are you implying that there are no other mammals worth looking for apart for that one?Nice!
I'll say no more and let others keep on guessing. I'm intrigued as to what other mammals you want to see as well though.
Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part three: 2013-2014
- Thread starter Chlidonias
- Start date
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
I was following your plover story with great interest and then got confused when I checked a map and saw that Plimmerton is not on the Chatham Islands. So are the ones you saw reintroduced birds or they are visitors from Chatham?
are you implying that there are no other mammals worth looking for apart for that one?
Of course not, I'm just saying that mammals of that caliber are likely to be damn elusive and may well take up a lot of your time.
I can think of a fair few that are within that species range that I'd dearly love to see as well. I'm just intrigued as to what other 3 are your top priority species?
no, they stopped the train service from the NZ mainland to the Chatham Islands due to all the drownings. Plimmerton is a little town just north of Wellington.
There have been several attempts to reintroduce shore plovers to islands off the coast of the mainland but without a whole lot of success. However the ones on Mana Island are doing quite well, and it is these birds that flit back and forth from there to Plimmerton. The group includes adults and young birds.
Of course not, I'm just saying that mammals of that caliber are likely to be damn elusive and may well take up a lot of your time.
Mystery Country number one is more of a passing-through country rather than somewhere I was planning to go, so Mystery Mammal number one is just the best mammal of that country. I'm not too fussed if I don't see it because it also lives in several other countries I'll be in so I should see it at some point.
Mystery Mammal number two is actually the sole reason I wanted to go to Mystery Country number two (to which it is endemic), but it should be pretty straightforward to see (fingers crossed).
Mystery Mammal number three is the important one. But if I don't find one I'll just pretend I was looking for something else entirely, probably some sort of hedgehog or gerbil or something. There is a secondary important mammal in that country too.
Mystery Mammal number four is really four species, and then there's another one as well, oh and a sixth one. I don't really know how easy any of them are. A couple depend on how relaxed the local police of Mystery Country number four are about a foreigner wandering about certain areas without any government supervision....
So there you go, clear as day.
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
Completely clear, even clearer than the lens on my glasses......?
Good luck, I guess you're already on your way now!
Good luck and have fun!!
I hope you see everything you want to!
~Thylo
I hope you see everything you want to!
~Thylo
I'm in Hong Kong airport right now. I met up with a local birder who works at the airport and we talked about birds as you do, as well as interesting mammals. Looks like I will have to go to Japan this trip which wasn't in the general plan. I aim on coming back to Hong Kong a bit later at a better time of year (I didn't leave the airport at all today) to see the pink dolphins and some other bits and pieces.
Off soon to Mystery Country number one.
Off soon to Mystery Country number one.
Have fun Chlidonias! Make sure to take lots of pics!
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
I can so picture you going up to random airport employees: "Hi, I like birds. Do you?".
South Korea, 5-6 August
I set off from New Zealand on the 3rd of August, flying Wellington to Auckland where I had a three hour wait, then a very bumpy flight from Auckland to Hong Kong where I had a six hour wait, and then Hong Kong to Seoul where it was the end of the next day. I stayed inside the airport at Hong Kong and met up with a local birder, who bought me breakfast which was good because I had no Hong Kong dollars, so I'll buy him lunch when I return (I think that was his plan, to make sure I came back to Hong Kong). He also pretty much sealed me going to Japan, which I wasn't going to, by telling me about the Ryukyu giant long-tailed rat – and if there's one thing I like it's a giant rat! I passed some more time looking out the windows with my binoculars but all I saw were a couple of white birds flying over the ocean which I figure were reef herons, and a couple of mynahs perching on a distant pole so I don't know which species. Neither made it onto the trip list.
Now, South Korea isn't actually a destination country on this trip, more of a passing-through country. It wasn't in the original plans and was only added in because it was the easiest route to get to the first proper country, and I only have nine days here. August is also the absolute worst time to visit Korea. It is the middle of summer, usually between thirty and forty degrees with high humidity and there are few birds around. Not that many birders go to South Korea anyway! But those that do go in the winter when all the migrant waterfowl and waders and so forth are here. This time of year, not so much around.
