South Korea trip part 3 - Walking around Daejeon in the rain

I planned a trip to the south east of the country later in the week so I spent a couple of days walking around the Daejeon area. Things were pretty much the same in the Cemetery, apart from a new arrival, an Oriental Cuckoo that was singing in the woods. At first this completely confused me and I imagined it was a Hoopoe as it sounds surprising similar.

As Grant was now back at work, I went out on the Monday in the pouring rain and followed a river tributary through a recently developed area and onto farmland towards a forest. I turned out it was hard to get into the forest from this area as all paths seemed to lead to someones garden. However, I came across a pair of Bull-headed Shrikes that obviously had a nest site nearby.

There were also a few Daurian Redstarts around that also obviously had nest sites. I had seen one previously outside Grants flat. The males are really stunning birds indeed.

On Tuesday I decided to walk north along the river as Grant had told me about a small colony of White-cheeked Starlings a few miles up. It was still raining, sometimes quite heavily, but had a warm, humid feel about it so it was actually quite pleasant and the sun did shine from time to time.

I found the Starlings nesting in drainage pipes built in to a concrete KTX railway bridge. There didn't seem to be that many of  them but it was hard to tell, they were moving backwards and forwards between the nest sites and across the river.

I also came across a small flock of Chinese Penduline Tits in a reedbed along the riverside. Grant later said he hadn't seem them in Daejeon, but he was to see them on a couple of occasions in the coming days.
I kept walking north along the river, it was clearly much further than I had anticipated. I kept going a while longer and it was just as good I did because I came to a small sandy outlet from a tributary that had a strange looking Wood Sandpiper in it, no that's not a Wood Sand its a Grey-tailed Tattler, then another one flew in and was promptly chased off by the first.

Grey-tailed Tattler. 

I ran off a few shots, couldn't quite get the clarity on them, even though the bird was very close and I knew it was getting busy along the footpath now. I also noticed at least 3 Long-billed Plovers in the area including one walking along the cycle track right in front of me.

Long-billed Plover

I carried on north but the path was blocked due to some huge bridge being built, so I made my way back the way I'd come, it was a lot longer going back but I got a chance to take some more pictures. A couple of Barn Swallows flew over and a single Red-rumped Swallow too. A Pygmy Woodpecker was foraging on dead reeds literally a few feet from me but my pictures were absolutely shite, however I did get this shot of its bum....

Dark-spotted Frog (Pelophylax nigromaculatus)

Tree Sparrows are abundant, and it seems they are on the increase here

Eastern Spot-billed Ducks are common here. The only other duck I saw occasionally were Mandarins

Magpies are also common here, they look a lot more robust than our Magpies and they have different calls, some of which resemble Jackdaws

LRP

Japanese Wagtail

South Korea trip part 2 - Going to Gunsan

Grant had some time off during the week so we decided to visit Gunsan for a couple of days. We got on a bus at Daejeon bus station and we were on our way. About 30 minutes into our trip, Grant looked worried and said he thought we might be on the wrong bus as there was a similar sounding place near Daejeon. It turned out he was right but luckily we were able to get a connecting bus from the fake Gunsan to the real Gunsan and better still the bus took us through some great scenery on the way including a National Park and some more rural areas, and as we weren't in a hurry it worked out better in the end. I took a couple of snaps through the bus window....

We arrived at Gunsan then got a taxi to our destination which was on the Geum river estuary. This site is reported to be an important area for Baikal Teal during the winter. There's a huge observation tower looking over a freshwater part of the river where it has been dammed, it looks more like an airport control tower than a hide. Unfortunately the tower seems to be built about half a mile away from the rivers edge. Grant has never seen Baikal Teal here as when he came to look it was so cold the river was frozen solid.

We stayed in a hotel on a hill nearby that mainly seemed to cater for weddings, and a rather skeletal staff populated the building. The garden was full of huge, grotesque stone sculptures. The view from the window was pretty good though as you can see the freshwater part of the river, plus a strange amusement park or fun fair that was always open but never seemed to have any visitors.

The Geum River Barrage, seperating the brackish water from the fresh water

There is an area that contains several restaurants and a shop selling junk food. We had some excellent Korean food in two of the restaurants here in a really friendly atmosphere, highly recommended but the menus are for more than one person so going on your own may be a problem as Grant has found out in the past. 

