Locusts Swarm Israel's South, Provide "Protein Festival" for Birds [Updated]
[Update (2021-04-27 20:08:00 UTC): Hat tip to FatPhil for locating the correct travel distance for the birds. Story has been updated accordingly.]
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
Locusts swarm Israel's South, provide 'protein festival' for birds -watch:
Residents of Israel's South may have found themselves pestered by pests over the weekend as a veritable plague of locusts swarmed the area.
The cloud of yellow insects flew into the areas surrounding Eilat and the Arava, with some even coming from the sea.
The yellow color is an indication of their age, as these bugs are mature and skilled fliers, Amir Balaban, urban nature director for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), explained in a statement.
[...] In the last two years alone, locust swarms have devastated around 2.25 million hectares [5.6 million acres] of land around the world and left approximately 20.2 million people facing severe and acute food insecurity. To this day, the website Locust Watch, an arm of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, helps monitor locust swarms worldwide.
[...] The swarm comes as huge numbers of migratory birds flock to Israel's South as they head from their winter homes in Africa to their breeding grounds in Europe and Asia. This stop on their migratory trip is essential, as these forest birds have just finished crossing the Sahara Desert, 30,000 kilometers[*] devoid of food. The Eilat area, as a result, is their first food stop.
And as Balaban explains, these locusts turned this normal food stop into an all-you-can eat protein buffet.
[*] This appears to be an error. Presumably, they intended 3,000 km which would be approximately 1,800 miles. According to this story about birds' migrations which as linked-to by this story: "The second, and more crucially, is that this is what lies south of Eilat: The Sahara desert, 30,000 meters of barren desert these birds need to cross." So, that works to to about 18 miles.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.