I left the Windflower Guesthouse at 5.30am on my first morning to try and get to Dongmak lagoon early. It was already so hot that just the short walk to the subway left my t-shirt wet with sweat. Dongmak is just on the edge of Seoul, and the lagoon there has a breeding colony of black-faced spoonbills. It is easy to get to, just three train rides from where I was staying. I got there at about 8am and quickly found the lagoon. The first birds I saw were spot-billed ducks, loads of them, along with a great flock of gulls loafing around on a mud-bank in the middle. New Zealand has three species of gulls, all very easy to identify: the field guide for east Asia has nine pages of gulls! There was no way I was going to be able to identify those at the distance they were at so I was going to pretend they weren't there, but fortunately I soon found a few which were much closer, and even more fortunately they were black-tailed gulls, probably the easiest species to identify due to the bill markings. There were a few (very few) sandpiper type jobs wandering here and there but none close enough to conclusively identify for me. In the middle of the lagoon is a big ugly pile of rocks and dirt, and that is the island for the spoonbills. Sure enough there were about ten of them perched on top. Black-billed spoonbills are the rarest of all the spoonbills. They were also my main bird I wanted to see in South Korea, so that was nice and easy. And that was pretty much it for the water birds apart for lots and lots of grey herons, great white egrets and great cormorants. Like I said, not exactly the best time of year for birding in Korea!
There were a few birds in the trees between the lagoon and the road, but again only a few. Only two of them were new for me. Oriental turtle doves kept flying out of trees just ahead and disappearing. I knew they were Streptopelia and I knew the only one here should be the Oriental turtle dove but it took a while before I managed to see some perched so I could actually look at them. The other lifer was a bit more tricky because I didn't have a clue what it was! The first ones I saw I thought must be juveniles of something because of the way they looked and the noise they were making, but I kept seeing them without any “adult” birds with them, and eventually I got a long enough look at one to figure out it was actually a brown-eared bulbul! One of the more nondescript birds I must say! But it is the most northerly species of bulbul, so that probably counts for something. The only other passerines I saw were tree sparrow, great tit and common magpie (although depending on how you want to split them, those last two could also be considered lifers, as eastern tit and Chinese magpie).
After spending the morning not seeing much at Dongmak, I took another three trains from there to the COEX Aquarium, which was pure madness. I've never been in an aquarium so packed with people before. My sole reason for going was to see African manatees, of which they have three, and which I saw despite the crowds. So now, with regards to sea cows, I have seen dugong at Sydney Aquarium, West Indian manatee at Singapore Zoo, and African manatee at COEX Aquarium. Just the Amazonian manatee to go, but there are none outside South America. Of course I haven’t seen any of those in the wild yet but, you know, baby steps.
The next day (today) I went to the Seoul Zoo which is huge and not really suitable for visiting in summer heat. The other thing with South Korea's summer is that it is also the rainy season, so a good portion of my time there was spent sheltering from an enormous thunderstorm. It has now topped my list for places where I have seen the hardest rain! The only additional bird for the day was large-billed crow (which I'm sure has been split as well but never mind).
Reviews of the aquarium and the zoo in the South Korean part of the forum (both threads called "Visit August 2013")
I set off from New Zealand on the 3rd of August, flying Wellington to Auckland where I had a three hour wait, then a very bumpy flight from Auckland to Hong Kong where I had a six hour wait, and then Hong Kong to Seoul where it was the end of the next day. I stayed inside the airport at Hong Kong and met up with a local birder, who bought me breakfast which was good because I had no Hong Kong dollars, so I'll buy him lunch when I return (I think that was his plan, to make sure I came back to Hong Kong). He also pretty much sealed me going to Japan, which I wasn't going to, by telling me about the Ryukyu giant long-tailed rat – and if there's one thing I like it's a giant rat! I passed some more time looking out the windows with my binoculars but all I saw were a couple of white birds flying over the ocean which I figure were reef herons, and a couple of mynahs perching on a distant pole so I don't know which species. Neither made it onto the trip list.
