Tui, the boys and I had planned on visiting my family in England. My dad was to care for the boys, while Tui and I would visit Turkey and Northern Cyprus to look for two "new" owls. Magnus Rob and the Sound Approach in their excellent book "Undiscovered owls" suggest that scops owls in Cyprus are a separate species from Eurasian scops owl. Much more exciting they suggest that the very rare (and recently rediscovered) fish owls of Southern Turkey are a separate species (Turkish Fish owl) from the far more abundant Brown fish owl in India. Both splits were based on differences in their calls
June 22nd. Dad kindly picked us up from Heathrow and drove us to Fi's (my sister) house in Denton, rural Norfolk. It was great to see Dad, Fi and her family.
June 23rd. The family drove to the beach at Southwold for the day. After everyone had gone to bed, I walked around the flinty corn fields at twilight in search of owls. I had a very close encounter with a tawny owl perched on a five-barred gate. This is the owl of childhood, and to this day I think of Stix owls as the archetypal owls. Perfect in form and design.
June 24th. George slept really badly last night due to jet lag.
June 25th. George had another really difficult night. At breakfast Fi and Dad explained that they just didn't feel able to care for George while Tui and I took a trip to Turkey and Cyprus. Lately George has been a real handful and Tui and I were both concerned about how my family would manage him when he's upset. We spent a lot of the day trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the vacation. By nightfall we had decided that I would go to Turkey and Cyprus while Tui and the boys would stay in an airb&b near Fi's home.
June 26th. Dad drove us to the airb&b at Blofield Heath.
June 27th. Dad (the taxi driver of this trip) picked me up early and we drove to Stanstead Airport. As Northern (Turkish) Cyprus isn't recognized by any nation other than Turkey, I had to fly to Turkey (Istanbul), then change planes and fly to Ercan in Northern Cyprus. It was close to midnight when I arrived. I had reserved a car, but it had broken down and they didn't have a replacement. I had to hunt around with several agencies before I could find a car. I ended up with a really crap old black fiesta that rattled a lot.
I drove across the Mesorai Plain of central Cyprus up to the Kyrenia mountains. I took a tiny mountain road off the highway towards Buffavento Castle. At the first stop I got out and heard a Cyprus scops-owl. The bird sounded quite close, but I ended up chasing it down a very steep rocky hillside covered in prickly scrub, back below the noisy main highway and into some dense thickets. Eventually after 90 minutes it stopped calling and I gave up. I tried three more stops, and heard a barn owl. At the fourth stop I heard three Cyprus scops-owls quite close. After ten minutes I saw one in flight between a couple of stunted cyprus trees. Ten minutes later I got a great view of singing scops owl in a small pine tree.
Driving into Girne I saw an owl on a wire. I backed up the road and got good views of a Lillith (little) owl.
Sadly Tui had made a reservation at a really nice hotel in Girne. I didn't have directions, so asked a couple of guys, who very kindly drove there, while I followed through a labyrinth of streets. I stepped into the fantastic looking stone hotel. No one was at reception. A note suggested I call "0", which I did a few times to no avail. Fortunately there were some key cards. I chanced it, and the card opened the door to a vacant room. I felt a little uneasy, but soon settled into a deep sleep.
June 28th. I did my best to sleep in, then spent the middle part of the day avoiding the intense sun. In the afternoon I drove up the lonely Karpaz Peninsular at the far eastern end of Cyprus. This turned out to be an excellent destination, free of condominiums and casinos which blight much of the area around Girne. I parked at the very end of the road, beyond which are a couple of islets, then the Middle East. A few Audouin's gulls flew by, a new bird for me. The peninsular is famous for wild donkeys, and a few came to insect the car. Suspicious that they had an appetite for wiper blades (some where discarded on the ground), I shooed them away.
