Bird Report and photos by Mike Friel
This morning was buzzing with birds in my home village, Majin, near Jinju. First, before 8am, the persimmon tree was being stalked for its last two fruit by Magpies, Brown-eared Bulbuls and a female Grey-headed Woodpecker, who got there first. When a bulbul tried to butt in, the woodpecker sent it packing. Half an hour later, the Jay family arrived. Ever since I dug up the peanuts, they’ve been coming in to pinch them, and now they get an official quota. I noticed today that one bird, instead of immediately splitting open the shell to eat the nut, placed the whole full shell in its crop, took a second one in its bill and flew off for a double feed.
Towards 11am I went out to check the Cinereous Vultures, who have been coming in numbers now that the manure has arrived for the fields. Today I counted one hundred of them at the high point, but they didn’t hang around for long as they saw that the farmers were not spreading the dung on the fields yet, which is the best time for finding nuggets of rotten chicken. For the first time this year I found a tagged vulture. The Americans tag the birds with white numbers, the Germans with red, but this one was blue. This means it’s a rehab’ed bird which was tagged last winter in Korea before being released back into the wild.
Eurasian Jay Garrulus glandarius. Photo © Mike Friel.
Brown-eared Bulbul Microscelis amaurotis. Photo © Mike Friel.
Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus. Photo © Mike Friel.
Cinereous Vultures Aegypius monachus feeding. Photo © Mike Friel.
Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus. Photo © Mike Friel.
Tagged Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus. Photo © Mike Friel.
Fantastic pictures, Mike. Thanks for the report.