Now, South Korea isn't actually a destination country on this trip, more of a passing-through country. It wasn't in the original plans and was only added in because it was the easiest route to get to the first proper country, and I only have nine days here. August is also the absolute worst time to visit Korea. It is the middle of summer, usually between thirty and forty degrees with high humidity and there are few birds around. Not that many birders go to South Korea anyway! But those that do go in the winter when all the migrant waterfowl and waders and so forth are here. This time of year, not so much around.
I left the Windflower Guesthouse at 5.30am on my first morning to try and get to Dongmak lagoon early. It was already so hot that just the short walk to the subway left my t-shirt wet with sweat. Dongmak is just on the edge of Seoul, and the lagoon there has a breeding colony of black-faced spoonbills. It is easy to get to, just three train rides from where I was staying. I got there at about 8am and quickly found the lagoon. The first birds I saw were spot-billed ducks, loads of them, along with a great flock of gulls loafing around on a mud-bank in the middle. New Zealand has three species of gulls, all very easy to identify: the field guide for east Asia has nine pages of gulls! There was no way I was going to be able to identify those at the distance they were at so I was going to pretend they weren't there, but fortunately I soon found a few which were much closer, and even more fortunately they were black-tailed gulls, probably the easiest species to identify due to the bill markings. There were a few (very few) sandpiper type jobs wandering here and there but none close enough to conclusively identify for me. In the middle of the lagoon is a big ugly pile of rocks and dirt, and that is the island for the spoonbills. Sure enough there were about ten of them perched on top. Black-billed spoonbills are the rarest of all the spoonbills. They were also my main bird I wanted to see in South Korea, so that was nice and easy. And that was pretty much it for the water birds apart for lots and lots of grey herons, great white egrets and great cormorants. Like I said, not exactly the best time of year for birding in Korea!
There were a few birds in the trees between the lagoon and the road, but again only a few. Only two of them were new for me. Oriental turtle doves kept flying out of trees just ahead and disappearing. I knew they were Streptopelia and I knew the only one here should be the Oriental turtle dove but it took a while before I managed to see some perched so I could actually look at them. The other lifer was a bit more tricky because I didn't have a clue what it was! The first ones I saw I thought must be juveniles of something because of the way they looked and the noise they were making, but I kept seeing them without any “adult” birds with them, and eventually I got a long enough look at one to figure out it was actually a brown-eared bulbul! One of the more nondescript birds I must say! But it is the most northerly species of bulbul, so that probably counts for something. The only other passerines I saw were tree sparrow, great tit and common magpie (although depending on how you want to split them, those last two could also be considered lifers, as eastern tit and Chinese magpie).
After spending the morning not seeing much at Dongmak, I took another three trains from there to the COEX Aquarium, which was pure madness. I've never been in an aquarium so packed with people before. My sole reason for going was to see African manatees, of which they have three, and which I saw despite the crowds. So now, with regards to sea cows, I have seen dugong at Sydney Aquarium, West Indian manatee at Singapore Zoo, and African manatee at COEX Aquarium. Just the Amazonian manatee to go, but there are none outside South America. Of course I haven’t seen any of those in the wild yet but, you know, baby steps.
The next day (today) I went to the Seoul Zoo which is huge and not really suitable for visiting in summer heat. The other thing with South Korea's summer is that it is also the rainy season, so a good portion of my time there was spent sheltering from an enormous thunderstorm. It has now topped my list for places where I have seen the hardest rain! The only additional bird for the day was large-billed crow (which I'm sure has been split as well but never mind).
Reviews of the aquarium and the zoo in the South Korean part of the forum (both threads called "Visit August 2013")
normally I write my blogs out long-hand in a notebook, and then when I can get to an internet cafe I type them all out again. It's quite time-consuming.