Karpaz's wild donkeys
I enjoyed a long evening and beautiful sunset before driving a few miles back down the peninsular. I stopped at the first area of farmland, which had some promising looking larger trees. As soon as I got out the car I could hear a Cyprus scops owl. I hiked up through the fields towards the scops owl. I passed an old dusty tractor and I saw a Lillith owl calling from a fence. Higher up the hillside I found a pair of Cyprus scops owls singing in some small cyprus trees. There was still light in the sky, and the owls were very easy to see. Back at the car I saw a barn owl flying into a grove of eucalyptus trees. What a brilliant evening! I also found a couple of Eurasian nightjars perched on a dirt road by their eye-shine. It was a longish drive back to Girne, I was hoping for more barn owls but didn't see any in the headlights.June 29th. I decided to go check out both Girne Castle by the town harbor and later Buffavento Castle in the Kyrenia mountains.
The hike up to Buffavento Castle in the Kyrenia Mountains
The mountains were beautiful, and I did a couple of short hikes before returning the car to Ercan airport.It was a short flight to Antalya in Southern Turkey. I picked up a rental car and drove east, parallel to the coast to the seaside resort town of Side. I parked the car at the edge of the old town, and walked through dramatic Roman ruins along with many tourists. Tui had reserved a guest house in town, and checking in I was again reminded of how much she would have liked this place. I had an early start tomorrow for fish owls, and it was a long way through the larger city of Manavgat to get to good owl habitat, so I decided to stay in town. I did walk back through the ruins after dusk and found a little owl. It was scolding a couple of people who had gotten to close to a nearby begging juvenile.
June 30th. I woke really early at 4am, nervous about the day. The rediscovery of the fish owl was the genesis for this trip. I arrived early at Side gate, a Roman gate, next to a colosseum, a fabulous place to rendezvous. At 5am, Mehmet, my guide, pulled in in a silver Toyota and purposely waved me over. Mehmet knew a lot about the owls, and was an economics major who worked for Vigo Tours, https://vigotours.com/, the outfit who organized the fish owl tour. I never asked how he got into owls, but suspect it may have been photography, as he carried a big camera. We drove for about 30km to the upper reservoir on the Manavgat River. Despite a warm calm dawn at Side, the reservoir was blasted by a North wind from the Anatolian plains.We boarded a surprisingly large lake boat, while the wind whipped up white caps and blew the plastic chairs across the deck. This didn't look good. "The owls don't like the wind or the sun" Mehmet proclaimed.
Buffeted by the wind we sailed across the lake to the "little canyon". The wind wasn't so bad in the tight canyon, and soon Mehmet had found an adult fish owl. I found a juvenile perched nearby. Wow! These are big wonderful peach-colored owls, with inscrutable pale golden eyes, powerful beaks and feet, and wild rakish ear tufts.
Oymapinar Barji (Green Canyon) at dawn.
The boatmen skillfully turned the boat around in the narrow Canyon, then sailed back across the lake to the big canyon. We followed this canyon for a couple of miles. Dramatic limestone slopes and cliffs rose out of the water. Determined pines grew out of cracks in the white rock. Eventually we slowed and Mehmet found an owl, moments later I found another. Again an adult and a juvenile. We sailed back out the canyon and across the lake. Mehmet gave me some good tips on finding tawny owl and common scops owl in the mountains beyond the lake.Late in the afternoon I drove out into the mountains towards Konya. I was amazed at view of huge snow covered mountains that were so close to the hot coastal plain. I turned off the main highway towards the village of Uzumdere and stopped at an abandoned walled graveyard that Mehmet had recommended for tawny owl. By now it was early evening. The graveyard was full of unmarked stone graves, and packed with mature Oak and Cyprus trees. It was a wonderful place, marred only by thousands of tiny flies that swarmed my eyes. I searched diligently for roosting owls, and although I found lots of whitewash, I could not find an owl.
I then drove the rest of the way to Uzumdere. The road followed a beautiful green-river shaded by mature deciduous trees. I was passing a fish farm, where two dogs and some children were playing by the roadside. I drove slowly by, when one of the dogs got up and stepped in front of the car. I heard a thump and then the dog crying. I got out of the car to find a white toothed, slender black and tan pup crying on the porch. A man came to the door and waved me off. I did my best to say that I was sorry. I felt terrible and surprised, having driven by countless roadside dogs without really considered that they may just walk into the car. I was still feeling shaky when I pulled into the mosque parking lot at Uzumdere. It was still well before dusk, so I took a short hike to calm down. On the way back to the car I saw a small owl fly up to a wire. I was surprised to see it was a Common scops owl. A few minutes later I found another bird singing from an utility wire behind the mosque. I had not seen this species since the late eighties.