To the east there is a Eco Park near the observation tower that seemed to have very little in the way of birds in it at all, a couple of Parrotbills in the reedbeds but nothing else on two of the times I visited. Though Grant has had better luck in the past. The main activity occured to the west of the barrage. The area kind of reminded me a tiny bit of the more industrial parts of Rainham on a huge scale, but at Rainham, Terek Sandpipers, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and Far Eastern Curlews are not a common sight. Nor are Mongolian Plovers or Black-tailed Gulls. I counted the Tereks one time and got 161, funny there is always that extra 1 that gets in there. At first there was no sign of any Sharp-tailed Sands but on the second day they turned up in numbers amongst the Dunlin, I counted 72 on the 26th April. The most obvious wader here was probably Bar-tailed Godwit, but there were also quite a few Black-tailed. We had 10 of the rather rare Far Eastern Oystercatchers, maybe a future split? Best of all on the evening of the 26th we had 3 of the rare Black-faced Spoonbill feeding out on the mud, with another few unidentified Spoonbill species earlier that flew off north.

Aveley Bay?

There were also a few passerines about, at least 9 Olive-backed Pipits, a single winter looking male Pallas's Reed Bunting and a group of Chinese Penduline Tits in the reed bed as well as several Black-faced Buntings. Also heard and saw White's Thrush in the woods nearby on several occasions. 

A trip to South Korea part one

It was curious but as I looked out the coach window at the landscape on my trip to Daejeon from Incheon airport, there was a strange feeling of familiarity about it, which I later put down to seeing old photographs of Korea from the 50's and some movies recently perhaps. The forested rippling hills with flat paddy fields in between, quickly being developed with tons of new apartment blocks. South Korea, or at least Daejeon is on the same latitude as Athens (Greece) and it has generally pretty cold winters, mediterranean springs and sub-tropical summers apparently.

I think the first bird I saw on my trip was Grey Heron, along with a bunch of Pacific Golden Plover somewhere near the Aam-Dearo area, plus loads of frustratingly distant gulls and other waders.

My first trip out with Grant was to the woods opposite his flat in Gun-dong, a nice hilly wood that turns up some good stuff. In fact we had 5 species of Woodpecker whilst standing in one area - White-backed, Great, Grey-headed, Pygmy and the least common one, Grey-capped (Pygmy) Woodpecker which surprised Grant as he had never seen one in his local wood. I only once again saw all 5 species together and that was in a Cemetery area near Wolpyeong Park that I was to spend many hours recording and birding in during the trip. This area is reached by walking a couple of miles along a river south of Gun-dong which could be quite busy at times, then got to along a path into the forest, this was to prove a perfect location, and very quiet (apart from the noisy building work on the other bank of the river).

The river was a good place to get migrants and was a regular place to see or hear Black-faced Buntings plus Olive-backed Pipits flying over. The sounds of birds in the cemetery forest were quite audible from below and White's Thrush could regularly be heard on the first visits and probably the easiest thrush to see as they were clearly nesting in here, with a max of 5 on one occasion. Plus regularly Yellow-rumped Flycatcher and Blue and White Flycatcher could be heard too. The other thrush that was on territory here was Grey-backed Thrush (Turdus hortulorum) and that was extremely hard to get anywhere near, though I did record it using my upturned umbrella.... I mean professional Chris Watson type parabolic scientific aparatus of course.

Dragon Swallowtail - pale morph

There were some pretty cool butterflies along the river path too, Blue Admiral was one that I didn't photograph, yes that's like Red Admiral but blue, basically. Plus lots of swallowtails....

Common Glider

Dragon Swallowtail - dark morph

Lilacene Bush Brown in the Cemetery

Long-tailed Spangle, when I was photographing this a couple of ladies came up to see what I was looking at, they seemed very impressed and it seems they were out foraging for plants near the cemetery.

 Regular birds in the cemetery included Japanese Tit, Azure-winged Magpie, Asian Stubtail with its insect like song, a variety of tits including the beautiful Varied Tit, Eastern Crowned Warbler, Yellow-throated Bunting, Oriental Turtle-doves and many others but some migrants appeared such as Asian Brown Flycatcher, Pale-legged Leaf Warbler and towards the end of April and early May, Black-naped Orioles began to set up territories plus Dusky Thrush on one occasion and on  a few occasions, Eyebrowed Thrush. Also the strange songs of Rufous-tailed Robins began to appear in early May. 

Also one time later on in my stay I was in the Cemetery with Grant and he decided to play a recording of Siberian Blue Robin and got one responding straight away! It turned out this bird may have been singing here for two weeks and I had mistaken it for a Dusky Warbler! This time it was perched out on a branch. Here's a recording of the Siberian Blue Robin and the cricket like song of Asian Stubtail
 

Eyebrowed Thrush looking at me looking at him 

View south along cycle track showing the woodland south of the cemetery

Two phylloscopus species that were heard in the area were Eastern Crowned Warbler and Yellow-browed Warbler, though the Yellow browed first turned up in early May.

