Southern Turkey, 30th april- 10th may 2012

[Galemys]

Part 1: Sultan marshes & Ala dag mountains (click on pictures to see them in a larger size format)

From 30th of april till the 10th of may I was on a short solo holiday in Southern Turkey. I visited 4 area’s that were known for their wildlife and travelled by public transport.
I arrived in the evening at Kayseri airport (mid-Turkey, near Cappadocia) and was dropped off by public transport bus 50 km to the South in a small place called Yesilhisar at 2 am. It was still 20 km from my first destination so after half a night’s sleep in a field a mile outside the village I started walking to Sultansazligi, the Sultan marshes, a wetland of international fame.
Sleeping in a field:


Bushcraft-lunchbox , encountered during my walk:

The area is a flat bowl filled with some marshy lakes and a few rural villages. It is flanked on three sides by dry sloping hills with scant vegetation that are used for shepherding.

A big extinct vulcano (Erciyes dagi, 3900 m) rises to the North.


Camping is prohibited in the national park so I set up camp in de garden of the pension, using my 3x3 tarp and one tentpole:

Wetlands & vulcano (Erciyes dagi):

The pastures on the edges of the wetlands are used by cattle and other domestic animals (and overheated sheepdogs):

Dinnertime! Noodles, beef jerky & cashewnuts heated with two tealights and a roll of ducttape;

A young black whip snake (Dolichophis jugularis) that I found under a stone. Small but brave (or rather: badtempered); it tried several times to attack my hand:

I encountered lots of animal life at the Sultan marshes wetlands. Huge flocks of ducks, terns & waders, countless migrant birds, grass & dice snakes, susliks (ground squirrels) frogs, tree frogs, I even saw a rare white-headed duck.
Hedgehog prints in the mud:

Grass snake:

Yellow wagtail (of the race feldegg):

Watchtower:

Hasan, my captain on a a boat trip through the reedbeds:


After a few days at the marshes I took some (mini)buses to the Ala dag national park in the Taurus mountains 50 km South of the Sultan marshes. It was rainy here and I set up camp again in the garden of a pension that is frequented by birdwatchers. That first afternoon I walked to an impressive gorge in the pouring rain:


There was not much wildlife to be seen due to the rain but there were nice plants:



The next morning the weather was better and I got up at 4 o’clock to join an excursion up Demirkazik mountain. The owner of the pension takes parties of people up there with his tractor in search for the famous Caspian snowcock and other mountain birds. The other members of the party turned out to be a group of elderly English birders who were travelling with ‘Ornitholidays’.

Beautiful landscape:






Anatolian suslik (Spermophilus xanthoprymnus):


There’s more to come later in part 2 & 3!

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

Good stuff. What was the temps like and was there mozzies near the marshes ?

The Suslik looks like a cross between a red squirrel and a weasel !

 

[Galemys]

Part 2; The Goksu delta

After the mountain excursion the weather detoriated again but in the afternoon it got better and I was invited by the English birders to join them on a little ride, in search for two mountain bird species they had failed to find in the morning.
The next day they were kind enough to drop me of at a bigger village some 15 miles away so I could take a minibus heading for the Mediterranean coast. Off course there was a short detour before that, so the twitchers could finally add the long awaited wallcreeper and redfronted serins to their all important bird lists .

This local beauty in the coastward bound minibus was very interested in my binoculars:

A 150 km to the Southwest near the city of Silifke and the smaller village of Tasucu lies the Goksu river delta; 3 lakes, expansive reedbeds, small dunes and a lot of sand beaches:



I arrived late in the afternoon. After half an hour of frustatingly trying to erect my tarp-tent in the dunes (my tent pegs were useless in the loose sand) I gave up the idea of low profile camping and put up the hammock underneath this watchtower


While eating my dinner on the watchtower I heard some rustling in the reedbeds directly below. When I got up to have a look, a golden jackal appeared, looked me confident in the eyes from less than 10 meters for 10 seconds and then turned around and walked away leisurely! Unfortunelately it was closer to my camera than I was at the time so the only picture I got was this print the next morning:

After a night full of very loud frog sounds and surprised looks of two early birdwatchers that came to visit the watchtower I got up, had breakfast and packed my stuff. Then I walked the delta all morning (some 10 miles) in temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius. The only shadow was provided by two derelict watchtowers and an unfinished building. There were lots of plants and all kinds of wildlife to be seen.
Orchid:

Gladiolus imbricatus

Arum dioscoridis:

A kind of lily (probably an Anthericum)

Snails:

Aggressive ant:


In hindsight, a few hours walking with 18 kilos on my shoulders in this heat carrying only three liters of water was not a good idea. When I had rounded the delta lots of water and tea at a local teahouse made me feel normal again.

