The Mystery of the Relict Habitat / Adventure at Thunder Cape...

Black Swallowtail Papilio polyxenes

Cooper’s Hawk Accipiter cooperii

Woodchuck/Groundhog Marmota monax

Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis

  ...and other Hardy Boys classics. For the past several weeks I have been investigating credible reports of several birds in the NDG area that must for now remain unmentioned. That is because there are no records of this species in the central area of Montreal for at least the past century, and I don't want to be labelled a whack-job. If I can secure evidence of these birds, it could indicate a small, unknown relict population - exciting! It's not exactly an Ivory-billed Woodpecker level of excitement, but it's enough to get me out of bed. I'll find them.

Thunder Cape Bird Observatory (photo from their website)

  In other news, in a few days I'm headed off to windy shores of Lake Superior to spend a month or two at the remote Thunder Cape Bird Observatory (near Thunder Bay). That oughta be an experience and a half, I'm well chuffed.

http://www.tbfn.net/thunder-cape-bird-observatory

Motorcycle birding haiku(s)

Iced Suncheon fingers (Daelim Daystar)

Lost at sunset on Geoje (Daelim VS)

Halla-san hovers (Daelim Magma)

Bike birding is tops
No licence is no problem
Don't crash when birds pass

Skymeat / Eating Black Wood Pigeon

Typically spartan minbak accommodations

My nightly 'Shiksa', note the dreaded extra bowl of rice on the right - I begged Granny to stop

Spicy fish head soup - sears the gut

Black Wood Pigeon Columba janthina (near threatened)

(Here are two more brief excerpts from my thingy I'm working on:)

Tuesday: Spicy fish head soup, rice, kimchi

Wednesday: Spicy fish head soup (with extra heads), rice, kimchi

Thursday: Spicy fish head soup, rice, kimchi

Friday: Spicy fish head soup (super spicy today), rice, kimchi

Saturday: Leftovers

  Thus read my daily dinner menu for the last week of April 2013, while I was staying at the grottiest little inn South Korea had to offer. The meals were prepared by the gruff-bordering-on-friendly curly-permed lady that ran the place. For most of my three-week stay, I was the sole guest at the minbak, and the woman doted on me like I was the last grandson on Earth. This was sweet, but not always conducive to a relaxing meal.
  Minbaks, Korea’s ubiquitous rural dwellings, are essentially hotels without beds, or indeed most other amenities traditionally associated with the hospitality industry. Like soap, for example, or a dependable hot water supply (minbaks are also known to be reliable homes for fiendishly outsized spiders that hide out in shoes). Despite these privations, I absolutely loved staying in minbaks, as they were unpretentious, easy, and cheap – just one grimy step above camping.

...

  I am no fan of fried chicken. It’s the kind of uninspiring fare I will end up eating maybe once a year, socially. Koreans have come to love the stuff. There are grubby little “Hof and Chicken” places pocked throughout Korean cities, where one can find a half-dozen chain-smoking Korean men in their forties slumped over wobbly tables, gargling back pitchers of watery beer and baskets of heinous fried chicken. The chicken is extra greasy by Western standards, and always includes one horrid bendy neck piece, just to throw a wildcard into the mix. The widespread ritual of eating fried chicken and drinking beer (mekju) has spawned its own Konglish compound word: chimek. As in, let's go for chimek tonight.
  On Gageo Island, there are precisely three restaurants...sort of. The mainstays are the two minbaks that dish out spicy shiksa to hungry guests. Shiksa means “meal”, and after eating my potent fish head soup and kimchi for a week, I had had enough. To make matters worse, Granny had taken to bringing me two bowls of the standard nutritionless and bloaty white rice with my shiksa. Two bloody bowls! On my first night I made the mistake of telling her that I was very hungry, in my cutesy, broken Korean, and from then on, she insisted on bringing me an extra bowl of rice, ignoring my earnest and repeated protests.
  Spicy fish head soup is fine for someone so omnivorous and cosmopolitan (har har) as myself, but not every night for three weeks. I was growing weary of staring into the dead eyes in my bowl, then running up and firing off lava lasers (there’s an old Korean joke about how eating too much spicy food makes one’s arse look like the Japanese flag). I noticed the third restaurant on the isle was a fried chicken place which looked open, but I could never find anyone inside that was willing to serve me food. The first time I walked past, I wrinkled my nose and headed off for my nightly fish head soup and too much rice. After a while, the idea of eating something other than shiksa started to overwhelm my disdain for fried chicken. So, for a week I popped my head through the door and enquired about getting a plate of crispy necks. On the uncommon occasions when someone was present, I was repeatedly shooed away with a sighs and a dismissive “Yea OK OK, later later,” in Korean.
  Word must have gotten around that I was after fried chicken, because a few days later, Head Honcho and his cop sidekick, along with four other unsavory, puffy-faced Korean guys summoned me over to their table in my minbak’s dining area. They had a large turquoise plastic basket of fried chicken sitting between them, and were all beery smiles and glassy eyes.
  “Sit down and eat, and drink beer with us!” they urged. Amicable shoulder-slapping and a short flurry of broken Konglish ensued, as we exchanged skeletal life resumes over beer and fried chicken.
  Or...was it chicken? The pieces seemed smaller than your average fried chicken bits, and the meat was a touch on the dark and gamey side. After tucking suspiciously into my third piece, I offered: “This is good...chicken?”
  Titters and quick knowing glances around the table. The drunkest of the red-faced man-o-lanterns blurted out: “No no! Chicken nooo! San! Bidulgi! San-bidulgi!”, while pointing his thumb up through the wall in the general direction of the mountain ridge that forms the backbone of the island. San, in this case, means mountain, and bildulgi means pigeon.
  Mountain pigeon. I am eating Mountain Pigeon. I stopped chewing the wad of meat that was in my mouth, apprehension flushing heat into my cheeks. The only pigeons up on the mountain were Black Wood Pigeons, a near-threatened species. This was by no means a common species (a “Wow!” bird, in South Korea), and was confined to breeding on small, lightly inhabited offshore islands. And here I was on a small, lightly inhabited offshore island...eating one?
  “Muhhhhhh...?” I said. The cop and another guy laughed nervously, and tried to brush the man’s comment out of the air with the power of their sweeping hand motions, then made “He’s crazy” finger-spinning-next-to-head gestures. Head Honcho leaned back and hissed something into Drunkest Guy’s ear about me being a “bird person”, and the subject was changed clumsily over to the weather, with uneasy smiles all around.
  I laughed it off as though I believed their wavering denials, but I quietly spit out the mouthful I was chewing into a napkin and retired soon thereafter to my room, holding my theatrically full belly and backslapping my way out of the dining room. Holy shit I just ate Black Wood Pigeon! I despaired as I slunk off to bed.
  Ah, Korea, the land where they fry up endangered birds and feed them to visiting birders. I headed into the hills the next day, watching the few Black Wood Pigeons I came across with a careful new eye. I silently exhorted them to be more wary of people (they are a skittish species to begin with), while hoping they couldn’t somehow sense traces of their kin on my morning breath and fingernails.
  I wish this scene had a more satisfying resolution - a Scooby-Doo style ending that saw the hangdog perpetrators being cuffed dockside while I stood there with arms folded and a satisfied smirk on my face. “We’d have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for that darn meddling foreigner!” But that didn’t happen. I relayed my story to fellow birders, but they were strangely dismissive of the tale. Perhaps they didn’t want to believe it, or simply felt that I had read the situation incorrectly. Maybe I had. Or, maybe there’s a secretive Kentucky-fried Wood Pigeon-eating subculture operating on Gageo Island, obfuscated by a shady island Omertà. Only the Wood Pigeons know the truth I suppose.

