It's that time of year when we always used to go away on a (non-birding) foreign holiday but due to COVID we haven't been away since 2019. However travel is now relatively unrestricted and so it was off to Turkey on Saturday September 24th for David's sumptuous 60th Birthday Holiday Extravaganza.
We stayed overnight at Heathrow Airport before flying out to Istanbul the next morning to start our trip. We have visited Istanbul a few times now and it remains one of our most favourite of places, a beautiful mess of art, culture, history, architecture, scenery and wildlife amongst the noise, heat, tensions and dirt and the hustle and bustle of Megacity life.
Julie and Matt joined us to celebrate Davids Birthday, it was their first time in Istanbul and so we did a lot of the usual sightseeing but its always a joy to do even if we've done it before.
We stayed at the Hotel Summengen again (where we stayed before in 2018) and from our room balcony I saw the usual Yelkouan Shearwaters and Bottlenose Dolphins. Better views of the Shearwaters were obtained from the ferry on a day trip to the Princes Islands, something we hadn't done before, and we had a few brief views of Bottlenose Dolphins from the ferry too. Even better views of the Bottlenose Dolphins were had on a ferry ride across The Bosphorus to Kadicoy from Eminonu but oddly there were no Shearwaters seen on that ferry trip.
The usual mix of exotic and familiar birds were seen on our wanderings around the city with Alpine Swift, Hooded Crow, Laughing Dove, Yellow-legged Gull, Common Myna and Alexandrine Parakeet being exotic and House Sparrow, Starling, Swallow, Coot, Mallard, Grey Heron, Cormorant, Black-headed Gull, Great Tit and a single Mediterranean Gull being familiar.
Jackdaw and Shag were also seen, some of the Jackdaws showed the very obvious pale collars of the Eastern race (Corvus monedula soemmerringi), and the Shags were presumably of the Mediterranean race (Gulosus aristotelis desmarestii)
A few White butterflies of unknown species were seen briefly dashing about but 2 Geranium Bronze showed very nicely on our visit to The Princes Islands.
All in all we had a very enjoyable time sight-seeing in Istanbul despite Matt and David suffering with stinking colds, Matt suffering with lower gastric distress and myself suffering with upper and lower gastric distress (I threw up all over the platform of a tram station in front of a load of horrified Turkish people!). And with some interesting wildlife sightings too it wasnt a bad start to our Turkey trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment