Trek Upper Galilee — Hula Valley, Israel

Agamon Hula — The Cranes of the Hula Valley

A flat circuit of the restored lake in the Hula Valley, one of the great bottlenecks of the Europe–Africa flyway, where tens of thousands of common cranes spend the winter within metres of a covered hide.

Duration: 1 day
Distance: 8.5 km
Ascent: 20 m
Difficulty: Easy
Best season: November–March for the crane spectacle, when tens of thousands of common cranes winter on the lake; the birds thin out from late February as they head north, and by summer the show is over

The Hula Valley sits in the Syrian–African rift, the funnel through which birds moving between Europe, Asia and Africa are squeezed twice a year. An estimated 500 million migrating birds pass through the valley annually. There is nowhere else in Israel where the scale of migration is so plainly visible from a flat gravel path.

A lake drained, and partly given back. Lake Hula and its malarial marshes were drained between 1951 and 1958 — the Jordan deepened, canals cut, the peat opened to the air. It is remembered as one of the country’s founding engineering feats and, later, as one of its costliest ecological mistakes: the peat oxidised and burned, dust storms rose, nutrients washed down into the Sea of Galilee, and an endemic species, the Hula painted frog, was written off as extinct. A small reserve was set aside in 1963, and in the 1990s a further parcel was deliberately re-flooded. That reconstructed lake — about one square kilometre, with islands built for nesting — is the Agamon Hula. It is not the old Lake Hula. It is a fragment, engineered, and it works: the painted frog turned up again in 2011, alive.

The cranes are seasonal — autumn and winter only. This is the point of the visit and the thing to get right. Common cranes arrive from November, and tens of thousands winter here rather than continuing to Africa; counts run to some 30,000–40,000 birds on a good day. From late November to late March the fields are fed with several tonnes of maize daily, a deal struck to keep the birds off the farmers’ crops — and it is that feeding operation that holds the flocks in view. From late February they begin drifting north. Come in June and you will walk a pretty lake with no cranes on it.

Getting there. The Agamon Hula lies off Route 90 in the Upper Galilee, between Rosh Pina and Kiryat Shmona. Entry is ticketed. Walk the circuit, rent a bicycle or a golf cart, or ride the tractor-drawn wagon, which the cranes ignore because it looks like the machine that feeds them.

Good to know:

Dawn and dusk are the show: the flocks lift off and come back in, thousands at a time, calling.
Bring binoculars. The hides bring you close, but the water is wide.
Winter here is cold, wet and open. Dress for standing still in the wind.

Download waypoints (GPX) Points of interest in walking order — not a trail trace.

Day by day

DayDistanceAscentDescentWalking time

Day1 Hardest dayThe circuit of the Agamon

Distance8.5 kmAscent20 mDescentNot recordedWalking timeNot recorded

Day 1

The circuit of the Agamon

Agamon Hula visitor centre → Agamon Hula visitor centre 8.5 km 20 m

Navigate this day

An easy gravel circuit from the visitor centre out along the open water, past the feeding fields where the cranes gather, into the covered hides, and back through the restored marsh.

Segments

Out to the water 2 km 5 m Map

Visitor centre → Northern shore

Flat gravel path

A level path leads out of the visitor centre through reed beds and eucalyptus to the open water. Herons, pelicans, egrets and cormorants work the shallows; the Naftali ridge stands to the west and Mount Hermon closes the valley to the north. About 45 minutes.
The flyway and the islands 2.5 km 5 m Map

Northern shore → Eastern shore

Lakeside track

The path runs the shore of the reconstructed lake — about a square kilometre of water with islands built deliberately for nesting. This valley is a bottleneck of the great Europe–Africa flyway, and an estimated 500 million birds cross it each year: raptors, storks, waterfowl, passerines, moving on a schedule older than the border. About 45 minutes.
The feeding fields and the cranes 2 km 5 m Map

Eastern shore → Crane fields

Field track

In winter this is the centre of it. Tens of thousands of common cranes gather on the fed fields — some 30,000–40,000 on a good day, birds that would once have carried on to Sudan and Ethiopia and now simply stay. From late November to late March a tractor delivers several tonnes of maize daily, a bargain that keeps them off the surrounding crops. Empty in summer. About 1 hour.
The covered hides 1 km 0 m Map

Crane fields → Southern hides

Boardwalk to screened hides

Screened wooden hides let you sit within metres of birds that would flush from an open path. Sit still, stay quiet, and watch the flocks come in at dusk — thousands of cranes dropping onto the water at once, calling the whole way down. The best half-hour of the day. About 45 minutes.
The restored marsh and back 1 km 5 m Map

Southern hides → Visitor centre

Boardwalk and gravel path

Close the loop through the re-flooded marsh — papyrus, reed and open peat, a deliberate patch of the wetland that the drainage of the 1950s erased. Somewhere in here lives the Hula painted frog, declared extinct in 1996 and rediscovered in 2011: the reason this fragment matters. About 30 minutes.