Moonshine Shaman on Gageo Island

The Makkeoli Shaman sorting roots, with his sacred green boulder visible behind

The shaman's magical makkeoli moonshine

Recharged and tipsy

One of few remaining inhabited houses in 2-Gu 

Most 2-Gu houses are in this state

Looking northwest towards 2-Gu from Gageo Island's halfway point

Craggy tip of 2-Gu

The Shaman's neighbourhood

Looking down into 2-Gu

Bustling downtown 2-Gu, creepy abandoned school looming above

The steep road back up from 2-Gu - The shaman lived among the cliffs to the left, just out of frame

 (While on the subject of benevolent mystics, here's another snippet from a writing project I've been working on...)

  In addition to the smiling offers of free coffee that abounded in town after the abduction(http://snowyowllost.blogspot.ca/2016/04/abducted-by-korean-fellow.html) , one example of Gageo hospitality stands above the rest. During my second week, I made the lengthy (about 10 kilometres up and down the steepest of inclines) hike to the island’s second largest town, 2-Gu (pronounced “goo”). This place was lifted from a Hitchcock film. Clinging to a coastal cathedral of wind-whipped spires and crags, the “town” consisted of little more than a two-boat harbour, a herd of brazen brown cliff cows, a creepy deserted school from the 1940s, one seafood restaurant, and about ten houses, most of which were rotting into the weeds. It was a humid day, and after my two-hour slog, I was shattered and sweat-drenched. But after re-checking the day’s wind forecast, I knew that this was where and when I wanted to be, bird-wise. Situated in Gageo’s northwest armpit, the wind-beaten uplands of 2-Gu were a perfect migrant trap. This was the spot to search for bunched-up migrating birds as they rallied for their continued northward voyage.
  Wiping sweat from my brow, I gingerly wended my way up a narrow cliff-top trail, scanning through each weedy patch in search of movement. I didn’t find much, as the coastal winds kept most birds to cover. After an unproductive hour-long probe of the cliff tops above town, I started back towards 2-Gu, and the punishing return walk to 1-Gu that awaited.
  As I passed the last abandoned old house before the trail to town widened, I saw that it wasn’t in fact abandoned. An old man was hunched over a battered aluminium tub, amidst a jumble of lumber, junk, and dozens of large plastic vats and baskets. He was pulling apart roots and throwing the good bits into the tub when my arrival jarred him from his trance-like routine. A medley of surprise, curiosity, and calm hospitality played across his face in the span of a second, and he rose slowly to greet me.
  After introductions, I learned that he was the island’s lone remaining shaman. He revealed that he had lived in this remotest of outposts since he was young enough to remember when the dilapidated school still echoed with the voices of fishermen’s children. In a scenario that was the gentle opposite of the abduction, he graciously bade me into his cluttered, stone-walled courtyard. I sat on the warm ground while the shaman scampered inside. He returned laden with modest refreshments, which he laid out on a small table. I gratefully ate the fresh spiced greens from metal bowls, but the best was yet to come. He produced a green plastic bottle of homemade makkeoli, and poured me a tall cup, then a smaller one for himself.
  Makkeoli (pronounce it without the “e”) is a rice-based alcohol commonly associated with Korea’s working class. Viscous and milky with a nutty, fizzy mouthfeel, I never cottoned to the stuff, as it gave me instantaneous headaches, and I just didn’t get it. But this was unlike any store-bought makkeoli I had ever reluctantly sipped. The shaman’s brew was thick and chunky, and tinged an unappetizing purplish-brown, but it was finest libation I had ever drunk, hands down. It was ice cold and tasted like glorious root beer yogurt, and as it flowed down my throat I was charged with a gust of superhuman vitality and calmness. I necked down several glasses of the exquisite elixir, while gleaning further fragments of the shaman’s life story.
  It seems the shaman had selected the location for his residence because of its proximity to a sacred rock. The jagged green spire of granite, the highest feature on that section of cliff, loomed 40 feet overhead. The rear of his house appeared to grow organically from the impressive vine-covered monolith, and in that perfect instant I had no reason to doubt his claim that the place was imbued with supernatural properties.
  When it was time to part ways, I told him of my distant destination, which elicited a raised eyebrow. As I headed back out through the gate, he slipped me another, smaller bottle of the magical makkeoli.
  “If you’re walking all the way back to 1-Gu, you’ll be needing this,” he smiled.
  I like to think this shaman’s smile did more than warm my ornery heart. Perhaps he was to thank for the outrageously fortunate chain of avian events that transpired on Gago in the week that followed our encounter.