This trip I have a laptop (a weeny one less than a foot long) and so I can type the blogs on it and keep my lists updated while in out-of-the way areas, and then when I can get wifi I can post them. Not sure how it's going to go in some places I'm going but we'll see.
Juwangsan National Park, 7-10 August
It's so much fun being back in Asia again, where you collect insect bites like other people collect zoo guidebooks, where it is so hot that you're sweating while trying to dry yourself after a shower, where the water from the shower leaves your skin with a greasy film, where the used toilet paper doesn't go into the toilet but into a bin beside the toilet. Popular culture totally lied to me about South Korea: nobody here speaks English and I haven't met even one K-Pop girl. Not that it matters because she wouldn't speak English if I did. The non-English-speaking here takes a curious turn: if you ask if someone speaks English, instead of shrugging or making some other gesture like people elsewhere would, here the person just stares at you. And stares. And stares. Evidently they are hoping that if they stay very very still then you will not be able to see them and leave. It's the chameleon defence.
I hadn't had any intention of staying in Seoul more than a couple of days. I don't know much about South Korean national parks, so I had taken a lucky dip from a selection I found on the internet and settled on Juwangsan National Park. August is a holiday month in South Korea and the parks get pretty full, but apparently this one somewhat less than others because it is further away from the capital, and also it is based around a mountain so I figured it should be cooler there. It was not.
The park is easy to get to. I took a three-hour bus ride from Seoul to Andong at 7.30am, and then a one-hour bus from there to Cheongsong at 11.45am. There was supposed to be a bus from there to the park at 1.10pm but it didn't arrive so the next one was at 1.50 (they come every half hour or so). The buses are easy enough and so long as you can pronounce the name of the place to the ticket seller then you're sorted. The intercity buses have the destination in English on them, but for local ones you might need to compare the Korean script on your ticket with that on the front of each bus to get the right one. Once at the park there's a whole village of food stalls outside the entrance and amongst them I found a minbak to stay in for 30,000 Won per night.
I'd been hoping it would be cooler here than Seoul, and hence more bird activity, but that was not the case. The temperature was in the mid-thirties when I arrived, but I went out anyway to get the lay of the land. The forest is really nice, a mix of pines and broadleaf, wrapped around massive outcrops of rock. The trees were throbbing with song, but it wasn't from birds it was from cicadas. Of birds there was little sign. It would be great here in spring or even winter, but right now it was dead from the heat. At the first junction in the path after entering I perused the map signboard. All the other visitors were heading off to the right, so I took the left. I should have paid more attention to the colour-coding: there was a reason everyone else was going right! The trails are marked in different colours for easy, intermediate, moderate, advanced and expert. There is literally ONE section of track colour-coded for expert. Guess where I ended up. Before getting to that vertical section, I found a couple of birds in a tree which had me scratching my head over. After going through the entire passerine section of the field guide ten times I finally settled on Daurian redstart, except they didn't look like the picture! That sounds kind of stupid, but it was a process of elimination and nothing else had the tail colour and wing-patch, and yet in the book they weren't all mottly on the body like my ones. I wasn't happy with the ID but fortunately the next day one of those individuals was still there, and it was accompanied by a full male so I knew it was right after all; I'm guessing they were immatures or weird females. I also found a flock of vinous-throated parrotbills which I was delighted with because they were my first parrotbills (and I knew what they were straight away!)
I persevered with the track I was on but there were no birds at all up there, so I climbed back down and found another trail. This one turned into a series of wooden steps, and it was here that I saw a Siberian chipmunk, my first mammal of this trip. There are quite a few species of chipmunks but this is the only one found outside the Americas. A little bit after that I found a white-backed woodpecker. My only real target bird for South Korea was the black-faced spoonbill but the woodpecker was much better. For the spoonbills I knew they were always at Dongmak Lagoon so was 99% sure I'd see them no problem, just turn up and there they are, but with the woodpecker you see it unexpectedly fly in through the trees and then have to put some work into trying to get a good enough look as it moves between the trunks until you can work out what species it is (and also I didn't know there were white-backed woodpeckers in South Korea so even better).
