13 years in the past, a poor fisherman in a small Turkish village was retrieving his web from a lake when he heard a noise behind him and turned to discover a majestic being standing on the bow of his rowboat.
Gleaming white feathers coated its head, neck and chest, yielding to black plumes on its wings. It stood atop skinny orange legs that just about matched the colour of its lengthy, pointy beak.
The fisherman, Adem Yilmaz, acknowledged it as one of many white storks that had lengthy summered within the village, he recalled, however he had by no means seen one so shut, a lot much less hosted one on his boat.
Questioning if it was hungry, he tossed it a fish, which the chicken devoured. He tossed one other. And one other.
So started an unlikely story of man and chicken that has captivated Turkey because the passing years — and a deft social media marketing campaign by a neighborhood nature photographer — have unfold the pair’s story as a modern-day fable of cross-species friendship.
The stork, nicknamed Yaren, or “companion,” in Turkish, not solely returned to Mr. Yilmaz’s boat repeatedly that first yr, the fisherman mentioned, however after migrating south for the winter, returned the following spring to the identical village, the identical nest — and the identical boat.
Final month, after Yaren appeared within the village for the thirteenth yr in a row, the native information media gleefully coated his arrival just like the springtime sighting of a Turkish Punxsutawney Phil.
The pair’s story has introduced surprising fame, though no critical fortune, to Mr. Yilmaz, 70, and Yaren, estimated to be 17. They’ve co-starred in a kids’s e book and an award-winning documentary. A kids’s journey film that includes a cameo by Mr. Yilmaz (and a digital rendering of the stork) is anticipated to debut in cinemas throughout Turkey this yr.
Stork lovers in every single place can watch Yaren and his accomplice, Nazli, or “coquette” in Turkish, as they preen, contort their necks, clack their beaks, renovate their nest and sometimes mate, because of a 24-hour webcam arrange by the native authorities.
“This isn’t a story. This can be a true story,” Ali Ozkan, the mayor of Karacabey, whose district contains the village, mentioned in an interview. “It’s a true story with the flavour of a story.”
The chicken’s celeb has bolstered municipal efforts to extend native tourism with strolling paths and low retailers close to the district’s lakes and wetlands, he mentioned. The world has developed a stork “grasp plan” to look after the birds.
He initially confronted some criticism from constituents who puzzled why a mayor was getting concerned with storks, he mentioned. However now, residents name in once they discover broken nests, and a good friend from one other metropolis lately phoned him to complain that he couldn’t see Yaren on the webcam.
The story has put Mr. Yilmaz’s village of Eskikaraagac — inhabitants 235 — on the map, drawing teams of scholars and vacationers who stroll its slim streets to see the storks and take boat rides on neighboring Lake Uluabat. Many guests hunt down Yaren’s nest, which sits on a platform atop an electrical pole close to Mr. Yilmaz’s home, and act star-struck once they encounter the fisherman himself, peppering him with questions and posing for pictures.
One current morning, Mr. Yilmaz stood within the yard of his small, two-story home holding a bath of fish he had caught. Of their nest overhead, Yaren and Nazli dozed, groomed themselves and stuffed the air with the percussive clacking of their beaks.
“Yaren!” Mr. Yilmaz known as.
Each birds glided right down to the yard, and Mr. Yilmaz lofted fish into their beaks.
“They’re full,” Mr. Yilmaz introduced after the birds had downed about two dozen fish. “After 13 years, I can inform.”
Storks have lengthy nested within the village, arriving within the spring and mating earlier than migrating within the late summer season towards Africa.
Village elders recall when there gave the impression to be a stork nest on each roof and residents struggled to stop the birds from swiping laundry from out of doors traces. However most individuals preferred the birds, whose arrival proper after pink flowers bloomed on the almond timber was a harbinger of spring.
Ridvan Cetin, the village’s elected authority, mentioned a depend within the Eighties discovered 41 lively nests, that means 82 storks, not together with chicks.
