The plan was to go by car from Van all the way to tourist resort Antalya on the Mediterranean coast. Long drive, but for reasons unknown to me Turkey has better roads than countries like Sweden and England. Actually, this is a mystery, how come countries like Morocco, Egypt and Turkey have better roads than what we have.
First stop was a quarry, close to Van where Eastern Rock Nuthatch had been reported. Western was common there, but no Eastern (string?)
The ubiquitous Rock Sparrow was everywhere in the quarry.
Anna Bohlin joined up on our Turkey leg.
Slightly surprising was the amount of Rooks at this site. This is
barren high elevation, and we think about the Rook as a typical
bird of agricultural landscape.
After dipping the Eastern Rock Nuthatch it was high time for breakfast. We drove down to a lake with reeds close to Van. Again, same as camping, having breakfast at the birding site is very nice. In the reeds Reed Warbler and also Great Reed-warbler were common. Great Reed-warbler was earlier on the
difference list, Erik saw one at Muttla Ranch in Kuwait.
Soon we also found a few Paddyfield warblers, a good WP bird.
The lake also hosted a few White-headed Ducks. When we were planning our WP year we never though that we would just see White-headed Duck as a regular species several times over the year. We though it would have to be specifically targeted at a known site.
Driving west, around the large Lake Van we made a short stop to
have a good look at the common Armenian Gulls. Fully adult birds
are easy to distinguish from other Gulls due to their stocky four-coloured bills.
Arrived at the famous site of Nemut Dagi in the afternoon.
At the foot of the mountain we tried a spot recommended by Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu. We almost immediately found a few Cinerous Buntings at the spot.
According to Emin also Eastern Rock-nuthatch and Pale Rock-sparrow was a possibility at that spot but we couldn’t find any. Nemut Dagi is a major tourist attraction with large stone statues from 30-60 BC, i.e more than 2000 years old statues.
The tourist business in Turkey has apparently collapsed the last couple of years. Since (for completely strange reasons)
Booking.com is blocked in Turkey we just drove there and picked a hotel at random. Driving up on the cozy hotel driveway, the owner simply cries out in joy – Tourists !!.
We spoke to them and they had seen very few tourist the last few years and we also saw quite a few shut down places on the mountain.
After checking in, in the afternoon as well as the entire following day, we drove slowly up and down the mountain birding with many
short stops. Below the tree-line quite a few high quality birds were
common.
There are many reports of Finch’s Wheatear on the Numut Dagi mountain, however we couldn’t find any. The odd looking pale Black-eared Wheatears are quite similar though. This is one of the drawbacks of systems like eBird and Observado, there is never any checks for correctness, but then again, how could there be. The whole point is that everybody reports what they see which is exactly what makes these system so powerful and useful.
Below the tree-line we also found a couple of Eastern Rock-nuthatches. The nest is especially strange, a hole right into a vertical cliff.
Above the tree-line we soon found the price bird at Nemut Dagi, the Kurdish Wheatear.
The Wheatear as well as Cinerous Bunting were very easy on the mountain. What was not easy though was Pale Rock-sparrow, the Rock-sparrow should apparently be common on the Nemut Dagi mountain. We searched and listened for hours for the sparrow. This is a nomadic species, and some years they are abundant at a site whereas the next they can be missing. Other common species on the mountain were Rock Sparrow and surprisingly enough Wood Lark.
as well as Horned Lark.
Climbing all the way to the top –
we get to see the strange statues. Among the statues, Snowfinches nest. Strange and nice.