The next day I did the tropical birding trick of going out early and late to look for the birds, and spending the hottest middle part of the day hiding out. Trouble was, even at 6am it was extremely hot already and there were still no birds. I took the easiest track there was (all flat!) and by one of the toilet blocks spotted a pale thrush. The birds here are confusing me no end. The book says that the pale thrush is a winter migrant to South Korea, appearing from October to May. Now it is early August. But I got a few photos of it and I know it's a pale thrush, and I saw a couple of others later as well. On the way back past the same spot a couple of hours later I found a snazzy-looking elegant bunting and a Eurasian nuthatch. Technically the park is open from sunrise to an hour before sunset which means spot-lighting for nocturnal animals is out of the question, but unfortunately I went too far on the late afternoon birding session (which yielded almost no birds, by the way!) and it got dark while I was still out in the forest. Oops. Fortunately I happened to have my spot-lighting torch in my bag. Funny how things work out. The only thing that worried me a little were the big scary dogs chained outside one of the monasteries which I would have to pass on the way back. I wondered if they might only be chained by day but left free to roam at night. Really the only things that overly concern me when travelling are dogs and zombies. Fortunately the dogs were nowhere to be seen on the way back. The night didn't really have any better animal-watching results than the day, although there were a multitude of frogs and toads of at least four species and loads of big crickets all over the trails. The only bird seen was a grey nightjar sitting on the track, and there were no mammals apart for a large unidentified bat hawking over the river.
The next day was much the same, with a few additional new birds, namely Asian brown flycatcher, coal tit, and Brandt's jay. That last one was formerly included in the same species as the European jay but it looks completely different so that's one that I am splitting. Best animal of the morning was Oriental fire-bellied toad, an amphibian I've always wanted to see. I found two on the trails (one the classic bright green and one a brown colour) and somehow picked one out amongst the stones of a river-bank from up on a bridge fifty feet away. The night was even less interesting than the night before, although I did see a little viper of some sort (most of the herptile IDs will have to wait till after I'm home).
And now I'm back in Seoul for a couple of days before jetting off to my next destination. Getting back to Seoul was a little more roundabout than getting to Juwangsan. I got the bus from the park back to Cheongsong, where I discovered that the bus to Andong doesn't go from there, despite that being where it stopped on the way in. Instead I had to get a bus to another terminal where there was a bus to Andong. It was all made more confusing by nobody there speaking a lick of English and me not speaking a lick of Korean.
The mammal I was particularly wanting to see in South Korea was the raccoon dog, but with no mammal activity at Juwangsan apart for the chipmunks I won't be seeing them here now. But they are found in some other countries I'll be visiting, so maybe later.
It's so much fun being back in Asia again, where you collect insect bites like other people collect zoo guidebooks, where it is so hot that you're sweating while trying to dry yourself after a shower, where the water from the shower leaves your skin with a greasy film, where the used toilet paper doesn't go into the toilet but into a bin beside the toilet. Popular culture totally lied to me about South Korea: nobody here speaks English and I haven't met even one K-Pop girl. Not that it matters because she wouldn't speak English if I did. The non-English-speaking here takes a curious turn: if you ask if someone speaks English, instead of shrugging or making some other gesture like people elsewhere would, here the person just stares at you. And stares. And stares. Evidently they are hoping that if they stay very very still then you will not be able to see them and leave. It's the chameleon defence.
I hadn't had any intention of staying in Seoul more than a couple of days. I don't know much about South Korean national parks, so I had taken a lucky dip from a selection I found on the internet and settled on Juwangsan National Park. August is a holiday month in South Korea and the parks get pretty full, but apparently this one somewhat less than others because it is further away from the capital, and also it is based around a mountain so I figured it should be cooler there. It was not.
