Big Sunday

Long-eared Owl Asio otus with Eurasian Magpie Pica pica

Long-eared Owl Asio otus with Eurasian Magpie Pica pica
and Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos

Long-eared Owl Asio otus

Long-eared Owl Asio otus

Amur Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis euptilura

Amur Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis euptilura

Pechora Pipit Anthus gustavi

Pechora Pipit Anthus gustavi

Northern Lapwing Vanellus vanellus

Eurasian Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus, and a Skylark's final flight

Korean Water Deer Hydropotes inermis

Ruddy-breasteed Crake spot

  The original plan was river on Saturday, lake on Sunday…and then the smog settled heavy on Gangneung. Not your average springtime ‘yellow Gobi sand from China tainted with industrial heavy metals’-type smog. This was ‘South Korea built 12+ new coal plants in the past five years’ brand of insidious, invisible toxicity. Yay. So I stayed in all day with the windows shut, and still got sick. Time to make an air purifier. Anyhow, I went to bed with a burr in my bustle, and vague notions of taking a bus to a mountain on Sunday. When I woke at 4:30am with a case of the smogthroat, the eye of the tiger took over and I decided to stay awake and hit the river and lake hard. And hard they were hit. 

  The day got off to an auspicious start with a dawn Saunders’s Gull near my house – gotta pick through those Black-headed! Also near my departure point was a group of the ‘local’ Red-billed Starlings. Another flock of 60+ seems to hang out west of Gyeongpo Lake.
  The seven-hour walk netted 55 species, and my Gangneung list blew well past 100. It was feeling wintery, species-wise, and the weather changed its mind a dozen times. I picked up a solid tally of personal Gangneung firsts, including Common Goldeneye, Common Merganser, Hooded Crane (three in flight near the lake headed southeast), Northern Lapwing (meow!), and Pechora (late?) and Olive-backed Pipits in the same field – how’s that for an impromptu ID quiz?

  Hard to single out a top moment on such a dynamic day, but two Long-eared Owls being mobbed by a pack of corvids checks all the boxes. The drama played out at a quiet spot I don't often visit. One of the owls remained perched and unchallenged the whole time, and it seemed that the second owl was trying to draw the mob away from it. Intense!
  Later, a Water Rail flushed in a reedy ditch with a wet gasp, and I couldn’t get a second look, in spite of an hour-long ‘ass in mud’ crake-out. I’m assuming it was an Eastern, but there was a Western spotted in Gangneung a few years back…nahhhh.
  The day ended with one more Rallidae surprise, when a crake flushed from beside a reedy reservoir and flew low to a nearby clump of reeds. I got quick but decent bino looks, and the bird was most certainly a Ruddy-breasted Crake. The plain, solidly monochrome colouration on the upperparts was a good hint. The facts that I didn’t notice what should have been vibrant red legs and that it was a bit more straw-coloured than the bloody-ruddy I would have expected worried me for a bit. A look at online images showed that some first-year birds show drab legs and overall plumage, so that helped seal the deal. Incidentally, this is the spot where Younghwan mentioned that the species is an annual nester, so I guess this was a late young bird.
  No wait, the day actually ended with cracking close views of an Amur Leopard Cat – finally! Of course I had the camera on the wrong setting when the cat was within ten feet of me, and only figured out my gaffe when that distance had trebled. No matter, I still got great looks – gorgeous.
  Oh, I also think I saw some Chinese and Uzbek construction fellers chasing Korean Water Deer around several different farm fields. Weeeeeeird. Reminds me of the time I found a heap of deer faces when I lived on Geoje-do.