Our great southern migration

I promised more on Korea so we will mostly leave the birds behind for this post as I have lots of pictures to share. The picture above is the first official night of our visit. I went as part of the COE (Council on Education) site team visit as part of the accreditation of Seoul National University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Each college that is accredited by the AVMA and by the Dept of Education gets a similar review at least every 7 years. SNU is the only accredited college in Asia, not to mention in Korea. It is one of ten colleges in Korea and the accreditation status lets its students practice in the US/Canada after passing NAVLE and state boards vs taking other longer and more expensive paths to practice. It isn't used much in that regard but does give the college a special level of esteem.   Our team are the center group bookended by women. So two SNU folks on left side, then 7 of us, then three SNU folks on right. The SNU folks are the dean and associate deans. ...

       This blog is in honor/honour of the females that are brown or faded green while their mates are colorful/colourful! Many of these birds are not readily recognizable! I have now downloaded but not yet sorted my Korea pics so didn't want to wait on those. Hopefully this weekend! Note: these could be juvenile males; they look like the females. But we are going with these are females.  The image above is a golden whistler. It does whistle but isn't very golden. You can see the male on J is for jellyfish. This little lady (pretty sure she is a lady) is a female scarlet robin. Looks brown and orange to me! Her mate was on the  Gang's all here The female fairy wrens are great at incognito. They could be superb or variegated. In some instances, I swear they are red-browed fire tail finches. However, those juveniles are all brown and don't have red eye patches. The fairy wren boys come in various blue shades. See More fairy tails . The females are bolder...

I have too many fun pelican pics to not have a post dedicated to them They do like their fish. These guys where hanging out with the cormorants and seals, waiting for the fish cleaners to throw some goodies                                        I promise a blog on Seoul eventually but I have this one ready to go and it has been too long since postings. I finished the site visit on the 21st; got home on the 22nd and we left for our current sit on the 23rd! Prior to leaving we made two trips to the storage unit and found a bunch of Minnesotans (well, 2 more) at a little road side food stand in Nowra. Look it up; Nowra is not that big. One worked at the stand and heard me ordering and one was a patron. Small world! We are now in Bermagui, just south of where our hopeful house is. The owner of this place has spinal damage that has her in a wheelchair. She is taking her first longer (more tha...

    We seem to do better with purples than with pink. We were just headed back to the car in one park when this colorful tweet flew by. It flew off again just as quick and it took some fiddling with lighting to see the pink. Rather than rose robin, this seems to be a pink robin! Always good to have a challenge, right?  This one is a purple swamp hen. These flamboyant birds are often found in the parks and nature preserves. Love the attitude in this one. The pacific koel is a new one for us. It was on the list for one of our sites (south of Sydney) and we hunted and hunted. We heard it right at the beginning and then not again. So of course, we find it in the tree opposite the Potato Point house. This picture was when it was up on the point but same bird. It is named for its call, so you can definitely know when it is around. Most of my pictures of the bird in this bush were just of its head peeking up, typically with a berry in its mouth.  Scott is headed for swim le...

  Having been in Minnesota for the last 3 decades, the ocean is a lovely change. I do now have a fascination with frieghters and container ships. We stopped in a park on the way to Swansea. We started down the road to the beach but it was traveled by big trucks and we found a side trail. On the side trail,  one of the signs said "direct to beach" while the other was a loop trail. We did the loop trail and then thought we should check out the beach while there. We trudged up a very sandy and moderately steep incline (eg lots of work), crested the hill to see a large expanse of sand without clear signage. We trudged more and found a sign. This one said "outlook" left and "beach" right. Beach was still a vague concept with another sandy hill. We tried outlook. We didn't find it but did get high enough to take this shot. Note the lack of a nearby beach! Enough workout, we reversed course.  Scott spotted the shark from one of our whale watching areas. It re...