WATERCOCK! WATERCOCK!

Watercock Gallicrex cinerea

Black-faced Spoonbill Platalea minor

Grey-backed Thrush Turdus hortulorum

Dragon Swallowtail Sericinus montela koreanus

Part of the Samneung Tomb park

Gongneung Reservoir, noisy with major
infrastructure work all the way around

Everything gets prickly when you're within sight of North Korea

The ever-shrinking kingdom of the Watercocks

Paju, June 6, 2023

   On the 6th, I undertook two circuits of the Samneung Tomb compound in Paju, and had a long hike around the (adjacent yet difficult to get to) Gongneung Reservoir, all in search of Ruddy Kingfishers. No luck, of course. Birdcurse! Plenty of Grey-backed Thrush around, as well as little black insects that like to hover an inch in front of eyeballs. A Fairy Pitta was heard singing once. It seemed like every valley around the area was stacked with endless, dirty little factories.

Paju, June 7, 2023

  Another couple of go-arounds at the Samneung Tombs, and still no sign of a Ruddy Kingfisher. The whole set-up there felt wrong to see the shy species: the 9am entry time, the fact that the hills between the tombs and the reservoir were mostly fenced-off, the noisy construction going on at the reservoir, and the seemingly constant landscaping at the tombs. I'm betting that the Ruddys spend most of their time in the woods around the reservoir, only occasionally being heard by folks over the hill at the tombs. Good for them, I say. All of that helped me solidify my decision to bail after two days.

  So I jumped into a cab and headed west until I got to the river, in search of Watercocks. A really kind woman in the only restaurant for miles let me dump my backpack there while I birded. Thanks, kind woman!

  I skirted some hills and walked towards a set of rice fields just south of where the Gongneuncheon Stream empties into the confluence of the Han and Imjin Rivers. With North Korea visible on the near horizon, there was a lot of South Korean military build-up around the rice fields. At one point, I bumbled around a bend on a quiet, leafy trail, and startled a couple of young soldiers in a guard post. My binos, long-lensed camouflaged camera, and green boonie hat didn’t do much to help put them at ease, I reckon. One stared at me open-mouthed, while the other one got twitchy. I gave them a goofy smile and walked away, quickly. Guess it worked.

  Watercocks resemble Moorhens on steroids. They are now very scarce in South Korea, like so many bird species that adapted to the ‘old fashioned’ rhythms and habitat associated with agriculture. They like quiet rice fields with extensive wild and brushy edges – a situation that is increasingly hard to find in modern South Korea. I'm pretty sure I glimpsed the species twice when I lived in Suncheon, but a glimpse is not good enough to tick, in my book.

  After an hour’s meander through the rice fields, I heard a ghostly, guttural gulping, very faintly. Or did I? I headed towards the sound, and it got louder. I spent 15 minutes making my way closer to the bizarre song of a Watercock, but I didn’t see it, in spite of constant binocular scans of the field edges. And then I did. It was a little blue-black blob, two fields over, with a flash of red and yellow at the pointy end.

  “WATERCOCK! WATERCOCK!” I whisper-screamed to no one. It looked just like the illustration in the field guide I’d stared at longingly for years…only a little smaller. I skulked over towards the bird, and got some fairly distant record shots, but I’m proud of how distant and grainy my pics are. I gave the bird its space, then backed off, but not before the SUV photog crowd noticed me and swooped into action.

  And now a cranky note on some of the photogs I encountered at both spots in Paju. I wish that someone would include a little booklet with every new 600mm lens about the ethics of using playback on breeding birds (rare or otherwise). It would be short and simple, and say something along the lines of “Hi! Congratulations on your purchase of this fine Japanese lens. Please don’t incessantly harass breeding birds by blaring playback in the name of getting a cool picture with it. Just don’t. Thanks. The end.”

  Anyway, many thanks to Mike W for coming with me on the first day at the tombs, and to Tim, Leslie, and Subho, for showing me dots on maps, and for rooting for me to find my long-awaited lifers. Watercock!