{"id":22987,"date":"2020-02-03T14:13:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T05:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=22987"},"modified":"2020-02-03T14:14:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T05:14:50","slug":"jungnangcheon-estuary-migratory-bird-protection-area-february-1st-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=22987","title":{"rendered":"Jungnangcheon Estuary Migratory Bird Protection Area, February 1st 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Birds News from Bernhard Seliger <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the delights of living in Seoul is that in-mid of the city or nearby there are some easily reachable bird-watching spots, among them the estuary of the rivulet Jungnangcheon flowing into the Han river. However, like elsewhere in the country, these spots are constantly changed, and often deteriorating, mostly through new construction. Jungnangcheon estuary has always had a sizable population of ducks and other water-birds, and it was famous for a large winter population of Mandarin ducks, but in recent years it has markedly declined. While it is impossible to pinpoint one reason alone, while mild winters add to a less attractive wintering in city, at least partially the explanation seems to be poor management of the habitat in the area. For several years a project to built a new Eunbong bridge caused extreme disruption of the river, but at least a fenced-in construction area around the bridge-building project also guaranteed enough distance of people and birds. At the same time, a lot has been done to make the area more attractive for bicycle riders and promenaders Unfortunately, doing so the healthy flight distance of man and bird was not observed. After finishing the construction, currently strollers and bicyclists walk and drive immediately by the area just West of the bridge, where in the past the largest group of ducks and other birds could be found. Not surprisingly, currently they are much more scattered here and there, and often small groups of birds being disturbed fly this or that way along the stream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

             A\nsurvey on the morning of February 2nd, from Oksu bridge (over Han River) in the\nWest to Seongdong bridge (over Jungnangcheon) in the East, brought a total of a\nlittle less than 1100 birds only (whereas in peak times, sometimes more than\n10.000 birds were seen here in the past). This includes still a nice mixture of\ndifferent ducks species, but not much else. At total of 33 Mandarin ducks<\/strong> was counted, \nand the largest groups of birds included Common Pochard<\/strong> (160), Eurasian\nCoot<\/strong> (138), Tufted Duck <\/strong>(134)\nand Mallard<\/strong> (129) – surprisingly,\nthat morning not a single Spot-billed\nduck<\/strong> was counted there. Also, Northern\nPintal<\/strong> (89), Gadwall<\/strong> (57) and Northern Shoveler<\/strong> (54) were\nrepresented, plus much smaller number of Eurasian\nTeal (<\/strong>28), Smew<\/strong> (7), Common Merganser<\/strong> (only 2 on the Han\nRiver), Great Crested Grebe<\/strong> (14), Little Grebe<\/strong> (7), two Great Egrets<\/strong> and one Little Egret<\/strong>, plus two Grey Herons<\/strong>. This small numbers and the\nonly 25 Great Cormorants<\/strong> are\nmarkedly different from past counts. A single Common Sandpiper <\/strong>was the only wader, a Kestrel<\/strong> and an Eastern\nbuzzard<\/strong> the only raptors counted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of easy-to-implement measures\ncome to mind for habitat improvement> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Directly in the Eunbong area, a screen\n(ideally of reed material, and very inconspicuous) could help to reduce\ndisturbance for the birds. Such a screen could be low-cost and might even be\nremoved in the summer time. For bird-watchers and – photographers, small\noutlooks could be put inside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– In several areas, in particular on the South side of Jungnangcheong, bulldozed areas or areas completely devoid of any vegetation could be much improved, with bushes and some larger trees planted. This would not only increase habitat for smaller birds, but also would reduce again disturbance from strollers and bicyclists – given the size of groups of these, the equipment including transistor radios, and their often shouted conversations, this disturbance is not small. – While the easternmost part of Jungnangcheong in the area has a lot of small islands and places to roost for birds in mid of the stream, and consequently had a large number of birds foraging and roosting, in the more Western parts from the old foot bridge to the Han river, currently there are few such places. Could there be an artificial help for creating such? One idea would be to green the foots of the bridges, where possible, like on Oksu bridge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jungnangcheong Estuary Migratory Bird Protection Area well deserves its designation, but has a number of management issues \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mandarin duck Aix galericulata<\/em> \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Eurasian teal Anas crecca<\/em> \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Planting of bushes and trees plus reed could improve habitat in places like these and provide much-need roosting \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Under the columns of Oksu bridge, greening could provide roosting habitat and maybe even space for breeding birds in the summer \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In the easternmost part of the surveyed area, small patches of reed on islands in the stream provide good habitat for ducks and other birds \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Oriental Turtledove Streptopelia orientalis <\/em>\u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Northern shoveler Spatula clypeata<\/em> \u00a9 Bernhard Seliger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birds News from Bernhard Seliger One of the delights of living in Seoul is that in-mid of the city or nearby there are some easily reachable bird-watching spots, among them the estuary of the rivulet Jungnangcheon flowing into the Han … read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":22995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-sightings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22987","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22998,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22987\/revisions\/22998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}