Ulleungdo, finally

I'll start with yesterday (my second day in Donghae).  I wandered around a bit in the morning and saw some Blue Rock Thrushes at the beach. Then I hung out at the beach for a while and got invited to lunch with a group of Koreans - they called themselves Donghae Marathon Club.  They also invited me to dinner and to homestay for the night. I had a great time and got to experience the company of some fun people.

This morning I caught the ferry over to Ulleungdo.  Even though I've seen tons of pictures of the island, they didn't really prepare me for actually seeing the mountains just rising out of the ocean.  When I got on the island, I had some difficulty finding my homestay and in my wanderings I discovered there were a bunch of cool plants just along the roads. For instance I saw lots of Houttuynia chordata, Petasites japonica, and Rubus phoenicolasius to name a few species.  I also saw a species of Rutaceae and wondered if it was Phellodendron insulare (an endemic species I found very little information on), but I'll have to look at it again when I have my guide on hand.  The species I've seen just on the roadsides in Donghae are so different from home, even the butterflies and spiders are really different.  I'm excited to see the whole island.

House FInches (probably)

These were in Hawaii and I have no idea what they are

Rubus parvifolius (personally I think this one should be called Rubus parviflorus because the flowers on this one actually are small)

There's Donghae

A male Blue Rock Thrush

This is him when I did playback for him

This was still in Donghae

I think this is a cuckoo but it was too blurry and far away to make any distinguishing characteristics

The lovely people I spent yesterday with

I don't actually have pictures of stuff in Ulleungdo yet, but I'm planning on starting tomorrow.  I'm going to take pictures of all the plants and birds and everything I can find, so there will be lots of pictures.