In 2025, Birds Korea and Birds Korea Yeoncheon have continued to conduct research on biodiversity (and especially on birds) for Yeoncheon County – helping to identify conservation priorities and ecotourism possibilities within the Biosphere Reserve, including identifying areas which should be considered for inclusion in a possible Yeoncheon Imjin River Ramsar site as previously raised by the Mayor.
As part of this, a major focus in 2025 has been trying to improve understanding of the distribution and ecological requirements of the nationally threatened Long-billed Plover 흰목물떼새. This is an extremely challenging species to survey well!
This particular mid-November survey was designed to run alongside regular monitoring of cranes and repeat counts of Scaly-sided Mergansers 호사비오리 along key stretches of the Imjin river (with this latter effort by Baek Seung-Kwang supported in October-November by an EAAFP Small grant happily finding a November day peak of 101 Scalies…), and as before included all three of the main streams / rivers in Yeoncheon/ the Biosphere Reserve: the Imjin, Hantan and Chatancheon.
In total, we (Baek Seung-Kwang, myself and on two of the dates, Kim Haemin) located 55 individual Long-billed Plover at a total of ten locations, with the largest concentrations at Horogoru (17) and in the proposed Jeongok Wetlands park (15). Based on behaviour and still poorly understood plumage variation, and in the absence of marked birds, it is tempting to suggest that the majority of these individuals likely were the same as those found during our Long-billed Plover surveys in spring and summer, when 59 and 28 respectively were found along the same three rivers. How many of these will remain through the winter? And if they leave Yeoncheon, where will they spend the winter?
In addition to Long-billed Plover, we found a further 88 or so bird species; evidence of several mammals (including what appear to be River Otter tracks at several locations) and a Nationally Threatened Brown Hairstreak Butterfly Thecla betulae.
Further observations of note during the same period included Yeoncheon’s first confirmed record of Black-faced Spoonbill 저어새 (photographed by Lee Su-Young and Jang Ryang in the Peace Rice-fields on November 15th) – truly remarkable so far inland, in freshwater and on such a later date; over a thousand White-naped Crane, four Hooded Crane and a single adult Common Crane; decent numbers of raptors (including several White-tailed Eagles, and single Osprey and Merlin); observations of Hill Pigeon in two new, additional areas; Grey-capped Pygmy Woodpecker at a new location; and – completely unlike last winter – good numbers of winter landbirds, including Siberian Accentors, Long-tailed Rosefinches, Pallas’s Rosefinches and Eurasian Bullfinches.
