Köprülü Kanyon: Krüper's Nuthatch success!
............ I would have thought Kropulu Canyon would be good territory too.
Best of luck.
We had a great week in Turkey, mainly Cappadocia. And I managed to rent a car instead of going to the sales-show marathon in Antalya the rest of the group was scheduled to go to. Originally, I had planned to get a taxi to drive us around. But that would have cost at least 130 Euros with the use of a driver plus rental car. The local Belek taxis said they would not go to Köprülü. So we rented the car without driver for 40 Euros plus 14 liters of Diesel fuel which added another 60 Turkish Lira, or about 24 Euros by local exchange rates. But with this, we had a full day, giving us much more flexibility. And after having been on a bus for many days, it was clear that driving in Turkey was not going to be a major problem outside the cities. So we also visited Aspendos with its excellent theater and aquaeduct. Though, for that part we kind of had to rush to see it before dark. A
Blue Rock Thrush surprised us. I had thought they'd migrate south. But later realised they winter there. However, on leaving the Belek hotel area by bus the following day, there were several
Spur-winged Lapwings which definitely were not "supposed" to still be around.
But now to the Köprülü Kanyon with its
Krüper's Nuthatches:
We tried a few places on the way with sounds I had taken along. Success came at just a bit less than one kilometer from the Köprülü Kanyon bridge. There is a distance sign in the other direction on the left as one drives up. It says Antalya 95. Just opposite that sign, we parked the car and walked to the first trees at the forest edge (second picture). As I played the alarm call, a nuthatch flew out of the large tree we were under. And then it was just a matter of getting to see it well. There were at least two birds, a male and a female. But my wife said she heard more a bit higher up on the slope.
Not surprisingly, the recordings of songs did not elicit responses this time of the year. So I was happy I had a recording of the alarm call as well, downloaded from xeno-canto. That worked well outside of the breeding season.
The forest is very open. And it had a fresh green cover due to the fact that there had been rains about 10 days earlier. Even a flowering little orchid.
We then drove up about half way towards Selge just for the views and the vegetation, with a native natural Cypress forest to look at. This whole area is definitely worth a visit even without the goal of finding the little nuthatch. There is quite a bit of road construction about half way up from the main "coast road". So I'm afraid the area may well get spoiled in the future.
Thanks go to wolfbirder for helping me decide what to do and where to go! :clap:
