Sorry for this late post! I was really busy this last month with...honestly nothing... I guess I really have no excuse... So as mentioned previously, I recently went on a nice trip to Eurasia, travelling from San Francisco to Istanbul to Astana to Almaty, back to Istanbul, and back home. I went with my sister Helen and her boyfriend Stuart, being a professional third wheeler just like I always am in life's day to day turmoils. However, the trip was amazing and possibly the best way to spend part of my extra long summer before the start of college. So, without further ado, I will begin rambling on about this special vacation!
6/16/15 - 6/17/15
The morning of the 16th I went birding in Santa Clara County (see last post) and then boarded my flight on Turkish Airlines in SFO. Service was nice but unfortunately the beverage service ran out of minty lemonade before getting to me so of course my sister just kept going on and on about how great it was to rub it in even more. I then watched Fault In Our Stars, like the hella basic teenager I am. I must say, it was pretty sad and yes, I did cry. Then food came and it was good and then I listened to some albums by assorted artists and blah and blah and wait wtf I thought I was supposed to talk about birds and naturey shit.
Anyways, the plane touched down sometime in the late afternoon of the 17th in Istanbul and we went on the metro to the Airbnb apartment Helen had reserved earlier. Of course, I watched out for birds from the windows. My first life birds were swifts which I believe were Alpine but didn't count. Now that I think about it, however, they were most definitely Alpines but you know what, for all intensive purposes, my first officially counted life bird was the Yellow-legged Gull.
We arrived at the apartment after dark and our really friendly host showed us around for great food places. For the first time in like 5 years I intentionally ate meat.
6/18/15
Woke up at around sunrise to a beautiful, well, sunrise and the sounds of birds. For the next approximately 2 hours I did a "city watch", creepily scanning the surrounding city and skies for birds. And yes, there were birds.
The second official life bird of the trip: Hooded Crow.
Flying above the apartment and most of Istanbul in general were huge swirling flocks of huge swirling Alpine Swifts. These guys are among the larger of the swifts and like all of their relatives, spend much of their lives in the air, flying with complex acrobatics and looking badass as fuck. I remember reading an article a few years back about an Alpine Swift which stayed in constant flight for 200 days, covering around 10,000 km during migration according to the radio transmitter attached to it. Damn birds are amazing. http://phys.org/news/2013-10-alpine-swift-aloft-days.html
More life birds! Or wait, just Rock Dove and House Sparrow. Funny how the most abundant city birds in Istanbul are the same as those in California, just these are native (I guess native-ish for the feral pigeons). Also funny how Eurasia wasn't bitten back in the ass with an invasive North American bird unlike how syphilis was brought back to the Old World in the Columbian Exchange. Yay colonialism!
Although I saw several Laughing Doves from the apartment window, I didn't get a decent enough picture until we left to go sightseeing in the city. These birds are actually native to the Middle East in addition to some other subtropical regions of Eurasia and Africa but they have been established in Istanbul for a number of years. If you've ever played Kingdom Hearts, their calls sound EXACTLY like the sound the Wight Knight heartless makes. I guess they also sound like...laughing. Yeah fun facts.
Such lovelies
Approaching the Golden Horn, a strait dividing the European side of Istanbul into the old city (where we were headed) and the new city, I stopped by the water to look for birds.
My failed attempt at capturing this Great Cormorant floating on the water turned into a pretty interesting photo as I took the picture at the moment the bird dove.
Yellow-legged Gull being really damn photogenic.
Before heading to the Hagia Sofia, we decided to take a walk in the lush Gulhane Park, a former palace garden for the Ottomans. Although the trees were tended a little too well for good bird diversity, I did see a good number of common species and got some decent looks.
The beautiful Red Admiral omnipresent throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
Wow Hooded Crows are so much more attractive than American Crows. No hate on our native corvids though. Love y'all.
Alexandrine Parakeet poking its head from its nest in one of the sycamores.
