the old Lake Hula. It is a fragment, engineered, and it works: the painted frog turned up again in 2011, alive.

The cranes are seasonal — autumn and winter only. This is the point of the visit and the thing to get right. Common cranes arrive from November, and tens of thousands winter here rather than continuing to Africa; counts run to some 30,000–40,000 birds on a good day. From late November to late March the fields are fed with several tonnes of maize daily, a deal struck to keep the birds off the farmers’ crops — and it is that feeding operation that holds the flocks in view. From late February they begin drifting north. Come in June and you will walk a pretty lake with no cranes on it.

Getting there. The Agamon Hula lies off Route 90 in the Upper Galilee, between Rosh Pina and Kiryat Shmona. Entry is ticketed. Walk the circuit, rent a bicycle or a golf cart, or ride the tractor-drawn wagon, which the cranes ignore because it looks like the machine that feeds them.

Good to know:

Dawn and dusk are the show: the flocks lift off and come back in, thousands at a time, calling.
Bring binoculars. The hides bring you close, but the water is wide.
Winter here is cold, wet and open. Dress for standing still in the wind.

اليوم 1

The circuit of the Agamon

Agamon Hula visitor centre → Agamon Hula visitor centre 8.5 km ↑ 20 m

التنقّل في هذا اليوم

An easy gravel circuit from the visitor centre out along the open water, past the feeding fields where the cranes gather, into the covered hides, and back through the restored marsh.

مقاطع

Out to the water 2 km ↑ 5 m 📍 خريطة

Visitor centre → Northern shore

Flat gravel path

A level path leads out of the visitor centre through reed beds and eucalyptus to the open water. Herons, pelicans, egrets and cormorants work the shallows; the Naftali ridge stands to the west and Mount Hermon closes the valley to the north. About 45 minutes.
The flyway and the islands 2.5 km ↑ 5 m 📍 خريطة

Northern shore → Eastern shore

Lakeside track

The path runs the shore of the reconstructed lake — about a square kilometre of water with islands built deliberately for nesting. This valley is a bottleneck of the great Europe–Africa flyway, and an estimated 500 million birds cross it each year: raptors, storks, waterfowl, passerines, moving on a schedule older than the border. About 45 minutes.
The feeding fields and the cranes 2 km ↑ 5 m 📍 خريطة

Eastern shore → Crane fields

Field track

In winter this is the centre of it. Tens of thousands of common cranes gather on the fed fields — some 30,000–40,000 on a good day, birds that would once have carried on to Sudan and Ethiopia and now simply stay. From late November to late March a tractor delivers several tonnes of maize daily, a bargain that keeps them off the surrounding crops. Empty in summer. About 1 hour.

عن هذا المكان

The common crane, also known as the Eurasian crane, is a bird of the family Gruidae, the cranes. A medium-sized species, it is the only crane commonly found in Europe besides the demoiselle crane and the Siberian crane that only are regular in the far eastern part of the continent. Along with the sandhill crane, demoiselle crane and the brolga, it is one of only four crane species not currently classified as threatened with extinction or conservation dependent on the species level. Despite the species' large numbers, local extinctions and extirpations have taken place in part of its range, and an ongoing reintroduction project is underway in the United Kingdom.
اقرأوا المزيد في ويكيبيديا ↗
صورة: Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5
The covered hides 1 km ↑ 0 m 📍 خريطة

Crane fields → Southern hides

Boardwalk to screened hides

Screened wooden hides let you sit within metres of birds that would flush from an open path. Sit still, stay quiet, and watch the flocks come in at dusk — thousands of cranes dropping onto the water at once, calling the whole way down. The best half-hour of the day. About 45 minutes.

عن هذا المكان

The common crane, also known as the Eurasian crane, is a bird of the family Gruidae, the cranes. A medium-sized species, it is the only crane commonly found in Europe besides the demoiselle crane and the Siberian crane that only are regular in the far eastern part of the continent. Along with the sandhill crane, demoiselle crane and the brolga, it is one of only four crane species not currently classified as threatened with extinction or conservation dependent on the species level. Despite the species' large numbers, local extinctions and extirpations have taken place in part of its range, and an ongoing reintroduction project is underway in the United Kingdom.
اقرأوا المزيد في ويكيبيديا ↗
صورة: Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5
The restored marsh and back 1 km ↑ 5 m 📍 خريطة

Southern hides → Visitor centre

Boardwalk and gravel path

Close the loop through the re-flooded marsh — papyrus, reed and open peat, a deliberate patch of the wetland that the drainage of the 1950s erased. Somewhere in here lives the Hula painted frog, declared extinct in 1996 and rediscovered in 2011: the reason this fragment matters. About 30 minutes.

عن هذا المكان

The Hula painted frog is a species of frog endemic to the Lake Hula marshes in northern Israel. It is the only living member of the genus Latonia, which is otherwise known from fossils from Europe spanning from the Oligocene to the Pleistocene. The Hula painted frog was thought to be extinct as a result of habitat destruction during the 1950s until the species was rediscovered in 2011.
اقرأوا المزيد في ويكيبيديا ↗
صورة: עוזי פז · CC BY 2.5