The story
Eilat Birds Festival in Eilat
Eilat Bird Festival runs five days each March, using guided excursions to explore one of the world's great migration bottlenecks, where the only overland route between Africa, Asia, and Europe funnels enormous numbers of birds past the city each spring. Organized by BirdLife Israel, the festival pairs birding tourism with Champions of the Flyway, a competitive species-count race that raises money for conservation.
Eilat sits on the only overland land bridge connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe, and every spring hundreds of millions of migratory birds funnel through the city's surrounding desert, farmland, and wetlands on their way north from African wintering grounds to breeding sites in Europe and Asia.