{"id":11725,"date":"2014-02-14T17:52:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T08:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=11725"},"modified":"2014-02-19T09:02:13","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T00:02:13","slug":"gangneung-february-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=11725","title":{"rendered":"Gangneung, February 14"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><strong>Bird News from Nial Moores with Team Finland<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Although a much fuller report will be published later, the following is intended as a quick first-hand account of the discovery of the <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">ROK\u2019s<\/span> first confirmed<\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">\u00a0<\/span><b>Lesser Scaup<\/b>\u00a0<i>Aythya affinis<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>On February 14<sup>th<\/sup>, following heavy snow along the east coast and under still-overcast skies, our group (comprised of 13 highly experienced birders) \u00a0visited Gyeongpo Lake in Gangneung to see if the recent harsh weather might have resulted in some weather-driven displacement. Soon after arrival, several in the group checked through the flock of duck on the small remaining area of open water. Aleksi Lehikoinen was the first to pick up an odd-looking\u00a0<i>aythya,<\/i>which appeared at long range to be more heavily vermiculated on the upperparts than the other scaup. With Dr. Hannu Huhtinen, he strongly suspected that the bird was a\u00a0<b>Lesser Scaup<\/b>. They alerted others in the group, who also noted several other features in support of their proposed identification (including slightly smaller size; a slightly tufted rear to the head; a more delicate bill etc). After 30 minutes or so, the bird started to preen and showed its upperwing clearly (captured in the image below by NM) helping to rule out hybrid origin and to confirm the identification. Adequately documented with images<b>, Lesser Scaup<\/b>\u00a0will therefore be added to Category One of the Birds Korea Checklist during the next update. This is the second North American duck species to be added to the national checklist this winter (with\u00a0<b>Bufflead<\/b>\u00a0<i>Bucephala albeola<\/i>\u00a0also first-found in the winter of 2012 \/ 2013).<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Lesser-Scaup_NM.jpg\" rel=\"prettyPhoto[11725]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11731\" alt=\"Lesser-Scaup_NM\" src=\"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Lesser-Scaup_NM-e1392767885861.jpg\" width=\"580\" height=\"435\" \/><\/a><b>Lesser Scaup<\/b>\u00a0<i>Aythya affinis<\/i>, \u00a9 Nial Moores\u00a0<\/center>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bird News from Nial Moores with Team Finland Although a much fuller report will be published later, the following is intended as a quick first-hand account of the discovery of the ROK\u2019s first confirmed\u00a0Lesser Scaup\u00a0Aythya affinis. On February 14th, following &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=11725\">read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[692],"class_list":["post-11725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-sightings","tag-gangneung"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11725"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11739,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725\/revisions\/11739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}