I’ve quite regularly given a plug to the Birds Korea website. Unsurprising given that I think the organisation does an amazing job on a tiny budget; that almost the whole website has been constructed by just one person, Andreas Kim; that I helped co-found Birds Korea with my brother Nial (who I’m unashamedly proud to describe as one of my heroes); and that the photographs that regularly appear on the website are world-class, taken almost exclusively by Birds Korea members, and have all been donated for free.

Over the last eighteen months (it could be more actually) Nial, Andreas, and a small number of Birds Korea supporters and staff have been incredibly busy collating 2,200 images of over 450 species and designing what I genuinely think is one of the very best photo-galleries I’ve ever seen - and writing all the text IN BOTH ENGLISH AND KOREAN to make it accessible to everyone in the region.

I’ve been itching to give 10,000 Birds readers a preview of the gallery, but Nial didn’t want anything announced until it was ready to launch properly: he wanted all the photos labelled correctly, the status of every species captioned, and he wanted to make sure the internal and external links working properly. He is, when it comes Birds Korea anyway, a total perfectionist who has worked 70 hour weeks for years and years and wasn’t going to allow his over-eager brother and colleague to open the stable door until he was good and ready…

He was right of course, and now that the gallery is ready and ‘open’ to the surfing public I’m just incredibly impressed by the work that must have gone into creating it to such a high level. Am I exaggerating, building up what is just a collection of photos into something more than the sum of its parts?

Baikal Teal page on new Birds Korea gallery:
all images on the site are clickable and go to larger images

I really don’t think so. I am utterly sure that this gallery will be THE reference for anyone wanting to see high-quality images of the birds of east Asia. No doubt as users go through the site they will uncover a few small errors, but there’s not a book or website on the planet that doesn’t contain a few mistakes. And just remember that the whole thing has been put together by people working almost for nothing, purely to help the conservation of birds…

Anyway, here’s the text that appears on the Birds Korea website that announces the gallery, a couple of screen-grabs, a small selection of the stunning photos - and here’s the link if you want to skip the words and get straight down to enjoying the photos: http://www.birdskorea.org/Gallery/BK-GA-Gallery.shtml

Opened in celebration of the United Nation’s International Year of Biodiversity in 2010, the Birds Korea Gallery contains more than 2,200 images of over 450 species of bird photographed here in the Republic of Korea.  All images are of wild birds. As disturbance by people can cause birds to desert their nests, their roosts or otherwise optimal habitat, none of the images are of species at the nest, use flash, or are of species showing obvious stress.  As such the images show the birds at their best: beautifully and naturally in their habitat.

The Gallery follows the Birds Korea Checklist, and is arranged by Order and Family (accessible through the sidebar on the left of the main Gallery Page) and also by species (click on any of the thumb images to go direct to that species).  After looking at images of the selected species, either go back to the Main Gallery page or use the link at the bottom of the page to see other species in the same or adjacent Families.

Because identification (and much of the fun and science of birdwatching!) depends on detail, images on each species’ page are, where appropriate, divided into Subspecies and into five main groups of plumage (Female or Male, Juvenile, Immature or Adult). All of the images are also labelled with the name of the Photographer, the date and location, and further details on the bird’s age and plumage-type.

More on the Captions

Each species and each subspecies is of course unique. Due to the wide diversity in plumage and plumage development, a wide range of terms is used in the captions below each image.

After leaving the nest, almost all species have a fairly distinctive Juvenile plumage (the first fully feathered plumage).

Soon after, some species then look near-identical whether Immature or Adult, Male or Female, for some or much of the year. These are labelled “Unspecified” in the Gallery.

Many other species, however, have a range of plumages.  For example, Males of many smaller species tend to be brighter or show more contrast than Females of the same species, while many species, small and large, also have a distinct Non-breeding Plumage (e.g. in the autumn and winter) and an often more colourful Breeding Plumage (e.g. in the spring and summer).

Furthermore, some smaller species look very similar to adults only a few months after they hatch from the egg. In contrast, many larger species take several years to acquire a fully Adult Plumage.

All of these different plumages are developed through a process of older feathers wearing away (so they look “worn”, with e.g. black feathers looking browner) and by feather replacement (“Moult”). Moult can take place rapidly in short spells seasonally, or can also take place more slowly and gradually, especially in larger species.

It is therefore useful to use the term “Calendar-year” when describing the age of some birds, especially larger species. Calendar-year describes the age of a bird from the time of hatching until the end of that calendar year (i.e. December 31) and then on for each successive Calendar-year.  For example, if a bird was born in June 2010, it is a First Calendar-year for the rest of 2010 until becoming a Second Calendar-year on January 1 2011, and a Third Calendar-year on January 1 2012.

For other species (like larger gulls), it is often useful to use season-based terms too, such as “First-winter” (i.e. the plumage after Juvenile plumage during the first winter of that bird’s life) and “First-summer”. In this way, the same bird born in June 2010 can be described on January 1 2011 as both a Second Calendar-year and a First-winter. By June 2011, half way through its Second Calendar-year, it will already have worn and moulted into a very-different looking First-summer Plumage.

And for other species still, like many shorebirds, it can be helpful to use a further set of terms to describe plumage.  Developing a full Adult Breeding Plumage is a very energy-expensive process, and many of Korea’s shorebirds already live extraordinarily energy-demanding lives, migrating huge distances in a single flight. “First Breeding Plumage” is a rather colour-poor breeding plumage shown by many such migrant shorebirds in the first full summer of their life (i.e. in their Second Calendar-year).  By contrast, in older birds a “Supplementary Plumage” is shown by most healthy adults of some species – an additional partial moult that produces an especially colourful plumage.

The Gallery and Conservation of Birds and Their Habitats

When viewing all of the fantastic images in the Birds Korea Gallery, it is easy to understand that the Republic of Korea has a wonderfully rich avian biodiversity. This diversity is a source of pride and inspiration for us all. While some species remain numerous and are easy to see, even in cities, many others are much less familiar. Some are now very rare and several are even globally threatened with extinction. Much still needs to be done to conserve all of these species and all of the habitats that they depend on.

Birds Korea would therefore like to thank here (and in the Acknowledgements below) all of the Photographers who so generously contribute their images for use on our websites. They do so in order to help us to fulfil our Conservation Mission. Of course, in all cases, they retain copyright over their images. Please respect the photographer’s copyright.

We would also like to ask you, the user of this Galley, to please help us to conserve the wonderful birdlife of Korea and the wider Yellow Sea eco-region. While the images in the Gallery are beautiful and diverse, the birds themselves and the habitats that they depend on are far more complex and vital to human life, health and happiness.

We and the birds need your support. Please join Birds Korea, Donate, and get involved in our work. Thank you!

Birds Korea, July 2010.

Birds Korea would like to thank all photographers for their great generosity in sharing their images (all are listed below in the separate section). The Birds Korea Gallery itself has been developed by a large group of contributors, including most especially Andreas Kim, who as website manager for both the English and Korean websites, has arranged all of the images and built the pages; Nial Moores, who has been responsible for many of the identification captions; Kim Sona and Park Meena for work on the Korean-language sections; and Martin Sutherland and Richard Chandler, for identifications and much-appreciated advice.