Israel Picks National Bird, The Hoopoe

May 30, 2008 - 11:36 AM by Karin Kloosterman · 7 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General

With bated breath, Israelis waited for Shimon Peres’ announcement yesterday: Israel’s National Bird will be the … (drum roll) …

Israel chooses its national bird as the hoopoe israelity pictures.jpg

The hoopoe!

Known as “Duchifat” (doo-khi-faht) in Hebrew, we had our first exposure to the hoopoe through Salman Rushdie’s novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, where Haroun the protagonist gets a mechanical hoopoe bird to fly him to the Land of Gup. A good read.

If you’ve even been to Israel you can see these delightful-looking birds, with a majestic headpiece, flying through Israel which is a migratory bottleneck for millions of birds heading to Europe or back to Africa.

According to the Haaretz newspaper, the hoopoe garnered 35 percent of the popular vote, barely edging out the goldfinch and the warbler. However, it won the unanimous support of a public committee, and since the national bird committee’s vote was worth one-quarter of the total vote, that gave the hoopoe a decisive victory.

In the birdwatching community, reactions to the results were mixed. Alon said he had supported the goldfinch at the beginning of the process. “The finch’s numbers are declining and it is being hunted,” he explained.

Dr Uzi Paz, a veteran birder and former head of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, supported the warbler: “That is a bird I researched, so I was rooting for it.”

The Bible mentions the hoopoe as a non-kosher bird, and the Quran tells a tale of King Solomon who spoke to animals and told the hoopoe of his visit to the Queen of Sheba’s land.

James, a Green Prophet, has been following the vote for some time, writing a series of posts about the vote here, here, here and here; and also over on Jewcy where he talks about an unusual bird that sings in his garden. Worth a read.

Our boyfriend asked us, “Why the hoopoe? Israel should have picked the dove.” Cute. We hadn’t even thought of that possibility. What do you think? Was the hoopoe the right choice for Israel?

Haaretz

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