Cattle Egret Roosting In A Tree In Israel

This past Passover vacation we found ourselves in Meron visiting the gravesite of the great sage Rebbi Shimon Bar Yochai. As the sun was setting, or a bit before that, my daughter and I were waiting for my husband and boys and we paused on the descent road to look at the view. All of a sudden we saw a bunch of white birds flying towards a tree, and then realized the tree was literally packed with these white birds! I could not exactly capture the entire scene with my camera, but I did my best. It was such a wow moment that I tried to point it out to a few kids passing by, but sadly no one seemed to understand how amazing this was, or maybe it was too strange that this woman was pointing out large white birds? I have never seen such a sight and I just had to share it with you. In our location in Northern Israel we are on the migratory path for birds, but cattle egret in a large group, truly a new experience!

Here is that sunset view we were looking at! That is our city!

Look!
Can you make them out? Apparently this is how they do it. Cattle egret can be either migratory or not, so I don’t know about these guys! I read that prior to 1948 all cattle egret were migratory, but after that they started staying in Israel, smart, after all, if they fly south within the country it is certainly a balmy winter!