Jason Loghry, Aug 24
Tomorrow morning, I’m heading back to the Texas coast. I was only here a few months this time, but I really enjoyed my stay as I was able to spend a lot of my time volunteering with Birds Korea. We started with a week-long coastal shorebird survey, then had a nine-day birding expedition, and as a result of some of our observations, we were able to get support for research looking closely at Far Eastern Curlew on Yubu Island. We will post in detail about this research and our results in a later blog, but first I wanted to share one of our videos from Yubu-do in July.
Everyday I counted Far Eastern Curlews at high tides. But I also spent a lot of time looking at and recording wing moult, bill size, and getting images of as many individuals as possible with an open wing. And it was usually at high tide that I was able to really get a good chance of observing curlews in close proximity.
Above is a video of some of the curlews I observed during an early morning high tide. There were other shorebirds present in the foreground, but in this video I was focusing on mostly capturing the line of Far Eastern Curlews at high tide. I wonder if you can see the differences between the two curlew species (Eurasian and Far Eastern), and whether you’re able to identify a few of the other species. Leave a comment and let us know what you see.
Make sure to watch in HD if you have the option. Looking forward to sharing more about this project in the near future. Happy birding.