Also in the park were nesting Rose-ringed Parakeets. Like the feral parrots of Los Angeles, these colorful, noisy inhabitants of this quite urban area established themselves from escaped pets. I was not sure whether it was Kosher to count either one of these lovely species so I just left them off for now. Watching their antics more than made up for that.
As we reached the end of the quite longitudinal park, the Bosphorus Strait greeted us. I quickly scanned this body of water separating Europe and Asia, looking for one of my target birds of Istanbul. This would prove to be the easiest target bird on the trip to obtain, as the species showed up immediately in large numbers of small flocks, streaming just above the water's surface.
Levantine Shearwaters (Pardon this shitty af picture)!!!
European Shag flying by was another pleasant surprise, being my second new cormorant of the day.
The rest of the afternoon before going back to the apartment was spent at a monument in the city. The Hagia Sofia or something? Regardless, there were no new birds. Seriously though, the architecture was amazing.
Also, to all the other tourists in the area, THIS is the only way to take a selfie at the Hagia Sofia. Like seriously, you can't really see how amazing of a structure it is if you're pointing the camera to the side. Gosh.
After a tiring walk back to the apartment, we took a long siesta, woke up for dinner really late, and went back to sleep.
6/19/15
This day, even rainier than the last, we walked to the Blue Mosque. Before going there, however, I split off and took a walk around the Bosphorus coast to the Sea of Marmara before backtracking and joining up with the others for lunch. The walk in the inclement weather was extraordinarily beautiful and a really nice break from the tourists.
Lovely first cycle Yellow-legged Gull near the Galata Bridge.
Booted Eagles soaring above the Galata Bridge. Someday I need to come back for fall migration where supposedly thousands of raptors and storks pass by in a natural extravaganza.
Eurasian Hobby hunting swifts just before a sudden downpour.
My first Bottlenose Dolphins of the year in the Bosphorus. What brave souls, living in a relatively small area with such abundant ships passing through.
Closer views than those from yesterday of a European Shag in flight.
Yellow-legged Gull being really damn photogenic.
Great Cormorant hunting further out in the water than the spear fishermen scouring over the nearshore rocks.
As I looked into the Sea of Marmara, I noticed a few smaller gulls with more buoyant flight, suggesting terns. Upon further inspection, their identity was revealed, being my first black-headed gulls of the trip: the Black-headed Gull!
During this walk, I continued to witness hundreds of Levantine Shearwaters streaming by me in both directions. Hopefully the ocean can continue supporting such amazing numbers of seabirds.
At this point, I started to turn back and migrated again through Gulhane Park to get to the rest of the party.
Although we saw plenty of Great Tits the first day in Gulhane, I did not get any decent shots until this date. Oh yeah, and dear all of my friends who find out that I'm into birds, yes I am, in fact, quite completely aware that there is a bird known as the Great Tit.
Eastern Olivaceous Warbler, my first Old World warbler!
Pretty clouds on the walk home after seeing the Blue Mosque.
Same deal as yesterday. After arriving home, we plopped ourselves onto our sleeping areas, ate a super late dinner, and that was that.
6/20/15
Like on the first day, I awoke to a huge cloud of swifts swirling over the apartment. Within this flock, I picked out my final life bird of Istanbul part 1, the Common Swift.
I picked out at least 4 individuals with the Alpines, this species being significantly smaller and darker with faster wingbeats, also lacking the white undersides.
Some of its acquaintances (friends?)
Polygonia c-album, an Old World species quite common in Istanbul.
The only moth I saw happened to be one that I have also seen on my house in California, the Diamondback (Plutella xylostella). Like the House Sparrow, this species was introduced to the states, becoming a major annoyance to agriculture in some areas.
Later we hopped on a plane and flew over to Asia. To Kazakhstan!
TL;DR: Istanbul, birds, birds, to Kazakhstan!
To be continued...
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