Failing with the Finns

Freezing my damn hands off at Seongsan Ilchulbong Sunrise Peak (and test-driving some real binoculars)

Minutes before disaster

My lamentable redneck Bushnells

  (Click here for the prelude to this post:
 http://snowyowllost.blogspot.ca/2014/10/we-want-you-on-team-sisu.html)

  While the Finns all had flashy Swarovski and Zeiss optics strapped to their Finnsticks, I was using a pair of redneck-camouflaged Bushnells that I had plucked out of the “50% off” basket at Canadian Tire. They weren’t terrible at first, but I’m rough with my gear, and by then they were in sorry condition. The two barrels were no longer synced up, or “dejumelee”, as the French say (binoculars are known as jumelles in French, which means “twins” - so my bins had become “de-twinned”).
  During a lull, I made the mistake of asking to look though Nial’s pair of Swarovskis. The instant confidence and lens envy they instilled in me was dramatic. It felt like birds could no longer hide from me. With just a gentle twist of the focus knob, impenetrable layers of foliage melted away. I was omnipotent! Spartacus! Spart...oh yes, here are your bins back, Nial. Dammit, I needed to get me some Swaros.
  To further truncate my optics stature in the eyes of the Finns, the strap mounts on my bins were broken, and the strap itself had been fraying to threads for months. Instead of trying to fix it all properly, I had been emergency mending it with a growing collection of safety pins, zip-ties, strips of duct tape, and even a rogue staple or two.
  The strap situation came to a head while we were on Jeju’s northeast coast, near the iconic Seongsan Ilchulbong Sunrise Peak, probing a beachy area in small groups, or in my case, alone. I hadn’t often birded this particular corner of the island, but I was hoping to beat the proverbial and literal bushes and turn up something interesting. I was the “local expert” after all, and I had already looked useless once that morning, when Nial had led us to a cliff he knew of in Seogwipo that held several ghostly Grey Buntings...almost in my backyard. The late February day was tormented by icy winds, and my tanks of birding resolve were very nearly depleted. We spent most of the morning hunkered on some cliffs, lashed by obscene ocean winds. Nial went gloveless of course, which seemed to impress the Finns – they sent approving looks towards his burly skin-mitts. His hands had Sisu.
  I, on the “other hand”, was sporting an altogether embarrassing pair of checkered blue, black, and silver gloves, which drew worried glances from the Finns. The gloves were not only goofy-looking but also scandalously thin, and as a result my hands were frostbitten to the marrow. I was reluctant to even get my bins up for a bird, as that would have meant unballing my fists.
  My girl friend at the time, bless her, had heard me whining about how I needed new gloves for birding, so she purchased this ludicrous pair for me, strongly recommended to her by a Korean golfing website, of all things. As I was heading out the door to meet the Finns, I went for my holed, but warm, pair of old gloves, but as she was watching, I picked up the golf gloves instead with a confident smile.
  “Thanks again for the cool gloves,” I croaked on the way out the door. How cold could it get out there?
  Oh, it got cold. It got Old-fashioned Cold. With body and mind numbed, I staggered inland towards the shelter of some small grassy dunes, which were gathered behind a derelict seafood processing plant.
  “How are we spodesda find any birds in this fuggin wind?” I muttered through fwozen wips.
  Some of the Finns had the same idea as me, and were funnelling into the area. Oh shit, Finns! Gotta look sharp! I snatched up my bins as best I could with my frosted ham hocks and scanned a nearby tree line. This action caused the Finns to perk up as well – I peripherally sensed their bins coming to attention around me. Then, as if willed into existence by my desperation, a streamlined, medium-sized bird flashed over my shoulder.
  “Kestrel!” I bellowed, regretting it instantly. As the Finns turned to get a bead on the bird, I realized with a sickening lilt of the stomach that this was no Kestrel. The bird wheeled hard and dropped behind the trees, but I caught a clear glimpse of the fat belly and distinct thick white tail tip of a lowly Oriental Turtle Dove. Not the first time I had made that schoolboy error, but why now?
  Had they seen it yet? They hadn’t! The bird’s outline was barely visible as it zipped along behind the trees.
  “That’s it, keep flying, get out of here!” I pleaded in a whisper. “Good, keep going...” The dove did a quick 180 and flew back towards us at a rapid clip.
  “...no...NO! Don’t come back here you bastard...turn around!” The bird popped over the trees and did a lazy circuit over our heads, showing perfectly, no binoculars needed. Humbled, I shrugged at the Finns, who were all glaring at me with expressions that ranged from deadpan to pity. My face felt hot, and I wanted to sink into the sand.
  “I uh...it looked like a Kestrel. Wasn’t. It was a dove...” I muttered. Silence, as Scandinavian heads bowed and shook.
  As we headed back to the main group, I jumped off a small dune in a poorly executed attempt to avoid getting sand in my shoes. When I landed, the safety pins on my strap gave out with an audible snat, and the woeful Bushnells flung themselves into the sand, just as I had wanted to. The Finns all saw this and just kept walking, bowing their heads solemnly as though I was a leper grasping out for their pant-legs. I did my best to look dignified as I blew sand off the lenses and fished more safety pins from my bag.
  While the Finns must have looked upon me as some neophyte birder with pathetic opera glasses, I like to think of it differently. I would argue that my binoculars, and the choices I made on the rest of my birding gear prove that I did in fact have Sisu. I made do for ages with crappy gear, and managed to do well with what I had. We can’t all start off on our birding path with Swaros and 600mm lenses, innit.
  Those damned gloved though? Zero Sisu.

