On November 14, twin sisters Mandy and Lara Sirdah received a call from the Israeli military to immediately evacuate their home in northern Gaza. They were advised to leave all their possessions behind, including their treasured long-focus cameras and binoculars, which they had once used to document over 165 bird species, across 360-square-kilometers of occupied territory.

They walked 12 kilometers south to a friend’s home in Deir al-Balah, carrying white flags and raising their ID cards above their heads the entire time.

When they reached, they rested under the shade of a date palm tree in their friend’s garden. There, they spotted a Eurasian blackcap: a migratory bird that uses the palm groves for resting and refueling during the fall and winter months. In the absence of their cameras and laptops, they took out some blank sheets of paper and made a note: Sylvia atricapilla | أبو قلنسوة | 11/14/23 | Visiting | Deir al-Balah.

Gaza is a bottleneck for bird migration in autumn and spring, with millions of birds passing through this small strip of land between Africa and Eurasia. Its location on the southern Mediterranean coast makes it an important stopover for many species of migratory birds—in addition to a wide range of resident birds like the hooded crow, the white-throated kingfisher, and the Palestine sunbird.

“The rich bird diversity in Palestine and spectacular migration scenes have inspired many people to become interested in birds,” explains Bashar Jarayseh, a researcher in ecology and biodiversity from the West Bank, presently studying in Berlin. In recent years, a growing number of Palestinians have taken up birdwatching and wildlife photography—particularly in the West Bank, where several NGOs have been working on biodiversity research and awareness. “However, the number of organizations and individuals interested in birds is much smaller in Gaza due to the decades-long blockade, unstable political situation, and continuous wars,” says Jarayseh.

This includes the current genocide, now in its twelfth month. Beyond the appalling cost to human life, Israel’s war on Palestinians has caused widespread destruction to the environment. “The catastrophic aerial attack on Gaza will not fade when a ceasefire comes,” warned Al-Shabaka policy analyst Zena Agha, speaking to the Guardian in January. “The military detritus will continue to live in the soil, the earth, the sea and the bodies of the Palestinians living in Gaza—just as it does in other postwar contexts such as Iraq.”

On video call from Deir al-Balah, the Sirdah twins use their solar-powered phones for light. “We haven’t had electricity or running water for months,” says Lara. For nearly a year, they have been confined to the house, where they take care of their elderly parents. “In the past, we used to move around a lot for fieldwork, but it’s not safe anymore,” adds Mandy. “We don’t like stepping out, or going to the market, seeing all the damaged buildings and streets.”

Every night, they listen to the radio, hoping to hear news of a ceasefire so they can return to their home and old life in north Gaza. “The first thing we’ll do when we go back is find our cameras and visit all the areas that haven’t been damaged to take photographs,” they say in unison, rushing to finish each other’s sentences.

The 48-year-old twins have had an interest in nature since childhood, encouraged by their father, a schoolteacher who gifted them books on wildlife—but they stumbled upon birdwatching and photography much later on in life.

Since their graduation from Al Azhar University, in 2000, they had worked at Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children. One day, in 2015, during their office hours, they uploaded a photograph of sparrows playing in the rain on their social media accounts. “Mr. Imad Atrash from Palestinian Wildlife Society got in touch and asked us if we’d seen birds like this before in Gaza,” says Lara. “He told us that these were not regular house sparrows, but the rare Spanish sparrow. It was then that we began learning the names of the various bird species and documenting them.”

That same year, Dr Abdel Fattah Rabou from the Environmental Studies department at the Islamic University of Gaza approached the twins and asked them to join him and other Palestinian researchers in contributing to Gaza’s first bird checklist: a 20-year-long study involving extensive fieldwork, monitoring, interviews, scientific reviews, statistical analysis, and photography.

The sisters would make frequent trips with their cameras to the wetland habitats of Al-Mawasi and Wadi Gaza Nature Reserve; the waste stabilisation ponds and agricultural fields of Beit Lahiya; and the olive orchards of Zeitoun, south of Gaza City. While they personally never encountered any problems with Israeli soldiers and checkpoints, other birdwatchers have had different experiences.

“It has always been challenging to do fieldwork in Palestine,” says Jarayseh, who also contributed to the checklist. “Most natural areas are restricted to Palestinians, and many times the checkpoints hinder our movement and travel. In addition, it’s dangerous to use professional binoculars, cameras, and other equipment, as it can endanger our lives for ‘security’ reasons. Personally, I was once forced to leave a nature reserve in the Jordan Valley while surveying birds there for this reason,” he adds.

At the time of the study’s conclusion, in March 2022, the twins had documented 165 out of Gaza’s 250 recorded bird species, which make up 45.4% of Palestine’s total bird species. This included many rare migratory birds, like the elusive European nightjar, which they had captured for the first time during the day, as it camouflaged against the branches of an olive tree in Zeitoun. They also photographed the Eurasian oystercatcher—nicknamed the ‘carrot-bill’ due to its bright-orange beak—for the first time in Gaza. “We were walking along the seashore, and saw this bird touch down near the water. Of course, we were delighted, and quickly captured the moment with our cameras,” says Mandy.

Israel’s latest war on Gaza and the use of heavy weaponry has caused significant harm to nature, though the extent of it will only be clear once the war comes to an end. Recent satellite images show that about 60-68% of tree cover and farmland in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombs and bulldozers; raw sewage has contaminated beaches, coastal waters, and freshwater, with the closure of five out of six wastewater treatment plants; and Al-Mawasi and other areas have been reduced to “mountains of waste” which are “visible in satellite images from hundreds of kilometres above the Earth,” as reported in the Financial Times.

“Hundreds of thousands of displaced people take shelter in open areas and agricultural land where they set up camps,” says Jarayseh. “This further damages these areas and depletes their natural resources: wood, plants, and water. The noise from explosions, along with the damage and chemical pollution from various weapons, is likely to have killed many birds and deterred migratory ones from the area. It’s still difficult to assess the extent of the ecological damage, but the situation is devastating and dire,” he adds.

For now, Mandy and Lara try to find comfort among the date palm trees in their friend’s garden, making notes of all the birds they see: the resident white-spectacled bulbul, the laughing dove, and the rufous bush robin, which uses the habitat to breed in the summer—“and its lovely song can be heard in the morning,” says Jarayseh.

In March, the twins watched in awe as hundreds of white storks filled the sky, gliding in circles above them. Each autumn, the birds migrate from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, and then backwards to Europe in spring, passing over Gaza and the West Bank. “We felt hopeful that like the birds that migrate from north to south, and back again, we will one day return to our homes,” says Mandy.

But by early September, as they anticipated the storks to make their customary passage back over Gaza, on their way to Africa, they witnessed something that has never happened in all the years they’ve charted their movements: the skies remained strikingly empty—save, for the buzzing Israeli drones that have now become a daily foreboding feature in Gaza’s airspace.