Last week's Geoje-do birds

A secret valley filled with Yellow-throated Buntings

Half way up Parrotbill Mountain

Parrotbill Mountain

The view from my window - good for lazy gulling!

Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus

Little Grebe Tachybaptus ruficollis

Eurasian Teal Anas crecca

Eurasian Wigeon Anas penelope

Grey Heron Ardea cinerea

Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos

Olive-backed Pipit Anthus hodgsoni

Pale Thrush Turdus pallidus in pale light

Daurian Redstart Phoenicurus auroreus

Warbling (Japanese) White-eye Zosterops japonicus

  The weather for the first couple of weeks in January was unseasonably warm - up to 12° C (53°F) during the day. Here are a few of the birds I ran into on these sunny days. Daurian Redstarts have a habit of leading me down the trail like an impatient spirit guide, creaking their squeaky hinge creak.
  There is a salt-water canal right outside my window, and one of the first things I do every morning is scan the rafts of gulls and ducks for anything interesting.

Vinous-throated Parrotbill, January 12

Vinous-throated Parrotbill Sinosuthera webbiana

Vinous-throated Parrotbill Sinosuthera webbiana (Ilsan, March 2008)

This bird is among the smallest in Korea - just a ping-pong ball-sized fluffball! They rustle through the underbrush on hillsides and reedy ditches in groups of 10-30 like a pack of mice, and they don't sit still very long to pose for pictures. They're pretty common in rural areas all over Korea's mainland (plenty in the hills of Geoje!), but I never encountered any on Jeju.

My first birding excursion on Geoje-do, South Korea - January 9, 2012

The view from my roof - that's a salt-water canal

Plenty of reedbeds scattered around

Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris

Long-billed Plover Charadrius placidus

Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos

Coal Tit Periparus ater

Eastern Great Tit Parus minor

Varied Tit Sittiparus varius

Dog treats in my camera bag from now on? Check.

  I knew my new home on Geoje Island (island is 'do' in Korea, so I live on Geoje-do) was going to be a promising spot for birds when I spotted a Black Kite on the car ride back from Gimhae airport! That's a Korea first for me, by the way. I'm living in Gohyeon which is nestled in coastal valley that boasts a fairly wide range of suitable bird habitat.

   Jet-lagged, I woke at 5 a.m. and walked up a mountain, more of a hill, to watch the sun come up. Seems that's a Korean thing to do. Actually, a non-Korean friend of mine once climbed up the tallest mountain in South Korea at night, naked. He went on about how the dawn wind flowed past his genitals like they were wind chimes. Hippies. So the birds. I was sat up at the top, and a bird wave came and checked me out for a while. Lots of tits. Then a Roe Deer came whipping past me at a distance of about three feet, followed closely by a formidable-looking dog. The dog stopped 50 feet beyond me and looked around, having smelled me I guess. I didn't move an inch, and the dog kept on after the deer. Time to start packing dog treats in my camera bag I see!

  Overall I was impressed by my new patch, as I passed by a harbour, a salt-water canal, fresh-water streams, low mountains, fallow farm fields, marshy wetlands, and massive reedbeds. 

 I spotted 42 species on this walk, including a number of mainland species that were notably infrequent or absent from my Jeju birding trips, such as Long-tailed Tit, Varied Tit, Coal Tit, Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, and Vinous-throated Parrotbill - most part of a vigorous and inquisitive bird wave that enveloped me as I ate breakfast on that mountaintop. In the hills, I also saw a Japanese White-eye, numerous Yellow-throated Buntings, as well as a Dusky Thrush and a Pale Thrush. The harbour and streams are home to many hundreds of Spot-billed Ducks, as well as groups of 20-50 Eurasian Teal, Gadwall, Mallard, Eurasian Wigeon, Common Pochard, Common Goldeneye, and Great Crested Grebe. I spotted a Black-headed Gull in the harbour with the more common gulls, while a lone Cinereous Vulture soared overhead. At a quiet spot on a rocky stream, I was pleased to find five Long-billed Plovers.

