Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11

INTRODUCTION 13

CHAPTER 1 WINDOWS 17 Grey-headed Woodpecker 20 White’s Thrush 22 Eurasian Kestrel 24 Eurasian Sparrowhawk 26 White-throated Rock Thrush 28 Chestnut Bunting 30 Varied Tit 32 Stejneger’s Stonechat 34 Long-tailed Tit 36 Arctic Warbler 38 Alpine Accentor 40 Chestnut-flanked White-eye 42 Chinese 44 Bull-headed Shrike 46 Daurian Redstart 48

새사진집-내지 최종.indd 6 2013-06-18 오후 10:10:14 CHAPTER 2 CURTAINS 51 Grey Heron 54 Oriental Scops Owl 56 Brown Hawk Owl or Northern Boobook 58 Yellow-breasted Bunting 60 Eagle Owl 62 Long-tailed Shrike & Chinese Penduline Tit 64 Rhinocerous Auklet 66 Eastern Crowned Warbler 68 Brown Shrike 70 Common Pheasant 72 Oriental Reed Warbler 74 Yellow Wagtail 76 Cattle Egret 78

CHAPTER 3 MOTION 81 Little Tern 84 Hen Harrier 86 Far-eastern Oystercatcher 88 Naumann’s Thrush 90 92 Japanese White-eye & Common Rosefinch 94 Eurasian Nuthatch 96 Terek Sandpiper 98 Spectacled Guillemot 100 Common Sandpiper 102 Black-winged Stilt 104 Black-faced Spoonbill 106 Ancient Murrelet 108

새사진집-내지 최종.indd 7 2013-06-18 오후 10:10:14 CHAPTER 4 STILLNESS 111 Dunlin 114 Taiga Flycatcher 118 Red-breasted Flycatcher 120 Sharp-tailed Sandpiper & Asian Rosy 122 Black-legged Kittiwake 124 Eastern Buzzard 126 Chinese Sparrowhawk 128 Marsh Sandpiper 130 Wood Sandpiper 132 Oriental Pratincole 134 Chinese Pond Heron 136 Desert Wheatear 138 Mugimaki Flycatcher 140 Blue Rock Thrush 142 Common 144

CHAPTER 5 MYTHOGRAPHY 147 Mandarin Duck 150 Goldcrest 152 Siberian Rubythroat 154 Grey Plover & Hazel Grouse 156 Narcissus Flycatcher 158 Red-breasted Merganser 160 Hoopoe 162 Oriental Stork & Grey-faced Buzzard 164 White-naped Crane & Red-crowned Crane 166 Streaked Shearwater 168 Whooper Swan 172 White-fronted Goose 174 Siberian Blue Robin 176

새사진집-내지 최종.indd 8 2013-06-18 오후 10:10:14 CHAPTER 6 MYUNG-AM 179 White-bellied Green Pigeon 182 Spotted Dove 184 Japanese Robin 186 188 190 Japanese Wagtail 192 Black Paradise Flycatcher 194 Siberian Accentor 196 Black Brant 198 Falcated Duck 200 Common Snipe 202 Short-eared Owl 204 Blue-and-white Flycatcher 206 Green Sandpiper 208

CHAPTER 7 DIMINISHING FRAMES 211 Ruddy Kingfisher 214 Curlew Sandpiper 216 Eurasian Spoonbill 218 Ruddy Crake 220 Bar-tailed Godwit 222 Brambling 224 Great Knot 226 Grey-capped Woodpecker 228 Plumbeous Redstart 230 Asian Stubtail & Oriental Cuckoo 232 White-backed Woodpecker 234 Pallas’s Reed Bunting 238 Scaly-sided Merganser 240

ENVOI 243

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Korea’s deserve a wider audience. The country’s geographical location, topography, temperate climate, and wealth of diverse habitats combine to support an extraordinarily attractive avifauna. Many visitors to Korea see the impressive metropolitan centers of Seoul or Busan, and others may visit Jejudo Island’s black sand beaches or hike the popular mountain trails. Fewer see the more hidden parts of the country: the western offshore islands, the scattered and diminishing wetlands, the picturesque east coast fishing villages, the mountain hamlets and the river valleys. We can glimpse these places through the birds that live there. Moreover, we can glimpse something else—hints of Korea’s people, culture, and history. A picture of a yields a narrow but genuine window into a country’s identity. What a country’s arts or folklore or language says about nature—or says by means of nature—has a special authenticity. Above all, there are the birds themselves, in all their many types of beauty. This book seeks to introduce the birds: through photographs, through descriptions of their lives, and through the ways our different cultures, Western and Asian both, perceive them. If the reader then develops a new or better appreciation for these creatures, the stage will have been well set: for ultimately, looking beyond its pages, this book has another and more activist purpose. As the chapters that follow will suggest, windows

