Marine Bird Survey: Goseong County, September 6-7

Bird News from Nial Moores with Choi Hyun-Ah (HSF).

A return to Goseong County, Gangwon Province, to conduct a few additional counts of marine birds as part of a joint project with the Hanns Seidel Foundation Korea (HSF) to research biodiversity in the inner border region of Korea.

Although there are no photographs to back up most of the more interesting sightings, highlights of this survey included a total of 101 Red-necked Phalarope; one presumed Red Phalarope (already in full non-breeding plumage) seen heading south from Geojin headland on the 6th; 2,400+ Common Tern (including 1,703 counted moving south between 15:20 and 17:20 on the 6th); two presumed Arctic Tern (one adult and one juvenile) from the boat on the 7th;  one or two Aleutian Tern from the boat on 7th (one close adult in near full breeding plumage, and one more distant dark bird presumed to be a juvenile moulting into First-winter); ten Pomarine Skua and at least three Parasitic Jaeger.

There was also a surprisingly good mix of gulls on the beach by the Daejin lighthouse on the 7th which were rather easier to digiscope, including one Vega, one Taimyr, three Slaty-backeds (out of a total of nine recorded during this survey) and a dozen or so Black-tailed Gulls (out of a total of 528) and one unidentified Caspian-like individual with a very long, highly-patterned bill that seemed to be out of the range of any of the regular Korean gull taxa.

rs-btgudsc07357Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris © Nial Moores

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rs-sbgudsc07374Slaty-backed Gulls Larus schistisagus © Nial Moores

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rs-gullspdsc07354Unidentified gull showing several features considered to be out of the range of regularly-occurring Korean taxa © Nial Moores

 

Although a more detailed report is in preparation for the HSF, selected counts made this survey as listed above can already be compared to counts made with the same methodology in early September 2015.

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