Under Construction!

  I'll be working feverishly on this blog for the next week or so, so hopefully it will be fat and happy by February...

Back in Korea...again

Grim, jet-lagged zombie, wandering through the hills in search of tits...

Feeding the chickadees with Dan when life was simple

  So I'm back in Korea, yet again, and it's time to go birding. I've got a lot of bird-ventures to put up here from the past few years, and not just Korea, so expect a geographical and chronological nightmare! Here's a thumbnail sketch of Matt Poll the birder:

  I grew up in Montreal in the 1980's, and loved birds from the time my first grade teacher made my class write a letter to Ottawa asking the government to help ban the DDTs that were killing Ospreys. One of my first memories is of my father pointing out a Nighthawk diving and shrieking through the summer sky at dusk. Not too common a sight these days in Montreal, unfortunately. Back then my friend Dan and I used to tag along with his parents on countless birding field trips with the PQSPB (now the BPQ - Bird Protection Quebec). I'm afraid in our youthful exuberance we used piss all the adult birders off by running ahead in our search for 'cute' birds. So after being moderately interested in birding for a few years, I forgot all about birds for 15 years when I decided it would be better to grow out my hair and become a rock star. Oops.

  Flash forward to 2005, when my interest in birding was rekindled in a huge way one summer day in a narrow valley in Gimpo, South Korea. I was there teaching English to Korean kids that enjoyed nothing more it seemed than sneezing and coughing in my face constantly. I had a habit of ‘hiding’ on the roof of my school during breaks, to avoid getting assigned busy work by an overzealous boss. Leaning over the edge of the roof staring dreamily at a small farmer’s field, a Black-naped Oriole flew fast me at a distance of 20 feet, perched in a tree, and started mewling loudly. I was intrigued, and instantly angry at myself for not knowing what I was looking at. 

  On my next trip into Seoul, I picked up a copy of Birds of Korea, and jumped right in. I read it obsessively, and quickly began checking off the more common birds I was seeing around my neighborhood. I loved the fact that in Korea there was a whole different cast of bird characters compared to the birds I saw in Canada, yet many were strangely familiar nonetheless. 

   Another unique aspect about birding in Korea was the relative isolation. In North America and Europe, the number of birders per square mile is relatively high when compared to the relatively unbirded wilds of Asia. In Korea, your patch can be pretty darn big - I had the largest island in South Korea almost to myself, birdwise, for 2.5 years, for better or worse! Over the past few years, I have become increasingly involved with birding in Korea, and have met some great people because of it. I've also had to face some grim truths.

  Unfortunately, Korea's wild habitats are being consumed by thoughtless and voracious development on all fronts, and I fear the place will be one solid slab of concrete from the DMZ to Mara-do in 20 years. I would highly recommend contributing to and following the work of Birds Korea (www.birdskorea.org), an organization that works tirelessly to help document and combat habitat loss in South Korea.

  I'll be putting up all of my new birding tales from my latest Korean sojourn, as well as 'classic' stuff from my previous five years in Korea. I'll also put up some of my recent birding trips in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, so be prepared for a lot of discontinuity.

  I'm an amateur birder, and this is a work in progress, so keep that in mind if (when) I mis-name a subspecies! If you're reading this, then I wish you excellent birding and a peaceful new year.

"Historical post" - Jeju Island, June 2011

Fairy Pitta Pitta nympha

Jens finds his Fairy Pitta, thanks to Youngho

Scrambling through mosquito valley

Exploring a shamanistic site deep in the forest

Dolharubang - one of Jeju's iconic stone grandfathers

An older iteration

Spot the Pacific Reef Egrets

Looking north towards the mainland

Birding lunch of champions - ahlbap

Jens, super stoked to be eating ahlbap (note the kettle of makkeoli on the table)

