Making Friends

3 days ago I found this little guy in our garden, while it tried to get away from me it clearly could not fly. I could barely grab it before one of our dogs got hold of it, our spaniels have never hunted in their lives but they do unfortunately have a hunter instinct.

Not sure what to do with it I brought it between our two front doors, safe from our dogs but also a door between it and the street cats!
I brought some water and seeds but when I cam back for it an hour later 2 cats were looking at it right in front of our gate, and our dogs were looking at it from the other door, the poor thing didn't know what to do.

Fearing that the cats would make a meal out of it as it was already dark and they were lurking at it. I brought it to our laundry shed. Put a towel in one of the laundry baskets along with water and seeds and it slept in there the first night. The next day I had to go very early to the new house so I couldn't take it anywhere but I checked on it and it was now standing on a handle.

The next day I read that a broken wing could take anywhere from 2-4 weeks to heal and as our situation was not ideal I rang our vet who informed me that the directorate of national parks takes in birds and other wildlife and brings it to vets, so I brought it there, this is their lovely office, right in the park.

I had made a box with a wooden stick and air holes for better transportation, I hope it will recover fully. I still have no idea what kind of bird it is, if anyone knows, I'd love to know as well :) Thanks to someone on Instagram I now know that it is a female (or immature male) Eurasian Golden Oriole.

After a Winter Sleep

As soon as the weather gets warmer the mountains become greener, poppies and daisies appear and the turtles wake up from their Winter sleep and you see them everywhere.

Our house is at the end of a dead end street, no traffic and in front of our door is our garage which is open but only our car gets there so it is private and calm. We often get turtles in Summer there, I'm guessing that as it is at the end of the street they plan to go down the mountain in search for water but instead end up at our front door.
I always give them food and water. For the past week we had one right near our door, which is kind of unique as normally they eat and go, but she stayed for a week, most likely as it rained for 4 of those days so she was hiding in her little house.

Today a second one arrived, clearly younger as it is smaller but also the shield shinier and not roughed up yet :)

One plus one makes two :)

And a love story began... 3 makes a crowd so I left them in peace and gave them their privacy. A few hours later both were gone (without a goodbye *sniff*), I guess she was waiting for her prince charming :)

All the Critters

With my disappointment in humanity still very much present I thought it was best to focus myself on animals today. Here are most of the visitors we had throughout the years in our garden, some were too fast to take a picture of. Above is the Eurasian Hoopoe which only visited once.

This huge and amazing moth was also a one time wonder for us, Oleander hawk-moth (Daphnis nerii) is more native in parts of Africa.

A praying mantis on our sewing machine :)

A snake right next to my bedroom window.

A very odd and big caterpillar, what a beauty :)

We've had several chameleons, they are so intriguing.

Sometimes a grasshopper hops inside :)

And in the Summer we often have turtles in front of our door which are treated with water and fresh lettuce or cucumbers, these guys eat very noisily and greedy :)
We also get huge wild swines in our street which is right below the mountain, I will try to take pictures next Summer, they are enormous and only come out after dark.

We have lots of bird visitors especially this year after I set up a bird bath, they love it!

The birds leave pretty feathers, for us to use :)

Peaceful Sunday

With all the horrible things that happened the last few days in Turkey, a peaceful Sunday was just what we needed. Ankara is very far away from us, but even in our town people are on strike, a silent cry against the government. On November 1st we will have elections again as they have not been able to establish the government with all the conflicts between political parties. The world is far from world peace, I wonder if we will ever get there.

I would love to own this little island, without politics, guns and hate. Surrounded with like minded creative people, I sound like a hippie, I know but the phrase make love not war is close to my heart :)

We had a little walk, and I always love the wild flowers and berries we discover between the bushes, they are so beautiful. Even though it is mid October we still in the 30-35 degrees Celsius here (86-95 F). And nature is still acting like it is Spring, leaves are not falling yet.

The only thing that makes it feel like Winter is approaching are berries, I loved this natural garland here below, made out of berries.

We then went to our favorite place for dinner, where we usually go for brunch on Sundays. It is close to the water and there is always something going on. Like the water turtles and fishes I've shown before, goats and ducks and interesting birds.

This time we all of a sudden heard some loud water sounds and saw that a whole bunch of cows were crossing over. It was getting dark so they were heading home, without any human guidance, they clearly knew the way.