Haedam the monk

Text me, we'll pray

My friend, Haedam the monk
(@ Gangneung bus terminal)

Traditional Korean red bean-filled, walnut-shaped dumplings

Looks like a walnut...

...tastes like red bean paste.

Pocari Sweat: It's the Pocariest

  In February of 2012, I found myself on an overnight bus headed up Korea’s east coast in the name of one of Birds Korea’s many winter weekend pelagic trips. Halfway up the coast, the bus pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant/general store that looked to be semi-abandoned. As the bus had pushed north, I noted with detached concern that indeed much of the west coast looked to be semi-abandoned — an uninterrupted funeral march of eerie ghost towns and neglected pirate ship-shaped restaurants (the rural counterpart to the pirate bar craze) rolled past. The driver announced that we had 20 minutes to stretch, so I ambled over to the nearby cliffs for a spot of coast-watching. I scanned the choppy bay for about ten minutes, but didn’t turn up much other than a few Arctic Loons and Temminck’s Cormorants bobbing in the surf. From the corner of my eye I noticed a smaller gentleman watching me with a smile. He was in his early thirties, and was dressed from head to toe in loose grey clothing that looked like it had been crudely crafted from a blanket. A monk! He was a Buddhist monk.
  He approached and asked me what I was looking at. I told him I watching the birds on the sea, and showed him my Birds of Korea book. He read the title, and asked in unsteady English:       
  “You...LOVE...the Korea’s birds?”
  “Yes, I suppose I do!” I answered. At that, he bowed lightly and shuffled off.
  I used the last few minutes of rest-stop time to nose around in the bushes, then headed back to the bus. As I was about to board, there stood the monk by the front of the bus, like a Walmart greeter. He bowed deeply this time, and presented me with a bag using both hands (when giving or receiving something in Korea, be it a pen, beer, or money, two hands should always be used). Puzzled, I accepted the bag and peered inside. I pulled out a gift box of hodugwaja, traditional Korean dumpling cakes that are shaped like walnuts and stuffed with red bean paste. Also in the bag was a bottle of Pocari Sweat, a bizarre Korean sports drink. I never liked the stuff, as it was salty and cloudy — and what the hell was a Pocari and why would I want to drink its sweat?
  He told me that his name was Haedam, and that he was heading back to his home monastery up on Gangwha Island, which lies within propaganda loudspeaker range of North Korea. He tried to explain something about how Buddhist monks are not allowed to accumulate much money, and are supposed to use most of what they do have to bestow gifts upon people they deem to be worthy. I think. I was blown away by this gesture. I’m worthy! We sat beside each other on the next leg of the bus trip, and chatted amiably for almost an hour in two broken languages about birds, Buddha himself, Korea, and a surprising range of other topics. Before we parted ways in Gangneung, he pulled out what I felt was a pretty flashy smart phone for a Buddhist monk, and we exchanged numbers. Text me, we’ll pray? Best monk ever.

