{"id":14827,"date":"2015-03-30T13:07:42","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T04:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=14827"},"modified":"2015-03-30T13:07:42","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T04:07:42","slug":"near-seoul-march-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=14827","title":{"rendered":"Near Seoul, March 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nial Moores with Team Thai<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On our last day together, we headed to a well-known area of forest near Seoul to see if we could find any Hazel Grouse<\/strong>, a widespread, stunningly-patterned but often hard-to-see species here. With excellent directions (thanks again to fellow Birds Koreans!), we arrived in what is considered to be the the best area.\u00a0 Thanks no doubt too to a local birder who generously puts out grain for birds throughout the winter and to the warm spring weather, we were soon treated to excellent views of an unusually confiding male, first singing from near the canopy, then feeding on the ground, before vanishing back into the forest.<\/p>\n

An hour or two later (filled with good views of Great Spotted<\/strong>, White-backed<\/strong>, Grey-headed<\/strong> and Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers<\/strong>), a Hazel Grouse<\/strong> off in the distance started to call repeatedly. This provoked an immediate and quite spectacular response: an \u201cimposing display<\/a>\u201d of calling, tail-fanning and wing-spreading from a much closer bird (initially too close to digiscope!)…All images taken with a handheld Sony RX 100II through a superb Swarovski scope<\/a> – and not in response to use of playback (with thanks to JL for editing and loading the video clips).<\/p>\n