How to bird-watch without leaving the city

Efforts in Tel Aviv to increase urban residents' awareness of birds & collect data on urban bird populations.

"he Israeli Center for Yardbirds is one of the organizations that encourages the public to become involved in urban bird-watching. . .

One of the main and most ambitious activities of the Center for Yardbirds is Backyard Bird Count Week, which will be held at the end of this month for the second time. Last year over 200 people participated in the count and Lahav hopes that within a few years this number will grow to a few thousand. For a whole week, each person fills in a form to indicate how many of each breed of birds he saw.

"In the U.K., hundreds of thousands of people participate in such bird counts, and if they are held a few years in a row, they will provide information that we currently lack regarding urban birds," explains Lahav."