This yr, the village has solely 4 lively nests, together with Yaren’s.
“Now they’re only a few,” Mr. Cetin mentioned sadly.
Nobody within the village may recall a bond just like that between Mr. Yilmaz and Yaren.
“I’ve by no means seen something prefer it,” Mr. Cetin mentioned.
For Mr. Yilmaz, a quiet man with leathery palms and a sort, rutted face, Yaren was a serendipitous addition to what he had hoped can be a late, restful chapter in an in any other case tough life.
He grew up poor. His father pulled him out of college to work within the fields and fish, regardless of how chilly the climate.
“My life was between the sector and the lake,” he mentioned.
His mom died when he was 13. His father remarried when he was 17 to a lady Mr. Yilmaz didn’t like. So, with solely an elementary college schooling, he fled to Bursa, the closest huge metropolis, and labored in a manufacturing unit that made yogurt and different milk merchandise.
At 19, he married one other villager he had identified since childhood. They misplaced their first baby, a daughter, weeks after her beginning. He labored in numerous milk factories as he and his spouse raised three different kids, two boys and a woman.
In 2011, together with his kids grown and residing elsewhere together with his 5 grandchildren, he stopped working, returned to the village and moved again into his childhood residence, subsequent to the lake the place he had fished as a baby.
“It was my dream from the day I began working to go to my village and fish,” he mentioned.
Quickly after, the stork landed on his boat.
Every time Yaren left, Mr. Yilmaz puzzled whether or not he would return. However after a number of years, he stopped worrying.
“I used to be positive that so long as I used to be alive, this chicken was going to return,” he mentioned.
Early on, nobody a lot cared that Mr. Yilmaz had made pals with a stork. Different villagers teased him or mentioned he was losing his time — and his fish.
That modified in yr 5, when Alper Tuydes, a hunter turned wildlife photographer who works for the native authorities, started sharing pictures of the pair on social media. The story unfold, getting a raise every spring with Yaren’s arrival.
The connection of man and chicken corresponds with identified stork behaviors, mentioned Omer Donduren, a Turkish ornithologist.
Though storks keep away from direct contact with folks, they typically roost close to them, on roofs, in chimneys or atop electrical energy poles.
The birds have a tendency towards monogamy and show loyalty to their nests, parting methods with their companions emigrate, however rendezvousing in the identical nest within the spring to breed.
That might clarify why Yaren has roosted close to Mr. Yilmaz’s home yr after yr, Mr. Donduren mentioned.
Storks, which might dwell for greater than 20 years within the wild and greater than 30 in captivity, even have sturdy reminiscences, enabling them to recollect migration routes from as far north as Poland and Germany to locations many hundreds of miles south, so far as South Africa. It’s unclear the place Yaren spends his time after he leaves the village, however a tracker affixed to certainly one of his offspring adopted the chicken over Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic earlier than it stopped working.
Over time, Yaren’s experiences with Mr. Yilmaz have most likely turn out to be a part of his reminiscence, he mentioned.
“Nature doesn’t have a lot area for feelings,” Mr. Donduren mentioned. “For the stork, it’s a matter of straightforward meals. It thinks, There may be a straightforward supply of meals right here. This man appears protected. He doesn’t harm me.”
Mr. Yilmaz’s clarification is far easier.
“It’s simply to like an animal,” he mentioned. “They’re God’s creatures.”
One current morning, Mr. Yilmaz rowed into the lake and pulled up his web, dropping small fish into the boat.
“Yaren!” he known as.
The stork took flight, did a loop to surveil the boat and perched on a lamppost close to the financial institution.
“Yaren!” Mr. Yilmaz known as once more.
The chicken took flight once more, lastly alighting on the boat, the place Mr. Yilmaz tossed him fish after fish.
After some time, the stork lifted off, glided across the village and returned to his nest.
“That’s it,” Mr. Yilmaz mentioned with a glad smile. “He’s full.”
