Chai?

There is a lot of tea-drinking going on in Turkey. We think that one should always say yes when offered a cup of tea, and we’ve been offered many. Nice.

Going west from Birecic, where we all had our hair and beards sorted by a Syrian barber we drove towards Aladaglar NP. We didn’t make it all the way though, and decided to camp before sunset. Once at the camp site, Mårten thought he should check how Krüpers Nuthatch sounds and played it from the phone. Dang, an aggressive nuthatch came flying in immediately.

The habitat was pine forest, lot’s of Mistle Thrush, Coal Tits and more.

After a slow morning with slow birding and lots of coffee we eventually drove towards Aladaglar where we met up with Basar Safak who runs a wonderful pension just below the mountain. Anyone who decides to go to Aladaglar to see the Caspian Snowcock should seriously consider to stay in ÖzŞafak Pension and let Safak show you the area.

Before sunrise we drove up to the mountains to look for Caspian Snowcock and Radde’s Accentor. Here we need to give some extra cred to Basar Safak who broke his arm one day prior to our arrival. We thought it was strange how his messages suddenly changed character and his english got really bad. This time it was not a case of someone using spellchecker at the start and then later, not botherin. No, Basar was still drugged and had just left the hospital having to write with is left hand… And the day after he was with us up on that mountain, his arm in a cast and a big smile on his face. What a guy!

Birding in Aladag mountains was very different to our birding in the Caucasus mountains in Georgia. In Aladag the weather was perfect. No wind, no mist, no clouds, no snow (except at the top of the mountains). A fantastic morning and it was not long until Basars and Martens whistling payed of. A Snowcock was calling back and after some minutes scanning the slopes Klacke found two birds on a not to distant ridge. Very nice!

Me and Erik decided to try and get some pictures of a nice looking Rock Thrush while looking for Radde’s Accentor, our remaining target in Aladag. As the Thrush moved closer and closer we got more and more excited and then from under a small bush four meters away a brown bird crawled out. Radde’s Accentor Erik whispers to me! A dream bird for Erik and nice photos too.

Loads of other mountain birds too

After dropping off Anna Bohlin at Adana we drove further west. Picked a camping spot close to Akseki where Olive-tree Warblers should nest. Parked the car and open the doors, one-two-three-tick. They were singing everywhere. Very very hard bird to photograph though, the area where we camped hosted many many Olive-tree Warblers, singing constantly, always hiding.

Nice, that concluded the three eastern grey, Eastern Olivacious, Upcher’s and now Olive-tree. Other nice birds we saw in the morning were Middle-spotted Woodpecker, Eastern Orphean Warbler and to us unknown race of Eurasian Nuthatch.

One more slow morning with loads of coffee and birding.

Drove further west towards the well known site of the Turkish Brown Fishowls, Oymapinar. We choose a small mountain road there and did several stops looking for Rüppel Warbler. We saw Rüppel Warbler in Israel, but it would be nice to see on the breeding site as well. One stop had breeding Cretzschmar’s bunting singing.

And one had:

High quality birds.

Once we got close to the site, we tried to scope the owls from a site we had heard of.

But we couldn’t see the owls, the nest is known and the owls are down there. This lake has tourist boats driving around, but the skippers know that birders are prepared to pay up to get to the known owl site, thus they charge. Hence we had to pay up, 50 Euro/pers to get to the owls. Initial price was 100.

Driving further west towards a site for Dalmatian Pelican where we have a date with a friend of Emin, we start to talk tentatively about a recent siting of Amur Falcon in Romania – How far to drive there? – There are Dalmatian Pelicans in the Donau Delta too, right – so we change plan completely and fly to Romania. Flexibility is king.

So, this is last post from Turkey, and we’re giving Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu more than big thanks. Emin, we never met you, and now we’re leaving Turkey. Must meet some day !!!