Gapyeong, June 1-2 2023

Great Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major

Black-naped Oriole Oriolus chinensis

Marsh Tit Poecile palustris

Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea

Striated Heron Butorides striata

Little Egret Egretta garzetta

A colony of White-cheeked Starling Spodiopsar cineraceus

Asian Swallowtail Papilio Xuthus 

Purple Emperor Apatura iris

Siberian Chipmunk Eutamias sibiricus

Old fighting positions in the hills above town

All aboard the boat to Crazytown!

A photography club heads off in search of Tawny Owls
on Nami Island

  The first of June was a long travel day that saw me end up in Gapyeong, east of Seoul. At dusk, I took a walk into the the hills where perhaps Ruddy Kingfishers were heard several short years ago. It was not a productive walk, bird-wise. A new hotel and restaurant in the valley below were pumping out loud music into the once quiet hills. Later I found several weathered military dugouts atop a ridge above town – perhaps dug by Canadian troops during the Battle of Gapyeong in 1951…or maybe they were more recent excavations?

  On June 2, I took the short ferry trip to the bizarre tourist trap that is Nami Island. The Ruddy Kingfishers that used to nest on the island have been effectively extirpated by naughty photographers, and the remaining Black Woodpeckers there seem headed the same way. Three Eastern Tawny Owls (two young birds and one adult) were also drawing an attentive crowd.

  After Nami, several Striated Heron and Little Egret worked a riverbank near my weird hotel. A colony of White-cheeked Starlings buzzed and burbled along a brushy riverbank. There were juvenile birds begging in every tree, and there had to have been at least 150 birds there, probably more.