Chicken Information from Nial Moores, with Hong Sung Min, Kim Dong Gyu, Kim Eojin, Andy Lee and lots of others!
For me personally, a very attention-grabbing begin to autumn seawatching, with a three-hour boat journey out from the Gurypongpo Peninsula close to Pohang on each August 2nd and Third, and highlights that included Flesh-footed Shearwater, Lengthy-tailed Jaeger, (Japanese) Crested Murrelet, and actually fabulous views of hundreds of Streaked Shearwaters.
As written in our Standing of Birds again in 2014, “Marine Habitat has an space greater than 4 instances better than all the opposite important habitat sorts mixed within the ROK. It’s also probably the most poorly-surveyed…with many info gaps” (Moores et al. 2014). Most of our data of seabirds within the ROK nonetheless comes from surveys of breeding colonies, or from opportunistic land-based counts (particularly within the southeast, from the Guryongpo Peninsula, Ulsan and Busan). Whether or not because of the discovering of two albatross species in Korean waters within the final couple of years, and / or the popularity that it’s fairly straightforward to see (and even {photograph}) Aleutian Tern in Korean waters, and / or the affect of seabird movies by 새덕후 Korean Birder Kim Eojin, fortunately increasingly more birders have just lately began taking boats out to search for seabirds, particularly it appears in August and September and once more in mid-winter.
On the sort invitation of Hong Sung Min, I subsequently joined a gaggle of younger and upcoming birders on a ship organized out from the Guryongpo Peninsula by Kim Dong Gyu on the early season dates of August 2nd and threerd.
On August 2nd, below clear skies with calm seas and land-based temperatures peaking in Pohang at 37C and sea floor temperatures of 28C (in line with the Windy App), it took lower than 20 minutes to succeed in a big raft of worldwide Close to Threatened Streaked Shearwater. This primary raft included a lone globally Close to Threatened Flesh-footed Shearwater.
Flesh-footed Shearwater was quite extra frequent in Korean waters, with annual information within the 2000s from ferries within the West Sea and from land alongside the east coast, regardless of the a lot decrease variety of observers at the moment. Information appeared largely to be from late Might or June to mid-October, with e.g., 10 seen off the Guryongpo Peninsula on October 19th 2002 by Arnoud van den Berg and Magnus Robb and 5 seen between Gunsan and Eocheong on October 18th 2008. Certainly, a number of a long time in the past the East Sea was recognized because the “important wintering space” for Flesh-footed Shearwater banded on Lord Howe Island off Japanese Australia through the breeding season, with recoveries of banded (presumably lifeless, trapped in nets) birds from March to September (Buy 1971). Subsequently, nonetheless, the breeding inhabitants on Lord Howe Island, “held an estimated c. 20,000–40,000 breeding pairs in 1978, revised to 17,462 breeding pairs in 2003, when burrow occupancy was calculated at 58%; extra just lately, in 2009, inhabitants was estimated to be 16,267 pairs, representing a decline within the variety of pairs because the earlier rely of 6·8% (c. 1·3% per yr)” (Carboneras et al. 2020).
Is Flesh-footed Shearwater nonetheless a regularly-occurring species in ROK waters (outlined by Birds Korea as being recorded ten or extra instances yearly for the previous 5 years)? Or has this species already successfully grow to be misplaced?
Different species of be aware included a number of small teams of Pink-necked Phalarope and three storm petrels.
Though the second and third petrel had been straightforward to determine with confidence as Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel, based mostly on their small dimension, compact look and lively flight motion (typically bat-like, typically pratincole like), the primary particular person within the subject appeared like being quite massive and clearly long-tailed – with angled wings swept again like a falcon, and the flight fairly deliberate, highly effective and regular (certainly the silhouette and flight motion initially strongly prompt ID as a Eurasian Pastime Falco subbuteo 새호리기!).
A sequence of photographs of this primary particular person had been taken by Hong Sung Min and Kim Dong Gyu and are kindly shared under. They present that the chicken had a reasonably apparent white spot on the base of the first coverts, confidently ruling out the rarely-recorded Bulwer’s. Nevertheless, learn how to rule out the still-unrecorded-in-Korea Matsudeira’s Storm Petrel Hydrobates matsudairae? I’ve seen Matsudeira’s solely as soon as (a number of a long time in the past, in Japanese waters). Based mostly on that “expertise” and the textual content in Harrison et al. (2021), the flight motion and silhouette appeared good for Matsudeira’s, however presumably the white patch would present much more clearly than proven by this chicken?
eBird guidelines is right here.
On the threerd, in largely overcast situations with lowered visibility, “Crew Ulsan” visited the Homigot space briefly earlier than the boat, discovering a small flock of Russet Sparrow, and proof of some motion – with a flock of ten Widespread Tern passing by.
Though solely a day later, the seabirding felt quite completely different. First spotlight was a mixture of birds (Streaked Shearwaters, Black-tailed Gulls and Widespread Terns) drawn to a shoal of enormous fish, recognized within the subject as Japanese Mackerel, which had been pushing smaller fish as much as the floor.
This small feeding frenzy in flip attracted what we recognized as one (or a lot much less doubtless two) immature Lengthy-tailed Jaeger, and one (or maybe two) immature Parasitic Jaeger.
Private spotlight – and a quite simpler ID – got here when three completely different globally Weak (Japanese) Crested Murrelets had been referred to as out. This turns into my tenth (!) species of alcid seen off this peninsula.
The complete guidelines is right here.
Many info gaps on seabirds at sea stay – and these appear important to fill correctly, particularly if the nation is to determine a correct baseline on abundance and distribution earlier than additional development of offshore windfarms within the East Sea is permitted, together with in waters off Ulsan.
Once more thanks for the invitation to hitch these two boat journeys: I very a lot sit up for going once more, particularly on the peak of Aleutian Tern migration in late August-early September (with the hope lastly of getting respectable photographs of an accompanying Arctic Tern!), or after the passage of a hurricane – when species just like the nonetheless unrecorded Black-naped Tern Sterna sumatrana and Wedge-tailed Shearwater Ardenna pacifica and Leach’s Petrel Hydrobates leucorhous should all be doable…
References
Carboneras, C., F. Jutglar, G. M. Kirwan, and C. J. Sharpe. 2020. Flesh-footed Shearwater (Ardenna carneipes), model 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.flfshe.01
Harrison, P., Perrow, M. R. & Larsson, H. 2021. Seabirds. The New Identification Information. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
Moores, N., Kim, A. & Kim R. 2014. Standing of Birds, 2014. Birds Korea report on Chicken Inhabitants Tendencies and Conservation Standing within the Republic of Korea. Revealed by Birds Korea, September 2014.
Buy, D. 1971. Sixteenth Annual Report of the Australian Chicken-banding Scheme, July 1969 to June 1970. Division of Wildlife Analysis Technical Paper No. 22, CSIRO, Australia 1971.
