2024-03-02 01:45:00
Time.news – A true story, but with all the ingredients of a fairy tale, has been on stage for 13 years in Turkey, on the shores of Lake Ulubat, where a stork nicknamed Yaren spends the spring on the boat of a fisherman, Adem Yilmaz, who has become everyone is now ‘Uncle Adem’. A story that has come to light in recent years thanks to Alper Tuydes, a photographer and naturalist who was the first to photograph and every year immortalises the incredible scenes of the friendship between the stork and the fisherman. For 13 years Yaren has been going every spring to the village of Eskikaraagac, in the province of Bursa, in the north-west of the country and which has now become famous as ‘the village of storks’. Eskikaragac is located on the shores of Lake Ulubat, on a route traveled by tens of thousands of these animals, some of which winter right near the village.
“Some people in the village saw her yesterday and alerted me. On the way home I saw her in her usual nest. Then I went out, called her and she came to the roof of my house. She was back,” Adem said emotionally. Today.
Yaren, probably born in this area, returns every year to nest on the shores of Lake Ulubat and, tired from the long migration from Africa to Turkey, has learned to trust Adem, who continues to spoil her with fish taken directly from the net. “This morning I went out with the boat and she went out with me, she landed where she always lands. I put up the nets and fed her”, Adem told journalists, with the stork immediately flying away when anyone other than his fisherman friend approached.
The news of Yaren’s arrival was welcomed with joy not only by the entire community, but quickly spread around Turkey. However, it is impossible not to notice how, compared to previous years, the stork’s arrival this year occurred much earlier than usual. “I was expecting it in March, but it arrived on the evening of the last day of February. I was very happy,” says Adem.
The environment minister has expressed his desire to equip the chicks that will be born from the eggs this year with rings to monitor migration and a website has been activated for anyone who wants to follow their movements. “For 6 months we see each other every day, I always feed her, even in the afternoon and evening from the garden. Three times a day, also because chicks are born, she needs to eat”, says the fisherman.
While waiting to find a mate, Yaren ‘renovates’ the nest in the meantime and goes out in the morning with Adem, climbing aboard the little boat that bears his same name, Yaren, and stays to keep the elderly fisherman company for a good part of the long journey. and, otherwise solitary, day of work.
A story that did not go unnoticed and which made Yaren probably the most famous stork in the world. Not only birdwatching and photography enthusiasts, more and more tourists take advantage of the summer to visit the village, an oasis of tranquility which is not by chance a nesting place for many birds, where last year a statue portraying Adem and Yaren was also inaugurated . But the story of the stork and the fisherman was also awarded as best documentary at the 2019 Prague festival (“Yaren” directed by Burak Dogansoysal).
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