Turkey by Birds, Part I. Istanbul

* Edited to revise pics below. If anybody has any suggestions for *really* simple and free photo editors, lemme know.

Floyd and I just got back from a two-week trip to Turkey where we covered a lot of ground, saw a lot of amazing things, experienced some memorable stuff and ate A LOT of kebabs (or kebaps, as they would say in Turkey). This was a unique trip in so many ways, but it was unique for me in that I had a bird book. Yes, a bird book. “Birds of the Middle East” to be specific. And it changed the whole trip.

You see, I didn’t have a bird book when we took our trip to Morocco at the end of last year, and that really shook my universe. I had my binos (binoculars), and I saw birds, but I couldn’t ID them and, as my good friend the Chief can well understand, this was difficult for me. So I entered a sort of zen-like state where I simply enjoyed the unidentifiable birds for what they were...a flash of yellow, an snippet of song, a flit between the bushes, a dart amongst the leaves, a shadow on the wire, something gliding above me to briefly block out the sun. All very wonderful moments but, as a bird-watcher (or a “twitcher” as they’re aptly called over here), it was difficult for me. So I took a deep breath...and another...and then I let it go...again and again. Once I had mastered this zen-like state it really allowed me to enjoy other aspects of the space.

Whatever...I needed a flippin’ bird book. To this day I still think about some of those flashes of yellow and wonder what they were. It’s an addiction. I’ve got a warbler on my back and I just can’t shake it.

So this time I took advantage of a moment of clarity a few weeks before our trip and ordered the bird book, which changed everything. Now I could twitch twitch twitch away, disregarding ancient ruins, apple tea and carpet salesmen to follow some LBJ (little brown job) into the brush. Almost.

You see I love birds but I’m not so fanatical about birding that I fail to look at my surroundings. There are some people out there that give birding a bad bad name. We’ve all heard about those people, the serious twitchers (let’s call them tweekers shall we?), that travel the world counting up species, keeping their Life List, and completely failing to appreciate the places they are in. The people, the culture, the food, the landscapes...you know? I am not a tweeker. But birds do bring me closer to my surroundings. They make me think about the landscape, the habitats, the air and water quality, the disturbances, the food (no, not kebabs) and the predators. And thinking about these things gets me more in tune with where I’m at, on a few levels.

So I’m going to write about the birds I saw on our trip…and I think this is OK. First, because you don’t need me dumbing down some of the most important Islamic (and Christian) architecture and ancient ruins in the world. Somebody else (pretty much anybody else) can do a much better job of talking about those things. Secondly, and most importantly, I really like birds.

Now this might take a while so we’ll take the installment plan.

Day 1-4, Istanbul

Istanbul is a giant city. The historic (touristy) area is pretty much contained to the center of the City but the cheap, concrete apartment blocks stretch on and on and on; therefore, I wasn’t surprised to read that Istanbul has less green space per head of population than almost any other European city (Istanbul’s population is somewhere around 15 million, about the same as the entire New York metropolitan area). But not all birds need green space. Istanbul’s concrete forests and mosque mountains provide habitat to all sorts of birds. Noisy birds. Ror example, the swirling cyclone flocks of Common and Alpine Swifts shrieking and swarming the mosques and minarets all day and into the night, the Laughing Doves right outside of our window (guess what kind of a call this bird has at 5 in the morning?), and the Yellow-legged Gulls plying the skies, neck stretched, offering up an embarrassingly obnoxious laugh (remember that chick from Jersey at the wedding?).

Even non-birders can imagine my delight in finding the familiar cranky twittering of the House Sparrow (you know the one) was ubiquitous throughout city and countryside. They were everywhere. Even after driving 10 hours from Istanbul, to what felt like the most remote corner of the earth, I'd spy an LBJ, excitedly grab the binos and scan the shrub…only to see the unmistakable black bib of the House Sparrow. Little shit.

The quiet, less conspicuous birds were the flocks of Mediterranean Shearwaters that dodged the tankers and ferries, lightly skimming the midnight surface of the Bosphorous. And let’s not forget the Shags (tee-hee) and the Black-headed Gulls.

Interestingly, I had one of my more spiritual moments of the trip with a Rock Dove (a pigeon – or winged rat to some) that was nesting in the vaulted ceiling of Aya Sofya (“the Church of the Divine Wisdom” and, for a thousand years, the largest enclosed space in the world). Aya Sofya is generally a dark space but has the most amazing, dust-diffused light that comes in through the windows, illuminating the brilliant designs, paintings and mosaics that cover the walls and ceilings. While admiring this space, I watched a dove fly into its nest above and lose one of its feathers. I then watched the feather gently, slowly float down, through a shaft of light, to the floor, interestingly, to a very empty space in a room full of people. I waited a moment to see if anybody that was closer to the feather would pick it up...I mean how cool was that? But I quickly realized that nobody else had even noticed it. So I walked over and picked up, what I felt was, a most blessed of feathers. It served as the bookmark in my bird book for the trip and is one of the best souvenirs that I brought back.

Here are some pictures from Istanbul...and watch for the next installment, in which Floyd and Millicent careen through the Turkish countryside and bright yellow birds are identified!