To make his point that migrating birds know no boundaries, Israeli ornithologist Yossi Leshem gives Jewish, Christian and Muslim names to the birds he tracks.
Usually, the birds are oblivious. One vulture to whom he gave the name of Salam (Arabic for peace), however, took it seriously -- and headed straight for Mecca.
Leshem spends his life tracking birds. He sees this not only as an opportunity to study their flight paths, but also as a means of getting Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians to cooperate.
He began using satellite transmitters 10 years ago and has since -- jointly with the Max Planck Institute on the Bodensee in southern Germany and with funding from the German government -- followed dozens of storks, as well as several cranes, pelicans and griffon vultures.
THE PRINCESS
The longest-tracked bird is Princess, a stork from the village of Loburg southwest of Berlin. For more than a decade, she has been flying twice a year the 10,000km from northern Germany to South Africa -- via Turkey, Israel and Sudan -- and back, with a small antenna and transmitter strapped to her back.
She had to be recaught several times because her battery had expired.
Last spring, a German TV crew working on a documentary on Princess was eager to document her, with the help of Leshem, landing in Israel on her return to Germany.
But her satellite transmitter indicated she was heading for the Gaza Strip. There was a closure that day and Leshem tried feverishly to get special entry permits from the Israeli army.
Eventually, luck had it that she landed near a kibbutz just outside the Gaza Strip border.
As it takes a stork only several hours to fly over Israel, they were just in time to film her.
The incident, said Leshem, was an illustration of how even in this tense, war-torn region, birds ignore man-made borders. That, he believes, makes cooperation -- which he hopes will promote the peace process in the region -- essential.
FLIGHT SAFETY
One key area he works in is the issue of collisions between fighter jets and birds.
With its narrow air space, Israel has more planes per square kilometer than any other country. But as a bottleneck at the junction of three continents, it also has more migrating birds per square kilometer than anywhere else in the world.
Many birds prefer to fly over land, where they can rest, to crossing the Mediterranean in one stretch. Also, thermals -- spirals of warm air which migrating birds use to float on -- occur only over land, where they are created by sun beams hitting the earth.
The three main migrating routes from Europe to Africa therefore go through the Strait of Gibraltar, Sicily, or Israel and the Palestinian areas. More than 500 million migrating birds cross Israel each autumn and spring, according to Leshem.
One day last April, 105,000 storks -- 15 percent of the world population -- flew over Israel in five hours in a 200km line.
That makes the risk of collisions -- which with planes travelling at speeds of over 1,000kph can be as lethal as a direct missile hit -- more acute than anywhere else.
With the help of Russian-immigrant scientists, Leshem brought radar equipment from the former Soviet Union to central Israel, which provides real-time information on the Internet to the Israel Air Force (IAF) about the whereabouts of large flocks of birds and their altitudes, allowing Israeli jets to fly over or under them.
He said the number of collisions between birds and IAF planes dropped by more than 70 percent since the project started in 1992.
Leshem is holding talks on behalf of the IAF with the Jordanians to set up a radar network, which would cover the entire region.
INITIATIVES
He has in the past years already conducted joint research and educational projects with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Jordan.
One project had some 90 schools in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian autonomous areas follow groups of migrating birds online.
The schools communicated through the Internet and met in the field to watch the birds they were tracking together.
Another initiative involved the establishment of bird ringing (banding) and research stations in Israel, Palestinian areas and Jordan, which work together and exchange information.
Leshem's anecdotes are endless. Once, one of his Pelicans was caught with a transmitter in Sudan. The predominantly Muslim state immediately accused Israel of using Pelicans for spying.
"We couldn't get our radio back," the 56-year-old said.
Another time, in 1999, he held a conference on birds and flight safety. A delegation of the Royal Jordanian Air Force participated in the conference at the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration, which Leshem directs.
ENMITY IGNORED
The center is located at an armored corps memorial site in Latrun, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where the Jordanian Arab legion defeated the nascent Israeli army in one of the most desperate battles of the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war.
Leshem recalled how he watched in awe as the Israeli and Jordanian flags were hoisted side by side and air force generals of both countries saluted.
"They would have never come here to salute the [fallen Israeli] soldiers. But through the birds they came," he said.
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