{"id":31280,"date":"2025-11-19T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=31280"},"modified":"2025-11-19T21:36:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:36:16","slug":"long-billed-plover-additional-bird-surveys-yeoncheon-november-11th-16th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=31280","title":{"rendered":"Long-billed Plover & Additional Bird Surveys, Yeoncheon (November 11th -16th)."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2025, Birds Korea and Birds Korea Yeoncheon have continued to conduct research on biodiversity (and especially on birds) for Yeoncheon County \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/strong> \ud770\ubaa9\ubb3c\ub5bc\uc0c8.   This is an extremely challenging species to survey well!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This particular mid-November survey was designed to run alongside regular monitoring of cranes and repeat counts of Scaly-sided Mergansers<\/strong> \ud638\uc0ac\ube44\uc624\ub9ac 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total, we (Baek Seung-Kwang, myself and on two of the dates, Kim Haemin) located 55 individual Long-billed Plover<\/strong> 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Presumed First winter Long-billed Plover<\/strong> \ud770\ubaa9\ubb3c\ub5bc\uc0c8 \u00a9 Nial Moores<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Behaviour, including foraging very close together, suggested this might be a family group of Long-billed Plover <\/strong>(i.e., two adults and one bird born this year). If so, this means that some adults can show obvious pale upperpart fringes (palest on the wing coverts), apparently contra<\/em> at least some ID literature.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Long-billed Plover<\/strong>, 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<\/strong> Thecla betulae<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further observations of note during the same period included Yeoncheon\u2019s first confirmed record of Black-faced Spoonbill<\/strong> \uc800\uc5b4\uc0c8 (photographed by Lee Su-Young and Jang Ryang in the Peace Rice-fields on November 15th<\/sup>) \u2013 truly remarkable so far inland, in freshwater and on such a later date;  over a thousand White-naped Crane<\/strong>, four Hooded Crane<\/strong> and a single adult Common Crane<\/strong>; decent numbers of raptors (including several White-tailed Eagles<\/strong>, and single Osprey<\/strong> and Merlin<\/strong>); observations of Hill Pigeon<\/strong> in two new, additional areas; Grey-capped Pygmy Woodpecker<\/strong> at a new location; and \u2013 completely unlike last winter \u2013 good numbers of winter landbirds, including Siberian Accentors<\/strong>, Long-tailed Rosefinches<\/strong>, Pallas\u2019s Rosefinches<\/strong> and Eurasian Bullfinches<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Black-faced Spoonbill <\/strong>\uc800\uc5b4\uc0c8 \u00a9 Lee Su-Young & Jang Ryang<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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White-naped Cranes<\/strong> \uc7ac\ub450\ub8e8\ubbf8 above the Imjin River \u00a9 Nial Moores <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Spot the Common Crane<\/strong> \uac80\uc740\ubaa9\ub450\ub8e8\ubbf8 in among the flock of White-naped Cranes <\/strong>\uc7ac\ub450\ub8e8\ubbf8! (\u00a9 Nial Moores).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Although regular along the Imjin River in neighboring Paju, Osprey<\/strong> \ubb3c\uc218\ub9ac is a scarce migrant through Yeoncheon (\u00a9 Baek Seung-Kwang).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Merlin<\/strong> \uc1e0\ud669\uc870\ub871\uc774 \u00a9 Nial Moores<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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(Siberian) Long-tailed Rosefinch \uae34\uaf2c\ub9ac\ud64d\uc591\uc9c4\uc774 \u00a9 Nial Moores<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2025, Birds Korea and Birds Korea Yeoncheon have continued to conduct research on biodiversity (and especially on birds) for Yeoncheon County \u2013 helping to identify conservation priorities and ecotourism possibilities within the Biosphere Reserve, including identifying areas which should … read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":31281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31280","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\/31280","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\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31280"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31311,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31280\/revisions\/31311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}