The park is easy to get to. I took a three-hour bus ride from Seoul to Andong at 7.30am, and then a one-hour bus from there to Cheongsong at 11.45am. There was supposed to be a bus from there to the park at 1.10pm but it didn't arrive so the next one was at 1.50 (they come every half hour or so). The buses are easy enough and so long as you can pronounce the name of the place to the ticket seller then you're sorted. The intercity buses have the destination in English on them, but for local ones you might need to compare the Korean script on your ticket with that on the front of each bus to get the right one. Once at the park there's a whole village of food stalls outside the entrance and amongst them I found a minbak to stay in for 30,000 Won per night.
I'd been hoping it would be cooler here than Seoul, and hence more bird activity, but that was not the case. The temperature was in the mid-thirties when I arrived, but I went out anyway to get the lay of the land. The forest is really nice, a mix of pines and broadleaf, wrapped around massive outcrops of rock. The trees were throbbing with song, but it wasn't from birds it was from cicadas. Of birds there was little sign. It would be great here in spring or even winter, but right now it was dead from the heat. At the first junction in the path after entering I perused the map signboard. All the other visitors were heading off to the right, so I took the left. I should have paid more attention to the colour-coding: there was a reason everyone else was going right! The trails are marked in different colours for easy, intermediate, moderate, advanced and expert. There is literally ONE section of track colour-coded for expert. Guess where I ended up. Before getting to that vertical section, I found a couple of birds in a tree which had me scratching my head over. After going through the entire passerine section of the field guide ten times I finally settled on Daurian redstart, except they didn't look like the picture! That sounds kind of stupid, but it was a process of elimination and nothing else had the tail colour and wing-patch, and yet in the book they weren't all mottly on the body like my ones. I wasn't happy with the ID but fortunately the next day one of those individuals was still there, and it was accompanied by a full male so I knew it was right after all; I'm guessing they were immatures or weird females. I also found a flock of vinous-throated parrotbills which I was delighted with because they were my first parrotbills (and I knew what they were straight away!)
I persevered with the track I was on but there were no birds at all up there, so I climbed back down and found another trail. This one turned into a series of wooden steps, and it was here that I saw a Siberian chipmunk, my first mammal of this trip. There are quite a few species of chipmunks but this is the only one found outside the Americas. A little bit after that I found a white-backed woodpecker. My only real target bird for South Korea was the black-faced spoonbill but the woodpecker was much better. For the spoonbills I knew they were always at Dongmak Lagoon so was 99% sure I'd see them no problem, just turn up and there they are, but with the woodpecker you see it unexpectedly fly in through the trees and then have to put some work into trying to get a good enough look as it moves between the trunks until you can work out what species it is (and also I didn't know there were white-backed woodpeckers in South Korea so even better).
The next day I did the tropical birding trick of going out early and late to look for the birds, and spending the hottest middle part of the day hiding out. Trouble was, even at 6am it was extremely hot already and there were still no birds. I took the easiest track there was (all flat!) and by one of the toilet blocks spotted a pale thrush. The birds here are confusing me no end. The book says that the pale thrush is a winter migrant to South Korea, appearing from October to May. Now it is early August. But I got a few photos of it and I know it's a pale thrush, and I saw a couple of others later as well. On the way back past the same spot a couple of hours later I found a snazzy-looking elegant bunting and a Eurasian nuthatch. Technically the park is open from sunrise to an hour before sunset which means spot-lighting for nocturnal animals is out of the question, but unfortunately I went too far on the late afternoon birding session (which yielded almost no birds, by the way!) and it got dark while I was still out in the forest. Oops. Fortunately I happened to have my spot-lighting torch in my bag. Funny how things work out. The only thing that worried me a little were the big scary dogs chained outside one of the monasteries which I would have to pass on the way back. I wondered if they might only be chained by day but left free to roam at night. Really the only things that overly concern me when travelling are dogs and zombies. Fortunately the dogs were nowhere to be seen on the way back. The night didn't really have any better animal-watching results than the day, although there were a multitude of frogs and toads of at least four species and loads of big crickets all over the trails. The only bird seen was a grey nightjar sitting on the track, and there were no mammals apart for a large unidentified bat hawking over the river.
