My Steps to Start Birdwatching

One and half years ago, I was sitting on a bank near the Baltic Sea, watching the sea in a cold, windy and stormy Scandinavian weather.

I saw the occasional Turner Torso straight ahead in the city of Malmo, it was barely emerging amidst the fog. The waves in the sea were so strong that even the bank where I was sitting was left under the water.

After a while, my eye got caught in an object that appeared among the waves, like a small ship, from time to time it appeared on the crest of the wave, sometimes under the waves. When the waves brought it towards me, I realized that it was a duck. It was a magnificent scene, he was literally fighting with the waves, didn't care about the cold or wind, and the instinct to find food was above everything else. It was a scene I used to see in documentaries. There were no other creatures nearby, neither a ship nor an animal. He was like the king of the Baltic Sea. After a while like everything was going well, it started to rain cats and dogs. I thought that the duck would go back to shore to find a shelter. However, it seemed he was concentrating solely on finding food and he cared nothing else. Every passing minute I respected him more and more. After watching for a long time, the duck slowly disappeared through the Oresund bridge where only the main cables were visible in the fog.

I was interested in amateur photography for a long time, and mostly take portraits and landscape photos. As an amateur photographer, what I saw at the seaside influenced deeply. When I returned home, I called my twin brother Fatih Keles, a dentist who has been interested in bird observation and photography for a long time, after I described the duck I had seen and he convinced me that it was a Common Eider. After the phone, I started researching the Common Eider on the internet and getting incredible information about it, such as long immigration routes, behaviors and breeding etc. What I saw and read that day was the milestone and first steps to start bird observing. Thanks to the amazing scene, facts about birds and of course My Dear twin were the main influences for me to stepping this long and exciting journey...

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