Birds Still Sing in Gaza
Mandy and Lara Sirdah of Gaza City are birders. Those twin sisters, now in their late forties, started photographing birds in their backyard almost a decade ago. They began posting their pictures on social media, eventually visiting marshlands and other sites of vibrant bird activity in the Gaza Strip. They’re not trained biologists, but their work documenting the birds of Gaza was crucial to the publication of that territory’s first bird checklist in 2023. If it weren’t for the Israeli occupation — and now the full-scale war that has killed more than 34,000 people, 72 percent of them women and children, and damaged or destroyed 62 percent of all housing — Gaza would be ideal for birding. Like much of the Middle East, the territory lies under one of the world’s great flyways for millions of migrating birds. Its Mediterranean coast attracts shorebirds. Wadi Gaza, a river-fed ravine and floodplain that snakes its way across the middle of Gaza, is home to more than 100 bird species, as well as rare amphibians and other riparian creatures. In other words, that strip of land is a birder’s paradise. Or it would be a paradise. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has caused death and displacement, stoked unrest around the world, and sped up a version of ecocide. But, as Rebecca Gordon writes, even amid this devastation, life persists.
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