Butterflies of Korea - Part II (The Jeju Years)

remnants of Common Bluebottle Graphium sarpedon 

Long Tail Spangle Papilio macilentus

Small Copper Lycaena phlaeas 

Chestnut Tiger Parantica sita

Red Helen Papilio helenus

Indian Fritillary Argyreus hyperbius

Asian Swallowtail Papilo xuthus 

  Many words in Korean are simple compounds of other words (eg: ankle = ‘foot throat’; seal = ‘water dog’; Long-tailed Duck = ‘ocean pheasant’; fish = 'water meat'), and it is quite rewarding and amusing when you start to piece together words on your own. When I first saw a Long Tail Spangle on Jeju, I wondered if it was called 'Jebi-nabi,' or 'Swallow-butterfly.' It is.

Count the Hooded Cranes! Win prizes! Impress your friends!

Hooded Cranes Grus monacha, Suncheon Bay, February 17, 2016

  I miss the morning calm in Suncheon, when the entire bay was mine, and hundreds of Hooded Cranes complained overhead.

Jeju Memories 2009-2011, Part II

White-shouldered Starling Sturnia sinensis, Seogwipo, April 21, 2009

Brown-headed Thrush Turdus chrysolaus (1st summer male), Seogwipo, April 23, 2009

Brown-headed Thrush Turdus chrysolaus (adult female), Seogwipo, April 15, 2010

Yellow Bunting Emberiza sulphurata, Jungmun, April 25, 2009

Scaly-breasted Munia Lonchura punctulata (juvenile->adult), Seogwipo, November 14, 2009

Scaly-breasted Munia Lonchura punctulata (juvenile->adult), Seogwipo, November 14, 2009

Greater Short-toed Lark Calandrella brachydactyla, west coast, April 10, 2010

Citrine Wagtail Motacilla citreola, west coast, April 10, 2010

Asian Rosy Finch Leucosticte arctoa, west coast, November 27, 2010

  It's raining in Montreal at the moment, but always sunny in my memories of Jeju, from 48 lifetimes ago. Here are some of the sexier passerines I met along the way. I'm posting them because each one transports me back, and makes me smile. Incidentally, I found (and photographed) that Yellow Bunting, my first, while peeing. How about that?

Jeju Memories 2009-2011, Part I

Whiskered Tern Chlidonias hybrid, west coast, May 1, 2010

Black-faced Spoonbill Platalea minor, Hado-ri, January 30, 2011

Western Osprey Pandion haliaetus, Seogwipo, September 5, 2009

Western Osprey Pandion haliaetus, Seogwipo, September 5, 2009

Western Osprey Pandion haliaetus, Seogwipo, September 5, 2009

  Ahh, Jeju, the 'Hawaii of Korea.' It seems like 'they' have been destroying the charming place I once called home at an appalling rate. Pristine beaches are being ripped up and replaced with huge concrete swimming pools, it's absolute madness.
  That Osprey sure brings back the memories. I was having a terrible week, so I went down to my favourite riverside park to clear my head. After zoning out on a rock by the river for 20 minutes, I was stunned when a Western Osprey corkscrewed out of the sky and down into the water a few feet in front of me. It was an extremely hot day, and it seemed like the bird was looking to cool off. It drifted in the stream, at one point even using its wings as paddles to swim around.
  In other news, there is no news.