Last update - 00:00 17/01/2008
Cold weather turns fish pond into swan lake
A pair of white swans gliding nonchalantly in a reservoir near Kibbutz Afikim in the northern Jordan Valley could not imagine why the humans gathered around them were making such a fuss.
"I was driving around near fish ponds and suddenly I saw them," Yoash Sadeh, from Afikim, said. "It's amazing."
After checking to make sure the graceful avians had not escaped from area petting zoos, the observers realized they were seeing a rare sight.
"One of the most impressive signs of the Siberian weather we are experiencing is the arrival of birds who don't usually come here," said Amir Balaban, director of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel's Jerusalem Bird Observatory. According to Balaban, the swans who make it Israel are the lucky ones; they have escaped the cold snap in southern Europe and flew over Syria and Lebanon.
Four swans have so far been spotted.
Balaban said among the ways birds who normally winter in Israel have of dealing with the cold include inserting their beaks into their down feathers so their breath will warm the air in between the feathers.
Some birds do not fare as well: The striped-backed prinia, for example, cannot warm itself or hunt for insects when snow covers the ground.