Now let’s go back to the main display window and encounter two additional habitats:

Cultivated fields are a new habitat that was created due to continuous cultivation of fields by humans. The predatory birds on the left, the long-legged buzzard and the common buzzard, reach the open fields during their autumn migration, on their way from Europe to Africa. They stay in our country for a short period of time and feed off of rodents in the fields. In contrast, resident birds in Israel include the spur-winged lapwing, the hooded crow, the hoopoe, and the francolin.

You are probably familiar with the hoopoe. As part of Israel’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations, it was selected as the country’s national bird. Behind the hoopoe, with its prominent colors, is the francolin, a bird from the Galliformes order that is a relative of the partridge, the quail, and the chicken.

To the right, on a thorny branch, stands a lesser grey shrike. The shrike has an interesting characteristic: it tends to hunt insects and skewer them on the tree’s thorns. In this way, it accumulates a stockpile of available food while also “showing off” and marking its territory.