Winter in Kaş

Here’s some mid-winter updates bout the wildlife around us in Kaş. It does make us think that we ought to do a mid-winter trip here! It is of course much warmer than the UK, especially on the coast where it regularly reaches 20°C even at the turn of the year. That’s not to say there isn’t rain. Once a week a weather system will go through in a day or two and rain is heavy, with snow in the mountains. An hour inland of us there’s much snow on the mountains now.

December and January don’t see much in the way of flowers – though there’s still the odd Colchicum such as stevenii and a few Crocus. Now in late February everything is starting to bloom but more of thatlater! Birdlife in mid-winter features huge numbers of Song Thrushes and Chaffinches, the former feeding on the Strawberry Tree fruit. I found Antalya province’s first three Red Kites at Avlan and up at Girdev Lake there was a Brambling. At the same time wintering Wryneck, Red-backed Shrike and Quail at Patara were interesting to see.

The trap cameras round our place have been coming up trumps! You’ll see the pictures of Eurasian Lynx – this animal is regularly passing this camera. And in our village the wolves are increasing. Our usual two jumped to four in the autumn when two youngsters appeared (so presumably they had pups this year!) then this month they are now five with another adult joining. We haven’t told the local shepherds! December and January is prime time for fungi here. In early December there was a large bloom of Field Mushrooms and then the rest of the month has been the main time of the Saffron Milkcaps which the locals pick in huge numbers. But there are others… here are the earthstar Myriostoma coliforme and the local version of the Death Cap which is abundant…