In the afternoon I took a minibus to Adana, 150 km to the East. It was a slow 3 hour ride along long stretches of boulevard through ugly seaside towns full of big hotels and tall building blocks.

The busstation ("Otogar") in Adana, thee are lots of competing bus companies that offer rides to cities throughout Turkey for little money. At an Otogar there are shops, public toilets, sometimes even a barber and of course there’s food to buy (the "Adana kebab" was very good):

Touringcar coaches are used for the longer bus trips. They are quite luxurious with airco, little tv screens and a person who hands out water, tea or hot towels for refreshment.

After my Otogar kebab meal I took a bus heading East to Birecik, a city on the banks of the Euphrates river, some 20 km of the Syrian border. Birecik is, except for a few colonies in Morocco, the last resort for the endangered bald ibis, a quite ugly looking bird.


Part 3 is coming up soon

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Galemys]

Good stuff. What was the temps like and was there mozzies near the marshes ?

The Suslik looks like a cross between a red squirrel and a weasel !

On the Demirkazik mountainside (I think it was at 2300 meters) it was chilly, 5 degrees C or so and we were close to te snow. I had expected it to be much colder but the weather turned out to be fine that very morning. In Birecik at the Euphrates river (coming up in part 3) it was hot, above 40 degrees centigrade. I don't think I would like to go there in july or august...

The susliks are great! It took some veeeery slow walking to get this picture. They can be found all over the country in grassy fields.

Cheers,

Tom

Edit:
there were lots of mosquitos at the delta, luckily my hammock has a bug screen. Further to the east (along the coast and near the rivers of Euphrates & Tigris) there's a chance of encountering malaria.

 

[Barn Owl]

Looks like a cracking trip Tom.

 

[Galemys]

(the last) Part 3 Birecik/Euphrates
After a long busride from Adana I arrived late at night in Birecik and booked in to a motel, West of the bridge crossing the Euphrates. At walking distance of the motel there are some nature areas where some species of wildlife occur that can’t be found in the rest of Turkey.
The bridge crossing the Euphrates river:

View from the bridge to the North:

This city is famous for it’s bald ibis colony and pictures and even statues of these birds can be seen all over town:

Soon I found the birds in real life, feeding along the Euphrates river:

A horse on the river bank:


North of town there is a cliff face with large nestboxes where the birds breed. They used to migrate to Africa but when fewer and fewer birds started to return, the decision was made to keep them in an enclosure during late autumn and winter to prevent them from migrating. The rest of the year they fly around freely.
There is a warden, Mustafa, who monitors the birds and the breeding centre is a popular school trip destination.

The bald ibis breeding cliff with nestboxes, there are 100-120 birds here. A few wild colonies still exist in Morocco, but still the world population of this species is less than a 1000 birds:

The bald ibis (Geronticus eremita), not the prettiest of birds…they have a prehistoric look and make matching raw sounds:


In a wadi, a mostly dry river bed/canyon, close to the Ibis centre 2 pairs of bald ibis still breed on natural ledges.

This wadi curves through the dry semi-desert country and the few wadi pools are normally the only source of water for creatures inhabiting the hills above. It had been wet weather the days before I arrived so there was running water when I walked the wadi.
Wadi:




In some places strange rounded holes could be seen in the chalkstone, sometimes with a darker Stone enclosed in the chalk:


These heavy darker stones could easily be found in the riverbed as well, mostly egg-shaped and with a starlike pattern inside: it turned out to be marcasite! A good find for a bushcrafter or primitive pyromaniac
A kind of gold fever got hold of me and for an hour or so I frantically collected every piece of marcasite I got my eyes on. I finally stuffed some 2 kilos in my daypack…
Here’s a selection of marcasite found in the wadi, the two pieces on the left and right bottom corner had a more cubical crystal structure and are probably pyrite:

Later I returned to the wadi with Mustafa, the enthusiastic warden of the Ibis centre, to check on the two nests in the wadi. I asked him if he knew what the “dark stones” were and he answered that there was “some metal inside it”. He then casually mentioned that they could not be taken and that in the past, airport customs officers had arrested people for taking minerals out of Turkey… The next day I returned my looted marcasite (except for three little pieces) back to the wadi.

