Russky Island (it means Russian Island....)

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I found some birds today.

When googling yesterday trying to find if there was a tourist information centre in town (there was, in the marine terminal building) I discovered that last year the Russians had built a whacking great bridge across to Russky Island, which is why I couldn't find the ferry building because now people get there on the bus! The bridge isn't hard to miss: it's so big that it can be seen from pretty much anywhere in town. I went to the tourist information centre where, seeing it's a tourist information centre, the lady at the counter only spoke a little English (instead of none). Poor lady couldn't understand half of what I was trying to ask her, but I did discover which stop the buses to the island leave from and which numbers they were (15 and 29, in case you're wondering). I couldn't find anything about how to get anywhere else with some forest though.

I went to the bus stop after trying to find out some other things elsewhere to no avail, and there was a number 15 sitting there. I asked the driver if he went to Russky Island and he said “Russky? Da” so I assumed he did. I wasn't entirely convinced, especially when the bus stubbornly kept going in the opposite direction to the bridge, but eventually it went round a big U-turny road and I could see the bridge ahead. All was looking good until the bus veered off to the left and headed away from the bridge again, then came looping back round to approach it, then veered off in another direction. It was doing my head in, this. But finally the bus made it on to the bridge and I now only had the wondering if it would pass anywhere that looked good for birds. Most of the island appeared from the bus to be a tangle of highways rolling between newly-built run-down buildings (a Russian speciality it seems). But soon it was passing a patch of low forest that looked not too bad, so I jumped off as soon as there was a stop and walked back along the highway until I found a track. So far there had been no birds (at all!) but in the forest I did find bazillions of mosquitoes. Every time I stopped moving a wave of them would appear from nowhere and surround me.



I could hear birds so I knew they were around. The first ones to appear were marsh tits which were a new species for me, and later they were joined by Eurasian nuthatches and a white-backed woodpecker both of which I'd only seen for the first time last week in South Korea. An eastern crowned warbler bounced around in the trees for a bit. Then there was a long stretch of nothing. I had a look by the beach but found only tree sparrows and a distant crow which I think was probably a large-billed crow. But then while walking back along the road away from the beach I came across a seep at the edge which had a constant stream of little birds flying back and forth to bathe. Asian brown flycatchers, grey-streaked flycatchers, great tits, marsh tits, nuthatches and tree sparrows were all having a great time. Then a couple of chestnut-flanked white-eyes joined in which startled me because I didn't know there were any white-eyes this far north (and they were only the second new bird for the day). Also there were several flycatchers which I decided must be female yellow-rumped flycatchers. According to the distribution map in the Birds of East Asia guide, Vladivostok is just outside their range but I don't know what else would have a bright yellow rump like that (with greyish upperparts and whitish underparts). A shy streaky bird with white outer tail feathers was probably a female black-faced bunting I figured, but it stayed in the bushes so I couldn't get a proper look at it and it remains a mystery. Another bird that stayed off the list was a gull I saw gliding briefly into view and out again from a vantage point on top of a hill. It wasn't a black-tailed gull like all the others I've seen so far, and I think it might have been a slaty-backed gull but I don't really know for sure.



So at least some victory in the animal-watching today.

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