Hadoram Shirihai

Hadoram Shirihai (born in Israel 1962) is an Israeli ornithologist and writer.

Shirihai is the son of Batia and Eli Shirihai. His mother was a schoolteacher, his father was a zoologist in Israel. He grew up in Jerusalem where he became fascinated with birds when he was 13 and spent much time documenting shorebird behaviour, raptor breeding biology and participating in bird migration surveys. In the 1980s and 1990s, he lived in Eilat on Israel's Red Sea coast, where he founded the International Birdwatching Center, becoming its first director.

Shirihai was behind the discovery of several new species in the Western Palearctic and Israel. He worked as an escort for birding trips into the southern Negev desert, showing many observers locally breeding Hume's tawny owl and Nubian nightjar among other little-watched species of the area. He has written a number of bird identification papers, mostly published in English in magazines such as British Birds and Birding World. With David Christie, he co-wrote the Macmillan Birder's Guide to European and Middle Eastern birds among several other works.

Shirihai is a consummate birder, having added 50 previously undocumented new bird species to the List of birds of Israel, and 10 new species to the Western Palearctic list of birds.

In January 2015, a newly described owl species, Strix hadorami, was named after Shirihai by Dr. Manuel Schweizer and colleagues.

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