BIRDS

I don’t know much about birds, but there are a few here that I see every day. I really love watching them fly, and I generally love watching birds (and other animals too 😊). 

I think I’ve written about seagulls before. I often walk along the beach, and I’ve seen several different kinds of seagulls there.

My absolute favorite is the large white seagull with a yellow beak and big wings,but there are also smaller white-feathered seagulls here, as well as medium-sized ones with brownish-white plumage.

I’ve noticed that the seagulls are watching you😊. For example, when they land and I walk past them, they follow me with their eyes but don’t fly away—unless I make a sudden movement. Otherwise, they just watch. 

I love watching them glide high in the sky; they’re beautiful, especially over the sea. Not everyone likes their sound—it’s a strange, cawing-like noise. It’s not pleasant, but then again, they aren’t songbirds.

Then there are the crows here. They seem ordinary, but they’re not. The most common here is the hooded crow or the carrion crow. 

I thought (as perhaps many others do) that these birds live for 100 years, but then I read that they live for 15–20 years (though that’s still a pretty long time). I also read that they’re intelligent, which I’ve been able to observe myself. When they want to crack open a nut, for example, they’ll drop it from a height while flying so it hits the ground, or they’ll dip dry bread into water to make it easier to eat. Isn’t that funny? And impressive, too.Isn't that funny? At first, I just walked right past them, but then somehow I started to like them. I think they’re beautiful, too, with their shiny black heads.

By the way, there’s this thing… that when you start observing something, you notice the tiny details, and it turns out there’s a lot of beauty in things that at first glance seem ordinary, almost mundane.

It was surprising to me, but just imagine—parrots are flying around freely here. In flocks. Green parrots with red beaks. I didn’t even understand this—how could that be, since I thought these birds could only live in warm climates. At first I thought maybe they’d escaped from some zoo. But since I see them several times every year, they can’t just be escaped birds. So I did a little digging and found an interesting article about how the parrots ended up here:

https://www.trtworld.com/article/13117036

They live here, flitting about and eating fruit from the trees even in winter. I think I was surprised to see them here because it’s cold in winter and there isn’t much edible fruit on the trees… but it seems these animals have adapted to these conditions.

I’ve even seen starlings here. At first, from a distance, I mistook them for parrots when I saw them only at the tops of the trees, because they have a similar build and they also fly in flocks, just like parrots.

However, my husband told me a very interesting story that took place in the early 1930s in western Turkey. A kind of war broke out between the storks and the eagles. Birds from various cities joined their fellow storks to fight this war. The eagles kidnapped the storks’ chicks. People sided with the storks, and even the army intervened on their behalf. The reports about this latter part of the story aren’t entirely clear…😊

And I haven’t even mentioned the pigeons yet! But I will 😊 So these really are the most ordinary birds. But I have a big favorite, the wild pigeon—as it turns out, this is the Balkan turtle dove. Although they say the Balkan turtle dove is gray, so I don’t know what kind of turtle doves these are here, because they’re rust-colored and that’s that 😊 

Actually, I love everything about them. Their little beady eyes, which make their little round heads look so innocent. Their rust-colored feathers and their calls…I think I love the way they coo the most 😊 And did you know that these birds choose a mate for life? That touches me for some reason, even if it’s not intentional…still… And I also think it’s so beautiful how the male watches over, protects, and cares for his mate.

 We have a pair of turtle doves living here too, and they often land on the balcony or the windowsill, and in the morning I wake up to one of them cooing at the bedroom window… it’s a very pleasant experience in the mornings 😊