A Flock of Flamingos in Atlit

I continued to look at Facebook after my son's death, even though many of my friends' posts irritated me. How could they be posting gleeful photos and writing such joyful things after what had happened? One by one I snoozed them but I remained on Facebook and took a little joy in the many wonderful photos I saw posted in the various nature groups I belong to.

In October I started to see photos of flamingos passing through Israel for the winter. Between moments of great sadness, I suggested to Mister Handmade in Israel that maybe we take a day off to go and see them for ourselves. It required an early get up - flamingos are more active in the morning and evening hours - and a good long drive to Atlit, a small town located on the northern coast, about 20 kilometers south of the city of Haifa. Though far from it being his ideal day out, he was willing to come with me.

Twice a year 500 million birds from 550 species including the flamingo, fly over Israel on their way back and forth from their nesting grounds in Europe and Asia. While a few hundred flamingos choose to stay here for the winter, most of the population passes through Israel and continues to Africa.

Israel has two places where the flamingos can find food. These are the saline pools in Eilat and Atlit. The saline pools in Atlit belong to the Salt of the Earth salt company. They were mined for the production of table salt.  The permission in principle "to produce table salt from seawater in Atlit" was given by the British as far back as October 1921. In a letter sent from Downing Street, Mr. Shuckburgh, Winston Churchill’s assistant, wrote: "From London's point of view, the matter is confirmed, and now permission is subject to the British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel."

The flamingos eat small shrimps, algae, small seeds, microscopic organisms, mollusks and other plants and animals that live in shallow waters. It sucks water through its sharp curved beak, which acts as a strainer and filters out the food. The saline pools in Atlit are large and shallow, which allows for the evaporation of salt water for the salt mineral industry. During this evaporation process, large amounts of pink species of algae and miniature crustaceans grow on the water. Flamingos love this pink delicacy and they get their pink colour from this food. The young flamingo is mostly grey in colour but while growing and feeding on pink crustaceans, its body metabolizes the pigments and turns the feathers pink. In fact, the name flamingo comes from the Portuguese or Spanish word flamengo, which means flame-coloured. 

The saline pools in Atlit and Eilat offer a unique ecological habitat for many species of waterfowl. Executives at Salt of the Earth noticed that many migratory birds were using their pools as nesting areas as they pass through the region, though the flamingo itself does not nest in Israel. Natural predators such as jackals, foxes and dogs were threatening these birds with extinction, so a program was launched to fence off islands in the saline pools to deter the predators.

As a side benefit, the protected islands also solved serious flooding problems caused by rising water levels in the saline pools, which took a severe toll upon the population of the little terns. Before these efforts, the terns' population had dwindled to a perilous low of just 300 pairs. Salt of the Earth has also installed observation cameras in nesting areas for continued research and monitoring.

While Atlit and Eilat are the main places in Israel to see flamingos, there have also been sightings at Kibbutz Nahsholim, Ein Afek and Agamon Hula.

After quite some time viewing the flamingos, we took a short walk on the beach to see the Crusader fortress Château Pèlerin, and then hiked at Khirbet Karta, to see the ruins of another Crusader fortress (all of which I will blog about in another post). On our way home we made a return visit to the Mishmar HaSharon Reservoir in the Hefer Valley to see the pelicans that come to spend time at the reservoir during the migration season.

The Mishmar HaSharon Reservoir is one of many water storage facilities built by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the Hefer Valley. The Vickar Observation Point, a large shaded balcony that rises above the reservoir, offers a wonderful view of thousands of great white pelicans and other birds in the reservoir.
Members of staff at the reservoir feed the pelicans with six tonnes of fish three to four times a week, during the three months that the pelicans are flying over Israel, all funded by the Ministry of Agriculture. Large flocks of pelicans used to cause immeasurable damage to local fish farms and were chased from one pond to the next, without being provided with an alternative food source. This exhausted some of the pelicans to the point of death. This "refueling station" at Mishmar HaSharon has been placed at the pelicans' disposal to provide them with enough food to allow them to continue their migration.

As with previous visits, it was a wonderful thing to see. Our day out in nature allowed us a little relief from what has been a horrendous few months.

* This post has been shared on Little Things Thursday