TURKEY’S not just for Christmas.
It’s pretty good in June too.
Not for me the Turkey of the massed ranks of sun-loungers drawn up in tight rows along the Mediterranean coast, or the all-inclusive holiday fun behind a resort barricade of high walls and manned gates, available only to those people wearing the right colour hospital wristbands.
No, I prefer what I’d call the real Turkey in the east and south, where the local form of transport has four legs and a tail;
where the local children rush out to look at you but giggle shyly from behind their hands;
where the waiters come at a run in their eagerness to replenish your plate and glass;
where wearing a headscarf wins the smiling approval of the village matriarchs;
where the birds may be hard to find, but oh, so rewarding when you see them.
Take, for example, the Caspian Snowcock, elusive resident of the snowy tops of the Anatolian Mountains.
To see this bird, you need to take a tractor-ride at 5am up into the mountains to an altitude of 3,000m.
This is the lowest level that the bird descends to in the night, before it retreats back up to the snow-covered peaks during the day, so you have to go high and you have to be early to have any chance of seeing it.
A good telescope and a large dose of luck help too.
And our reward for having both was surprisingly good views of about six birds, large members of the pheasant family with delicately striped grey bodies and striking white facial markings.
Their almost Curlew-like calls echoed eerily around the mountaintops as we soaked up the fantastic scenic view and atmosphere of this awe-inspiring setting.
Or if you prefer your birds at sea level, how about White-breasted Kingfisher in the steamy coastal delta, a mega Kingfisher about a foot long with a bill of four inches!
It’s not always tied to water but can be seen in groves of trees, so its striking azure blue back and tail must surely give it some of the worst camouflage going in the birding world.
But perhaps the easiest birding was looking for the Striated Scops Owl which inhabits the trees of the shady tea gardens in Biracek.
How civilised! A cup of tea in one hand and binoculars in the other as you look up into each tree in turn for the dozing owl – my kind of birding!
I don’t know how it can possibly sleep with the noise of traffic, tea drinkers and the ubiquitous Turkish music all around it, but the gardens obviously suits it, as it is a regular visitor there.
With the combined efforts of the 12 people on the trip, we logged over 200 birds in 10 days, and I snapped nearly 400 photographs single-handed!
Unfortunately all good things come to an end, and was back to reality with a bump as we landed at Manchester at 3am with no sign of our taxi home, but no matter, at least I’ve got my photo album to daydream over.
