How Trapped Palestinians Fell in Love With Bird Watching

GAZA CITY—The skies of Gaza fill with shifting shapes on an early spring morning. At first they are barely visible, only specks soaring above central Gaza’s wetlands.

Mandy Sirdah quickly raises her binoculars. “Storks!” she shouts excitedly. Close by, Lara Sirdah, her identical twin sister wearing matching clothes, grabs her long-focus camera and points it to the sky. “So many! So beautiful!” she cries out with joy as she snaps photos of hundreds of white storks flying in circles above her.

Every spring, millions of birds set out from their wintering grounds in Africa and make their way north to Europe and Asia. At the intersection of three continents, the Middle East is an important stopover and one of the world’s busiest corridors for bird migration.

Read more at The Daily Beast.