Jeju Island, June 5-6 2011
  Several weeks before leaving Jeju (for the first time), I had the pleasure of guiding a visiting Danish birder around Jeju, in his quest for the rarest of avian jewels, a Fairy Pitta. Jens Thalund, one of the best birders in Denmark (in my opinion), is from Esbjerg, a small town I’ve actually visited, so we had a good chuckle about the situational symmetry of that.
  We met up in Seogwipo on the 5th and I scooted him out to a reliable location for Fairy Pittas near an ephemeral forest waterfall…well, reliable until ‘they’ ripped up the woods in order to construct a parking lot (and related infrastructure) large enough to accommodate the endless parade of Chinese tour buses that make the financial wheels of Jeju go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round. We sat on boulders in a dry riverbed for several hours, and heard a Fairy Pitta calling, but didn’t end up seeing one. The next day was kinder to us, here’s what I wrote at the time:
  Denmark is a cool place. They dump mayonnaise on pizza, make bleak yet hopeful statues, have a strict etiquette when it comes to sandwich condiments - and let's not forget the singular Tuborg Green. On Friday morning I met up with a Danish birder and we staked out my secret spot for five hours waiting for a Fairy Pitta that didn't show. Then on Saturday we met up with my Korean birding bud Youngho for some valley-climbing birdventures. Well, first we were hijacked and taken to the back room of a museum where we were pressed into service helping a Korean guy sort through some tricky bird IDs for a book he's putting together. He thanked us by taking us out for an awesome lunch and makkeoli. Life is hard.
  The meal was dolsot (hot bowl) ahlbap, which is a solid Korean peasant meal. It even looks healthy. Usually there's an egg mashed in, but in this case there were a bunch of fish eggs dumped in instead (the orange stuff on the rice) - I'll miss ahlbap. Makkeoli is a fizzy, earthy rice alcohol, and you're meant to drink it out of bowls. Some of my classier friends drink it straight from the plastic bleach-looking bottles. Personally, I've never been a big fan, but it's pretty good with lunch, especially when lunch is secretly breakfast. The Danish guy reminded me of Dr. House. He got his Pitta, in a humid valley filled with rude mosquitoes that were after my sweet sweet blood.

Foggypo

What a park should look like

One of my two favoured haunts in Seogwipo

Soaking up the Japanese White-eyes

My other riverside park - I usually had the place to myself in the mornings

The spot where I ran into a Zappey's Flycatcher

Almost stepped on this tiny but dangerous Ussuri Mamushi Pitviper Gloydius blomhoffi

Brown-eared Bulbul Hypsipetes amaurotis

Bulbul vomit

  During my last month on Jeju Island (well, until 2013), I took leisurely, unemployed strolls through my favourite Seogwipo parks, which were, at that time, notable for their ‘wildness’. Green riots of weeds and underbrush lined the riverbanks, home to countless species of flora and fauna. This was in contrast to what has become the norm in Korea these days when it comes to riverbanks – concrete paths topped in rubber matting, trimmed with guardrails – all ecological benefits scraped off and sanitized, in the name of keeping the construction industry going, I suppose.
  I also had an experience with a Jikbakguri - here were my thoughts at the time: 

  This Brown-eared Bulbul perched right outside my window for about 15 minutes, keeping out of the rain. It saw me see it see me, but was smart enough to know that I was on the other side of the window. Another bulbul perched above the original one, and after a while they both opened their bills and puked out some large seeds onto my aircon. How rude. They also shit on it. Bulbulshit. There appears to be a wide assortment of alarming and random stuff on my aircon. It's raining.

(*Note: This is a “historical post.” Whereas I started birding in Korea in 2005, this blog has only been active since early 2012 - these posts are an attempt to consolidate my early birdventures from the various blogs and websites where they reside, largely from the “Archived Bird News“ section of Birds Korea’s excellent website: http://www.birdskorea.org/Birds/Birdnews/BK-BN-Birdnews-archive.shtml. Find more historical posts by clicking on the "Historical posts" tab at the bottom of this post.)