Hello, hello birdie!

Two of these were in our backyard on Shabbat.


*picture from Wikipedia

"Backyard" being the field across from our house. And of course, since it was Shabbat, we couldn't take pictures. Instead, we stood mesmerised at the window for nearly an hour, watching the two enormous White Storks strut around the field. One took off and started circling the field, moving further away with each circle. We could not get over the wingspan of this bird. Seriously, it was huge.

Then Morey took Maimo for a walk and went down to the field. He didn't get close to the remaining bird, but from that vantage, he could definitely confirm the size of it. Huge! We watched the circling bird until we couldn't see it anymore, which because it was so large, was a long time. Then we watched the other one meandering around until we couldn't put off kiddush any longer.

Click on the link above to read about them. Their migration is interesting, and we were lucky enough to be in their path. Not knowing anything about birds, we Googled some images and thought maybe we had seen an albatross. After emailing Israbirding.com, we were corrected. The Albatross is an exclusive water bird. Neither of us has ever really been interested in bird watching, but we have so many beautiful birds here, that may have to change!