Israeli paraglider races to protect swifts at Jerusalem's Western Wall

Yuval Dax, an Israeli paraglider, has turned the swifts of Jerusalem’s Western Wall into a conservation cause at one of Judaism’s most symbolic sites. The common swifts return every spring to cracks in the Wall’s limestone stones, stay for about three months to nest and raise their young, then fly back to Africa. The colony is widely described as about 2,000 years old, and some sources trace it to biblical times.

The birds’ presence has long sat alongside prayer and pilgrimage in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation says another sound joins the plaza each spring, the calls of the swifts, and that the birds return to the same spot every year to build nests, lay eggs and rear their chicks. That makes the colony a rare urban wildlife population living inside an active holy site, where crowds, tourism and routine human movement can disturb the narrow cracks the birds depend on.

Concern over the colony has sharpened as the swifts’ numbers have been said to decline in recent years. Hunting along parts of the migration route, including in Arab countries, has been cited as one contributing factor, alongside pressure at the nesting site itself. In 2012, BBC News framed the birds’ return as part of an effort to save swifts nesting in Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, while Reuters described the Western Wall as a haven for migrant swifts. The Friends of the Swifts Association, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and Tel Aviv University have also been reported working together to protect existing nesting sites.

The colony’s reach extends beyond Jerusalem. A Fifth International Swift Conference in Israel in 2018 featured material on the Western Wall birds, including a drone photo of a swift flying over the Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque. That image underscored how the colony sits inside a landscape with global religious and environmental resonance, where the task is not just to admire the birds but to keep the stones, the worshippers and the nesting site in balance from one spring to the next.