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The Ornate Bird Palaces of Ottoman-Era Turkey (2017) (thisiscolossal.com)
87 points by keiferski on Nov 10, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



If you're interested in this, you should definitely check out the documentary Birdmen of Istanbul[1]. Turn on captions for English subtitles. It tells the story of the residents of bird cafes in Istanbul and the very old tradition of goldfinch, greenfinch and siskin training for singing.

They're completely obsessed with birds, dedicating their whole lives to finding and training them. They have special vocabulary for classifying different bird songs. It's known to be a dying tradition as well but this documentary might have rekindled the interest.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-M5JVR1JlM


Volume 2 ("The Desolate One") of the 2015 Portuguese film trilogy "Arabian Nights" has a 40-min story about bird trainers, as well. They love their birds, they love their songs, and they love to compete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Nights_(2015_film)


The Persians also built elaborate structures for birds.

Bird dropping might make a mess of elegant architecture, but the bird towers in Iran served to collect the valuable fertilizer they left behind. Very clever.

https://itto.org/iran/attraction/dovecotes-pigeon-tower-isfa...

https://themindcircle.com/mardavij-pigeon-tower/

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/450802/Pigeon-towers-signif...

.



Istanbul is the city where the people feed both the cats and the birds in an incomparable level to rest of the world. I remember visiting a smash burger joint near emirgan area, where the owner is feeding stray cats with burger patties... Weirdly beautiful


I almost have like a kilo of dry cat food with me. The bird feeder attracts pigeond and they often shit all over the place.

I have noticed that corvids also like cat food. We have so many and they compete with each other.


Dogs love cat food too, I think it's because it's very rich in protein.


This history plays a minor part in the plot of The Mountain in the Sea, which is a book about octopuses more so than the birds of Turkey




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