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새사진집-내지 최종.indd 13 2013-06-18 오후 10:10:15 Common Pheasant Phasianus colchicus 꿩 The Common Pheasant will be a familiar bird to most readers. Originally a native of , from the Far East and westward to the Caucasus, the pheasant was introduced into Europe at some point in the Middle Ages, perhaps as early as Roman times. Later, European settlers brought pheasants to North America, for they are a greatly prized game bird. Pheasants have flourished in their new homes. They thrive in any temperate climate and adapt to different environments, from woods to agricultural fields. Only occasional outbreaks of avian disease have curtailed their abundance. The pheasant is also a common resident throughout the Korean mainland. You will see one clattering from a copse with noisy wingbeats or sitting quietly in the stubble of a winter rice field. You may meet a burnished cock pheasant stepping out of a thicket of shrubs and vines to pose—like a silk painting of some ancient king—on a rock beneath a stunted pine. Or, out an evening on some inconsequential stroll, you may set a group of hens a-running quickly out of the grass bordering a village stream. Only once, though, have I seen one standing in a cherry tree. A startling spectacle, but our mind quickly adjusts, for the pheasant appears quite at home there. In a sudden, subtle step, the familiar becomes slightly strange, and the strange turns and settles into the familiar. Curtains will do that, for they can create a new context around a scene you thought you knew. The cherry blossoms draw and hold the eye; then the pheasant’s feathers demand attention, for they rival the flowers in color and texture. Look further: the ruddy cheeks recall a Korean folktale, where Rat-wife slaps Pheasant’s face after Pheasant, always proud, derides her humble home. The bird’s form, too, becomes more impressive the longer we gaze: the vigilant pose and stretched neck, the streaming tail, the martial spurs on sturdy legs.

Place: Jejudo Island, April Status: common resident throughout Korea Habitat: fields, forest edge Voice: an explosive kukkuk

72 CURTAINS 73

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새사진집-내지 최종.indd 73 2013-06-18 오후 10:10:42 Ruddy Kingfisher coromanda 호반새 Like the Green Sandpiper, the Ruddy Kingfisher is a forest bird, only more so. Except for the necessities of migration (Korean Ruddy fly to Southeast Asia for the winter), these shy birds live their entire cycle of life, from egg to dust, in the deep cover of leafy woods. For all their flamboyant appearance, Ruddy Kingfishers are surprisingly difficult to see. Most brief glimpses are of a flying bird, a flash of red or red and blue across the narrow corridor of sunlight opened by a river or stream flowing through the woods. In the deep shade beneath the forest canopy, these brilliant colors are much more subdued—to our eyes, but perhaps not theirs. A faint purple iridescence on the back (suggesting an owl-like porphyrin basis to their ruddy coloration, which would further advance visibility in dark conditions) suggests that, with their tetrachromatic capabilities, Ruddy Kingfishers see a brighter bird when they see each other—especially in the shade. For us, it is much easier to find a kingfisher by voice: their song is resonant, attractive, and eerie, a bit like the two-toned tungso flute of Korean traditional music, and an appropriate accompaniment to the almost alien aspect of their large-headed, stub-tailed structure, their plumage; and (especially) that enormous red beak. Ruddy Kingfishers use those beaks to catch fish in the woodland streams, snatch small invertebrates and amphibians, and dig in soft mold for worms. As Korea’s forests mature in their long process of regeneration from war-era destruction, the landscape may restore itself, providing more places for this bird to live and sing and hide— and more chances for us to try and find it. Then, almost any little patch of wood and stream will represent the ideal of a diminishing frame—no matter how localized, a healthy potential for a good encounter.

Place: Nami Island, June Status: scarce summer visitor and breeder, more common in northern provinces Habitat: mature deciduous woods with streams or ponds Voice: a far-carrying, descending trill—prrrrreeeeee-ew

214 DIMINISHING FRAMES 215

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