Despite it being a cold, overcast day, I decided to trek out to the Tama River and the local area for a few hours today in order to do a bit more birding, and I was rewarded with some rather interesting birds. First, among the more common, was the Black-backed Wagtail (sometimes called the White Wagtail), a bird I have seen about for quite some time, but have never been able to photograph well, mostly from its skittish nature. It has a striking black-and-white contrast. Today I found it mostly at the riverbank, usually on the concrete levees. Most of the photos are a bit fuzzy because I had to use the digital zoom, beyond the 10x optical zoom, sometimes up to 32x, in order to get the best shot.

Another common bird was this one–but despite a long search on the Internet, I cannot find its identity. To anyone seeing this, if you know what it is, let me know. They’re all around, in town and on the river. [Update: Andrew from Fujisawa correctly identified them as Gray Starlings. Thanks, Andrew!]

But I should find out sometime later this week–I plan on buying “A Field Guide to the Birds of Japan,” which seems to be the only really useful guide book out there–at least one that seems to have an English version (hopefully) to it. Amazon in the U.S. lists prices for the book up to $300 or so–I have no idea why, maybe collector’s editions or something. In Japan, the book as currently published is just over 3000 yen.

A bird I have seen around from time to time, but not quite so often, is the Little Egret.

The ducks were out on the river, of course, but I saw two new kinds today: the Teal (or Common Teal), and the Eurasian Wigeon (below), which looks like the Pochard, but has white feathers on the front of its head.

The biggest surprise, however, was a flock of largish black birds resting on the shore of a small island in the middle of the river. At first I took them for crows, but as their larger size became apparent and I realized crows don’t really do the river scene, I thought they might be a breed of black ducks. Even when I photographed them, I was unsure what they were–the small viewer on the back of my camera didn’t give up quite enough detail, and since my hands were freezing in the very, very cold wind on the river, I was not in the position to study it much. But on later review at home, the breed became apparent: they were Cormorants–a flock of Great Cormorants, in fact. Again, since I had to use the digital zoom due to the distance, the shots are far from crisp–but the Cormorants are distinctly identifiable.

So add another six species to the list. Of course, it’s always easy at the start.