Uzumdere Mosque
I returned to the walled graveyard passing the fish farm, where I was heartened to see the kids playing on the road. Hopefully their dog was OK. I parked up discreetly and walked around the graveyard. Eventually a tawny owl sang from a tree in the field, then flew into a large oak at the edge of the graveyard.
Almost as soon as I got back onto the highway, I saw a food cart (a converted Iveco bus) by the side of the road. I made a hasty u-turn and parked up. I was very warmly greeted by the patrons and the proprietor. I ordered a meal, which turned out to be a pickled cabbage salad and hot lamb sandwich. I ate it at a tiny wooden table, under a blazing starlit sky. A teenager breastfed her babe in an old green Renault 12. Two Anatolian dogs just loitered. The air was cool and smelled of pine and dust. I don't drink tea, but stayed and had tea, just to linger.
Back in Side, I parked out of the old town and walked past the Roman ruins. I found four little owls, including a couple of noisy begging juveniles in the ruins.
July 1st. I didn't have a special agenda today. I woke late, walked Side and swam in the warm Mediterranean. In the afternoon I returned to Oymapinar Barji, through a maze of confusing small country roads.
Oymapinar Barji (Green Canyon)
Near where the boats dock, Mehmet had pointed out a small cave where tawny owls purportedly nest. It was an exhilarating climb over sharp and lose limestone to the cave. Alas, there were no owls when I peered in.
My next goal was to hike as close as possible to the small canyon and see if I could find a hunting fish owl at dusk. I followed a small gravel road, that lead to a rather mysterious, but delightfully cool, half mile tunnel. After the tunnel the track petered out, and I had to scrabble around to get to the nearest bit of shore to the owls site. (It wasn't feasible to get to the exact roost as they where perched on a true cliff). The lake side was beautiful, and in the solitude I fell asleep on a slab of limestone. I woke well before dusk, and waited some more. Bats appeared. A scops owl flew by. A distant owl hooted once. It sounded more like a long-eared owl, than the recordings I have of a fish owl, but it's hard to be certain. Eventually it became completely park, and no fish owl had emerged.
Oymapinar Barji (Green Canyon) at dusk
It was tricky to hike back along the steep rocky slope and I was relieved to find the tunnel mouth. Tonight I found only one little owl on my walk from the car park through the ruins to old town Side.
July 2nd. I swam in the Med again and took one last walk around Side and the ruins, then headed back towards Antalya to catch my midday flight. The freeway to Antalya had traffic lights, which I noticed local people took to be advisory rather than compulsory. Driver tended to run red lights just after they changed, and more bizarrely anticipate a light about to turn green, and run it while still red. Following a Renault, I was surprised when it anticipated a light still green, but was about to turn red and stopped. My surprise turned to horror, when I hit my brakes, but the car barely slowed. I started to skid, and it was clear I didn't have space to stop, I let off the brakes and blew through a complex intersection that was dense with obstacles (concrete utility poles and tangential vehicles). I made it through the intersection unscathed, with what felt like pints of adrenaline coursing through my veins. But a swift minute passed and a Turkish police car was on my tail. I pulled over against a steel barrier. The officer got out. "I am sorry" I offered sincerely. "You are not sorry. You went through a red right" he replied dryly. We conducted the rest of our conversation with Google translate on his phone. I was freaked out that I would get taken to the police station and miss my flight. This was not the case. I was ticketed and told to pay at a bank or post office at the airport. I felt like a cursed idiot after hitting the dear and destroying my beloved Honda last month, hitting the dog two days ago and then almost getting into a terrible accident today. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Antalya airport confused me. I didn't realize that there was a second terminal. It was that one I flew from. The one without a post office, and with one bank that changes money, but does not allow you pay traffic citations.
July 3rd-6th. The rest of our stay in England went well. George was doing a lot better and was sleeping. The flight home with the boys was also unremarkable.