The next day was much the same, with a few additional new birds, namely Asian brown flycatcher, coal tit, and Brandt's jay. That last one was formerly included in the same species as the European jay but it looks completely different so that's one that I am splitting. Best animal of the morning was Oriental fire-bellied toad, an amphibian I've always wanted to see. I found two on the trails (one the classic bright green and one a brown colour) and somehow picked one out amongst the stones of a river-bank from up on a bridge fifty feet away. The night was even less interesting than the night before, although I did see a little viper of some sort (most of the herptile IDs will have to wait till after I'm home).
And now I'm back in Seoul for a couple of days before jetting off to my next destination. Getting back to Seoul was a little more roundabout than getting to Juwangsan. I got the bus from the park back to Cheongsong, where I discovered that the bus to Andong doesn't go from there, despite that being where it stopped on the way in. Instead I had to get a bus to another terminal where there was a bus to Andong. It was all made more confusing by nobody there speaking a lick of English and me not speaking a lick of Korean.
The mammal I was particularly wanting to see in South Korea was the raccoon dog, but with no mammal activity at Juwangsan apart for the chipmunks I won't be seeing them here now. But they are found in some other countries I'll be visiting, so maybe later.
Thanks for the excellent review of South Korea and the zoo.
What puzzled me was why you did not visit the Giant Aviary with black-faced spoonbill (perhaps because on the Lake it would look more natural or was it simply too bloody hot)?
I would settle for China: takin, panda, snub-nosed monkey, serow, white headed langur et cetera.
Vietnam: saola, giant muntjac, langurs, more langurs and the gibbons.
Enjoy!
What puzzled me was why you did not visit the Giant Aviary with black-faced spoonbill (perhaps because on the Lake it would look more natural or was it simply too bloody hot)?
I would settle for China: takin, panda, snub-nosed monkey, serow, white headed langur et cetera.
Vietnam: saola, giant muntjac, langurs, more langurs and the gibbons.
Enjoy!
back in Seoul, 11 August
Today I returned to Dongmak to see if I could find anything new. Literally right outside the exit to the Dongmak subway station was a small flock of Oriental greenfinches. Very nice birds indeed! (Although they were mostly juveniles, which aren't pictured in the field guide, so if an adult hadn't joined them I would have been all confused again). On the lagoon were much the same birds as last time, except now there was a very large flock of waders instead of just a few scattered individuals. There were loads of common greenshanks in the flock but I couldn't tell what else with the binoculars (need a scope!).
I knew there were mudflats around somewhere close (the Songdo mudflats) but I wasn't sure where. I'd had a look at a Google map before leaving New Zealand but I couldn't really tell from it what might be mudflats and what might be ports or something like that. So I just walked off towards where the sea should be and sure enough I found some mudflats. I guess I was lucky with the tides too. This was where all the waders were hanging out, and because they were much closer than the ones on the lagoon I could actually ID some of them. My wader identification skills aren't great because we don't get a big variety in New Zealand to practice on, so I can really only get the more obvious ones that are close enough, and lots get left as a “maybe/maybe not”. So first, apart for the lots and lots of greenshanks, was a little egret (that's an easy one) and some Pacific golden plovers (also easy). A Eurasian curlew was next, but I had to wait till it flew to check the rump colour to make sure it wasn't a Far Eastern curlew because apparently both are found here. Around the curlew were several Eurasian pied oystercatchers and then some Eurasian whimbrels. I got to the end of the walkway where the mudflats ended and headed back the way I'd come, and spotted some godwits amongst the greenshanks. It took ages standing in the hot hot sun waiting for them to fly to check their wings and rump colour to make sure they were black-tailed godwits, which is what I was hoping (because bar-tailed godwits are common as anything in New Zealand but black-tails very rare). And finally I found some common redshanks as well just before I headed back to the subway. So a nice little burst of birdy additions before the end of the South Korean leg of the trip.