It was quite something to see them cross like that, they knew exactly where the water was low.

After the cows were gone another gang approached us.

They came in such a way that it reminded us of the Jets from the WestSide Story, I actually sang their song while they approached, you know; 'When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette till your last dying day' :)

But while they acted like gang members all they were interested in was sharing our meal, which we did of course.

A little Bird Watching; Eurasian Hoopoe

Yesterday we had another beautiful visitor in our garden. Because of the doggies we do not often get birds to visit us, but this one saw that they were all sleeping lazily and used the opportunity to check our gardens for worms. Yesterday we had our first rain after 4 months, so this might be the reason for its appearance. After some thorough Google-ing we discovered that this is the Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupa Epops).

The Eurasian Hoopoe is actually a pretty rare and very unique bird. It doesn't look like any other bird you're never going to confuse this species with anything else: the Eurasian hoopoe has a distinctive crest of feathers on its head that, in combination with its long, thin and slightly decurved beak and orange plumage and black-and-white wings and tail, makes it unique. It's taxonomically unique too: it's the only extant species in its family, Upupidae (although the Madagascar subspecies is sometimes elevated to full species status). It's controversial, but this bird is either placed into the Coraciiformes clade (kingfishers, bee-eaters, rollers, and woodhoopoes) or it's placed into Upupiformes, along with eight other species, one of which is extinct. (info via: The Guardian).

Through my search I also discovered that the diversity of birds in Turkey cannot be matched by any European country. Over 460 species, including 330 breeding birds can be seen. Turkey holds the stronghold of the world population of 20 species, such as the near-endemic Krueper’s Nuthatch, Armenian Gull, White-throated Robin, Finsch’s Wheatear and Crimson-winged Finch. Globally Threatened Species regularly occur and can be observed easily, such as Marbled Teal, Dalmatian Pelican, Lesser Kestrel, Greater Spotted Eagle and Sociable Plover. (info via: birdwatchturkey)

Hoopoe on Bamboo by Zhao Mengfu, c. 1254–1322 (Shanghai Museum)

As my images are not very great, you can see much better and professional taken pictures here, and in this video below you can see him enjoying eating some worms. The muscles of the head allow the hoopoe's bill to be opened when it is inserted into the ground.

An Amazing Visitor

We've had plenty of visitors before, I've often shown them on our blog. For us it is one of the few reminders of how lovely it is to live here instead of the grey, rainy and cold Holland we left 18 years ago, it still somehow surprises us when we get such an exotic visitor in our own garden or home.

After research on the internet we found out that this is the Oleander hawk-moth (Daphnis nerii). Daphnis nerii is a large hawk-moth found in wide areas of Africa and Asia. It is a migratory species, flying to parts of eastern and southern Europe during the summer, particularly Turkey.
We had never seen one before and were delighted to see it.

It stayed on our terrace table for several hours until dusk, and it did not move at all while I was photographing it.

Nature's creatures are so very amazing, look at those colors, I would totally wear a dress in these colors and patterns :)

The adults feed on nectar of a great variety of flowers. They have a preference for fragrant species like petunia, jasmine and honeysuckle. They are especially active in the twilight time, hovering over the flowers after sunset. I guess that it is why it got in action when it turned dark.

In this map from Wikipedia you can see where these moths are, marked in blue is where they are in Summer, in green they are all year round, strange that we never have seen one before.

Maybe it was because of the Bluemoon :)

Unlike some information available on the internet, a bluemoon does not refer to the color of the moon but simply to the fact that it is the second full moon occurrence in the same month.

Spiky Visitor

Our house is the last and lowest house of a dead end street. As we are on a cliff, water rain always comes like a waterfall to our garden. But beside water also animals like to knock on our door. Every Summer we have quiet some turtles coming to our front door, looking for water, and we always put a bowl of water and some fresh lettuce for them so that they have some stock to go on.

A few days ago this hedgehog was at our door, this is the first time we had one of those. They are so cute and look like a walking sea urchin. I ran back home to grab my camera and the little guy never stopped walking. I followed him the entire street and he never looked my way but was constantly on the move.

However he did not neglect to stop when he some a nice juicy bug, ate it and then continued to walk on, it was really funny :)