There were lots of interesting plants and animals to see in the wadi, here’s a turkish tree frog (Hyla savignyi):

A kind of hornet (dead):

Miniature green toad (Bufo variabilis), fresh out of the water:

Tassel hyacinth (Muscari sp.):

Gecko in a marcasite hole:

1
A kind of bee orchid:

Tortoise:

Lunch break:


Under stones there’s a lot to be found as well, here’s a false widow spider (Steatoda paykulliana), according to Wikipedia it is less venomous than the black widow but dangerous nonetheless:

Little scorpion (the body was the size of my thumbnail):


And then I found this interesting little hooknosed wormsnake, Leptotyphlops macrorhynchus. This mature individual is as long and slender as a piece of spaghetti! At First sight it looks like a small pink rainworm but it feels firmer and smoother and has 2 little black eyes.


I also found this pretty little Roth's dwarf racer (Eirenis rothi), not poisonous despite it’s colourful head pattern:

And another Eirenis-species (probably E. eiselti):

Another much larger snake species (over one meter) greyish with a faint brown back pattern, took refuge in a dense bush, loudly hissing, before I could get a closer look.

Somewhere deep in the wadi I came upon this heartbreaking sight, a young (and healthy) pup lying next to a decaying carcass of a dog, probably it’s mother. There were some other dogs in the neighbourhood so I assumed that the pup had been taken care of by the other dogs, it certainly didn’t look like it had not been eating since the mother had died:

Caterpillar (actually there’s two of them):

Above the wadi there’s some dry vegetation:



On my way out of the wadi these two men would not let me walk by without inviting me to drink fruit juice, and eat an orange, an apple, a banana and lots of strawberries with them. They were -as most Turks I met- very hospital people and in spite of the language barrier I felt very privileged:

A brief thunderstorm during another trip through the wadi, luckily there was space to hide in one of the rock crevices:

Despite the rainstorm it was very hot in Birecik, this picture is taken at half past 4 in the afternoon, so around midday it is even hotter:

In a bend of the River are some gravel workings. This creates small reedfilled pools and these attract all kinds of wildlife:

The threatened Euphrates soft-shell turtle (Rafetus euphraticus):

Tinder! Some kind of salsify(Tragopogon sp.), it worked fine in my fire piston:


The semi-desert area surrounding Birecik is now largely irrigated thanks to some big damming projects. The main crop is Pistachio trees:



In the same pistachio orchard was this vehicle, who needs a landrover, when you can have all this?

Big grasshopper:

The dead sea sparrow (Passer moabiticus), one of 7 sparrow species here. In Turkey it only breeds in a few places in the South:

Another friendly Turk who spontaneously offered me some tea:

After checking out of my motel I was in need for a barber:

The barber did his job well (including some ear-torturing with an open flame to get rid of the hairs growing there):

On this last day I went looking for the striated scops owl (Otus brucei), a species that breeds scarcely in the Middle East, and in Turkey can only be found at Birecik. The park near Gulhane tea house is the place to look for this bird. Or to walk your sheep :

It took me over an hour to track the bird. At the moment I finally found one of the owls, hidden in the canopy, I was discovered myself by an army of schoolchildren, all trying out the only English sentence they knew: "miister, miister, how are you?":


Then it was time to head for the airport for my early morning flight to Istanbul (and finally Amsterdam). Here's my last sleeping spot, the waiting hall of Gaziantep airport:


All in all I had a brilliant time in Turkey with lots of nature and very friendly people; at several times I was offered a ride, a cup of tea or something to eat by people I had never met before. I did not encounter many people that spoke English very well but I was outside most of the touristy areas and this language barrier didn’t interfere with travelling the country.
My flights from Amsterdam to Kayseri and from Gaziantep back to Amsterdam (both via Istanbul) costed me 285 euros in total with Pegasus airlines. Transport by public buses runs smoothly and the highways are good. Petrol is quite expensive though (2 euros for a litre of Euro 95).
Wildcamping is prohibited in the National parks but if you keep a low profile you will probably not be noticed for there aren’t many rangers.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Joonsy]

Hi, southern Turkey is a wonderful place to go, went there a few years back, the locals hospitality is exceptional.

locals fishing hut at foot of mountains

goat herders rough makeshift shelter

 

[sandbender]

"...All in all I had a brilliant time in Turkey with lots of nature and very friendly people; at several times I was offered a ride, a cup of tea or something to eat by people I had never met before. I did not encounter many people that spoke English very well but I was outside most of the touristy areas and this language barrier didn’t interfere with travelling the country..."

That mirrors my experience of walking around Turkey, a beautiful country and a friendly and generous people.

Great pics, thanks for posting.

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

Turkey has lots of CLIMBING rock, never been but maybe one easter I should go. It's also got a lot of god sea kayaking.