I was quite surprised how few birds I saw in the time I spent in Korea (only 35 species), and I very much believe that if I was here at a better time of year the list would have been a lot longer. I won't be returning to this country though. Most countries I visit I want to go back to but I didn't really like South Korea. Part of it was just the constant knowledge that I was here at the wrong time of year, but I didn't like the general vibe of the place either. In most of southeast Asia the people are very friendly and anyone you smile at will immediately be all smiles back, and they'll try to help you out as much as possible with everything. Everybody loves me in southeast Asia. In Korea all I got were completely blank looks –smile at someone, blank look back – and it was weird always having an entire row of empty seats around me on the subway because literally no-one would ever sit next to me. Maybe I look like a psychopath from some local tv crime show or something.
Tomorrow I fly to Mystery Country number two, where I will have even less idea of what I'm doing than I do in Korea.
Today I returned to Dongmak to see if I could find anything new. Literally right outside the exit to the Dongmak subway station was a small flock of Oriental greenfinches. Very nice birds indeed! (Although they were mostly juveniles, which aren't pictured in the field guide, so if an adult hadn't joined them I would have been all confused again). On the lagoon were much the same birds as last time, except now there was a very large flock of waders instead of just a few scattered individuals. There were loads of common greenshanks in the flock but I couldn't tell what else with the binoculars (need a scope!).
I knew there were mudflats around somewhere close (the Songdo mudflats) but I wasn't sure where. I'd had a look at a Google map before leaving New Zealand but I couldn't really tell from it what might be mudflats and what might be ports or something like that. So I just walked off towards where the sea should be and sure enough I found some mudflats. I guess I was lucky with the tides too. This was where all the waders were hanging out, and because they were much closer than the ones on the lagoon I could actually ID some of them. My wader identification skills aren't great because we don't get a big variety in New Zealand to practice on, so I can really only get the more obvious ones that are close enough, and lots get left as a “maybe/maybe not”. So first, apart for the lots and lots of greenshanks, was a little egret (that's an easy one) and some Pacific golden plovers (also easy). A Eurasian curlew was next, but I had to wait till it flew to check the rump colour to make sure it wasn't a Far Eastern curlew because apparently both are found here. Around the curlew were several Eurasian pied oystercatchers and then some Eurasian whimbrels. I got to the end of the walkway where the mudflats ended and headed back the way I'd come, and spotted some godwits amongst the greenshanks. It took ages standing in the hot hot sun waiting for them to fly to check their wings and rump colour to make sure they were black-tailed godwits, which is what I was hoping (because bar-tailed godwits are common as anything in New Zealand but black-tails very rare). And finally I found some common redshanks as well just before I headed back to the subway. So a nice little burst of birdy additions before the end of the South Korean leg of the trip.
I was quite surprised how few birds I saw in the time I spent in Korea (only 35 species), and I very much believe that if I was here at a better time of year the list would have been a lot longer. I won't be returning to this country though. Most countries I visit I want to go back to but I didn't really like South Korea. Part of it was just the constant knowledge that I was here at the wrong time of year, but I didn't like the general vibe of the place either. In most of southeast Asia the people are very friendly and anyone you smile at will immediately be all smiles back, and they'll try to help you out as much as possible with everything. Everybody loves me in southeast Asia. In Korea all I got were completely blank looks –smile at someone, blank look back – and it was weird always having an entire row of empty seats around me on the subway because literally no-one would ever sit next to me. Maybe I look like a psychopath from some local tv crime show or something.
Tomorrow I fly to Mystery Country number two, where I will have even less idea of what I'm doing than I do in Korea.
after I left the zoo I thought that was one aviary I should have gone into, just for photos of the spoonbills, but it was a combination of heat and downpours and time.
All those Chinese and Vietnamese mammals are nice