TARGET 070801

It's for the birds!


Bird tower in Iran

Ancient ingenuity has created some of the oddest and astounding (and also some of the most effective) works of mankind. The tower shown above is a place which is full of small nesting places for birds. These nesting places have been carefully sculpted and organized for the maximum housing of birds.
Inside
Why would someone build such a place? Out of the love for birds? No, out of necessity. The nesting places fill with bird droppings, which can then be harvested and used as some of the most excellent fertilizer for crops. The birds do not require feeding, as they eat the insects and small rodents which would otherwise plague the land. So, the tower performs the second duty of providing pest control.

The photo above shows a tower which is centuries old, and was made by poorer farmers and tribesmen. More elaborate versions exist among the more wealthy, and can, in fact, become quite elaborate, as the interiors shown below, would indicate.
Interior
This birdhouse is located in Mybode, a tiny (not even on the map) village near Yazd, Iran, and is the one which will be used for the map dowsing for this site. The one shown at the top of the page could not be adequately researched for an exact location.
Harvesting
One fact of a farmer's life still remains, though. Sooner or later, somemeone has to shovel the stuff. When Farmer Brown complains about cleaning out the cow pens, he should hold the following picture clearly in mind, and count his blessings. In the bird towers, the only way to get to the stuff in the nests is to hang suspended inside the tower and dig, but in this case, with your hands.

Photos and information on the bird towers of Iran are very difficult to find, and indeed, the bare bit of information shown here came only after hours of research. The first picture shown came from an old National Geographic article on Iran, and the rest of the photos came from personal blogs of travelers and tourists. Those blogs can be found at the following web siter:

Daniel Laeng's blog, "Overland from Switzerland to someplace warmer"

Lucy's TravelPod




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