Listening Earth Blog

Birdsong echoing in Demerkazik Gorge by Listening Earth

It is 5am, icy cold, and as the first birdsong begins the dawn chorus, I have the feeling we’ve stumbled upon our most interesting recording location in Turkey thus far. Which is utterly unexpected as there is not a tree or bush in sight.

Preparing for this field trip, we had visions of forests full of birdsong. So we’ve aimed for the green spots on Google Earth. This is not one of them.

All around us is rock. We’re in a deep, dramatic, and quite spectacular gorge, not far below the snowline in the Taurus Mountains. Pale moonlight illuminates the peak of Mount Demerkazik, which rises above the end of the gorge, a ghostly, massive presence. Rock walls rise steeply above us to craggy and precipitous heights. The last stars are paling in the small amount of sky visible overhead.

To find birdlife in such a harsh place is a complete surprise, but shortly after switching on the microphones, a Scops Owl begins calling. It’s soft, repeated “tuet” calls echo like sonar pings off the rock walls – beautiful.

Presently a small songbird – which I later identify as a Black Redstart – begins a twittery song, each phrase preceeded by an unusual fizzing sound.

Soon the gorge is echoing with delicate voices; Rock Buntings, Red-fronted Serins, Wrens… Crag Martins begin sallying forth from precipice roosts, their twittery songs complimented by the whistling of wind in their wings as they swoop and dive aerobatically.

Then, from high on the rock wall above, comes the clucking call of a Chukar, a pheasant-like bird. Another joins in from the opposite rock wall and soon there’s a trio going on. In the dim light I can see one standing on a high rock, silhouetted against the sky, its head back and throat distended with song.

If we hadn’t been looking up scanning the cliff top we wouldn’t have seen them; a group of Ibex standing proudly. Later we hear barking calls from them as they scramble nimbly with complete lack of vertigo.

But the most exciting voice – although from far off – is the Curlew-like call of a Caspian Snowcock. Exciting because these birds are almost as rare as the proverbial chook’s tooth, or at least difficult to find. People come from all over to this area just to catch a distant glimpse of these birds in their high-altitude habitats.

When we arrived at our local hostel the previous evening, our hosts had offered us their ‘birdwatcher’s tour’ by tractor to see them. We declined, as tractors and microphones are not a good mix. After resigning ourselves to not seeing them, we were now being treated to their haunting voices drifting down the gorge from the snowy crags above us.

We ended up spending three mornings and afternoons exploring this gorge, making new discoveries each day. But that first morning was magic.

In the future we’d like to publish the recording we made as a complete album. In the meantime, this recording is a short taste of what we heard by moonlight high in the Taurus Mountains.