Striated Heron

One of the most abundant birds in this part of the world is the Vinous-throated Parrotbills, little cuties they are too and the sounds they make just adds to that cuteness. Just about anything you think you might see diving into a reed bed or hedge turns out to be them. Several times I heard them calling loudly and when I tried to record them they'd strangely go quiet and hide. Not quite as cute but just as common are the incredibly noisy Brown-eared Bulbuls that seem to have taken up people watching, I often thought I was alone and was suddenly startled to realise I was being scoped by a party of Bulbuls with their presumably good eyesight, this isn't necessarily true I'm afraid but it sometimes felt that way. Or they would hide in the woods and just as was about to record something really delicate, burst into raucous screeches. When the Black-naped Orioles turned up they gave the Bulbuls a run for their money as they are quite aggressive and I noticed the Bulbuls went a bit 'sheepish' which may not be the right description for a bird. The Orioles are seemingly different from the European Golden Orioles, being apparently much bolder and easier to see. They make some gorgeous sounds as you can hear here:

Another bird that was present along the riverside later with a 'tropical' song was the Manchurian Bush Warbler, I got a distant recording of one here:

Some kind of white heron

I'll leave this section with a recording of a Blue and White Flycatcher from the cemetery and an Indian Cuckoo that turned up at the beginning of May

Korean Red Squirrel

A long layover and brief walk near Helsinki (or so I thought)

I like Finland, so I chose to fly to Helsinki for a layover period whilst waiting for my connecting flight to Seoul the next day. Vantaa airport is a great place to sleep if you ever need to as they have some chairs that are designed for that purpose, they play birdsong in the toilets (Blyth's Reed Warbler when I went in) and its a very laid back place, usually. However, it being Easter it was actually quite busy there that Saturday morning. So after a rather restless night I got up at dawn and set off for a walk and some birding local to the airport. Outside it was chilly with a ground frost, clear blue skies and I was surrounded by the sound of Fieldfares and some Redwings plus a singing male Wheatear on the airport roof. It was going to be a great day. I walked past the Aviapolis where I camped last year (well in the forest nearby). Unfortunately things got a bit confusing as extensive revetment works and road building had begun and all familiar memories past the Aviapolis were no more, still I did manage to navigate to a park near the airport, even if it did take me a couple of hours to find my way! An early migrant Wryneck was perched in the birches near a hotel and quickly flew across the road where I lost sight of it. I wandered across what looked like another business park and took a path over a clearing and into some woodland and came out on a large field that seemed to be teaming with Skylark with a few pairs of Lapwing dotted about. The weather was warming up nicely! I followed a small road past a housing estate towards the river where there were several Fieldfares wandering about on garden lawns. Then I was in site of the forest a mile or two away.

Räkättirastas

 I had a chat with a local birder who was looking for Black Redstarts on the farmland. I said I was hoping for some Black Woodpecker action and he said he regularly gets them in his garden. However, I had no Black Woodpecker action today, although on reaching the forest I had a nice Lesser Spotted Woodpecker drumming away on a large birch.

Pikkutikka

 It seems that birds here are so easy to photograph, something that would be the opposite when I got to South Korea! As usual for Finland there were several Yellowhammers and Tree Sparrows about, a group of the later where already at nest sites in boxes near a farm.

Keltasirkku

Pikkuvarpunen

The weather was now absolutely gorgeous, the kind of thing you dream of in the UK but never happens. I walked through the forest, quite a few people enjoying the bank holiday weekend here, mostly cyclists. I reached a point where there were quite a few large Spruce trees and a path that went down to the river. Here, there were a pair of Goldeneye and a Common Sandpiper but sadly no Dippers were showing.

Now it was getting really warm, as I left the forest and headed back I thought I'd try to find a nearby reservoir, however after walking a couple of miles around the edge it was clear it was completely fenced off - here there were several common butterflies about including a Map butterfly and several of the early spring anemones were flowering.

Sininen Anemone

Valkovuokko - otherwise known as  Wood Anemone

I then had a lot of trouble finding my way back to the airport, spent a couple of hours walking along a highway and for some reason, maybe due to tiredness and overheating I failed to recognise the area close to the airport, in hindsight I think this is due to the fact that some of that built up area does tend to look the same - however I met and had a chat with a really nice woman called Maria who pointed me in the right direction and I got back in plenty of time for my connection. 

Västäräkki