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Hi everyone,
Well, another month has already gone by, and while in some
ways it has taken its time, in other ways it has really flown by. School still
keeps on going for me, everyone weekday. Although sometimes it feels like a bit
of a drag, the teachers that we have are really nice people, and the classes
can often turn out to be quite funny. I guess with such a varied mix of
foreigners, it is always bound to be interesting. Portuguese and Chinese seem
to be the two dominant languages, but everyone speaks at least a little bit of
English, which is nice.
I haven't really been able to get out birding as much as I
would have liked this month, primarily because of the horrible weather that has
insisted on hanging around since almost the beginning of the month, with only
the occasional respite. The weather did, however, bring the first decent snow
falls of the year, both times enough to turn the Ageo white the following
morning. On the second occasion, I awoke to find the world completely covered
in about 5cm of snow. I quickly dressed and headed out with the camera, and no
sooner had I stepped outside than a group of 10 White Wagtails flew in and
landed at eye level in the snow on next-door-neighbour's roof. I had no idea
what prompted them to fly to my window in particular, but after about 10
minutes of getting cold feet, they flew off, leaving me to hurry down to have a
slightly late breakfast. The best start
to a school morning by a long way!
Following the first dump of snow (on the 1st of February,
coincidentally), I headed out to Meiji Jingu Shrine with the idea of
photographing birds in snow. Naturally, the birds preferred not to get cold
feet, so that idea quickly fell through. However, I did manage to find a single
White's Thrush, which are uncommon and hard to find at best. Very similar to
our Zoothera thrushes back home,
particularly the Bassian Thrush.
A birding friend (Kaz) invited me to come along with him to
twitch some raptors that had turned up about 3 hours drive from Tokyo. Of
course I accepted, so on the 7th we drove out, stopping on the way at a
medium-sized lake which proved to be very fruitful. A large flock of Smew were
visible even as we got out of the car, and on closer inspection Common Teals,
Eurasian Wigeons, Tufted Ducks and Spot-billed Ducks were out in force. There
were also a few Great Crested Grebe and a single Slavonian Grebe, an uncommon
winter visitor. Some terrific spotting from Kaz netted first a female then a male Baikal Teal
amongst the commoner species. This was very unexpected, as Baikal Teal are rare
at best in the Kanto region. The male, in particular, was an absolute stunner
of a bird, strikingly patterned and coloured. A definite highlight of the
month. Moving on the raptor spot, we
were treated to some outstanding raptor birding. We had terrific views of birds
of prey such as Eastern Marsh Harrier (common), Hen Harrier (uncommon visitor),
Merlin (uncommon winter visitor--the males are really beautiful), Peregrine
Falcon (uncommon resident), and the ubiquitous Black Kites and Eastern
Buzzards. In addition, we also got our target species: Upland Buzzard, bird no.
100 in Japan for me. Upland Buzzards are a very rare vagrant, one of the first
records in the Kanto area in several decades I believe. Although there was some confusion at the end
of the day over a possible Rough-legged Buzzard (another vagrant), it was
overall a bumper day of birding, with 11
new species for me.
The bad weather persisted for the rest of the month,
although I did still manage some birding. Another outing (this time with Kaz's
birding group) on a rainy day still netted birds such as 4 species of bunting
(Common Reed, Siberian, Rustic and Black-faced), 4 species of thrush (White's,
Pale, Brown-headed and Dusky), Great White Egret, Hawfinch etc. The only new
bird of the day came in the form of 5 Falcated Teal, found in very dim light on
a large man-made reservoir.
A break in the weather on the 19th allowed me to visit Meiji
Jingu again after school (this is quickly becoming one of my stomping grounds
:) Highlights were outstanding views of Varied Tits, dynamic little birds that
they are. This trip also produced my first Grey Bunting (a male, thank
goodness), and a thrush that had me thinking Eye-browed Thrush (until I was
later corrected: a very odd Pale Thrush with a confusing white eyebrow).
Another break in the weather allowed me to visit a local
park with my grandmother. It was ridiculously busy, not with mothers and
toddlers, but with bird photographers. Nearly every single person in the park was
carrying some sort of a camera and watching birds, it was ridiculous! The
cameras ranged in size from small compacts to massive black and white 1m long
monsters to cameras attached to tripods, which made it kind of interested to
see who had which camera/lens. That aside, the amount of people was very
frustrating. The only birds of note were some Long-tailed Tits and a
Long-tailed Rosy Finch (female again).
Lastly, I met up with another local birder (Chris) and
together we went back to Maioka Park in Yokohama (the same park that I visited
with Kaz last month). This time we managed to find the Solitary Snipe, and
ended up having fabulous views of it. It has a very funny habit of bobbing up
and down continuously, especially whilst feeding, somewhat like a Common
Sandpiper but much more regular, very rythmic. Odd to watch. Solitary Snipe are
an uncommon resident in mountain streams in Honshu, and are usually very hard
to locate due to their remote habitat (mountain streams). However, recently a
couple seem to have taken up residence at Maioka Park, providing a much easier
opportunity to see this elusive species. We also had extremely close views of a
Common Snipe that seemed unusually unperturbed by our presence.
So that has been my month so far. I hope it is of some interest to some members of the chatline.
Attached is the 'image of the month': a
Varied Tit, taken at Meiji Jingu with a berry/nut in its beak. They have a habit of foraging amongst the leaf litter for berries/nuts, and then flying up into a nearby tree and smashing the berry/nut against the branch.
Hope you are all keeping well and keeping up the birding.
Cheers
Tobias
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