Well, I haven’t done birds for a while, so let’s get back to that a bit, eh? The weather should be good over the next week, and midterms have been graded, so I might have a bit of time to do more than just the incidental birdwatching.

I visited the Tama River a few times over the past few days, and I have to say that it’s like a change in the cast of characters. The ducks are all gone (though you can still spot some garden-variety types in the now-water-filled rice paddies nearby), the egrets are rather scarce, and the cormorants have gone elsewhere. The sparrows and starlings have remained. But there are a few new species here as well. The first and most startling was the appearance of the Little Tern (Koajisashi • コアジサシ). Tokyo is pretty far north for this bird’s range, but I saw a pair fishing by the side of the river. It was hard to catch them in flight because of movement and focus, but it was fun to watch. They would fly up and down a small stretch of the riverside, and when they spotted something, they’d go into hover mode, staying in one position for several seconds (see shot below) before diving down and snatching a fish from the water below.

Next, and not quite as clear in the photos is what I am fairly sure is a Long-billed Plover (Ikaru-chidori • イカルチドリ). I saw a few Little Ringed Plovers at the Wild Bird Park, and this one is similar, but the lack of a yellow rim around the eye and the specific white-and-black coloring above the bill seems to tag this one as a Long-billed Plover. Hard to catch, I only got a few blurry shots, as you can see. This bird camouflaged extremely well into the rocks along the beach, seeming to disappear most of the time.

And here’s the definitive shot with the head coloring:

Also on hand was a Japanese Wagtail and its immature offspring.

Then there was this guy, which I’m pretty sure was an Oriental Goldfinch, but it seemed to have almost too much red for that. However, I can’t guess what else it might have been:

This one I also couldn’t identify. There are a bunch of them making an somewhat of a racket in the tall grass, but they almost never came out above it to pose for a photo. I thought it might be an immature starling (the long pointed beak and general shape of the head and body seem to match starlings), but the tail seems too long for that. I think it might be a Japanese Swamp Warbler (Oosekka • オオセッカ), as the general appearance is similar and the habitat is right–but the identification is far from certain.

This guy was a complete question mark for me; I only got the one photo. Maybe an immature wagtail? The coloring seems a bit strange for that…

I should really download the category page for my birdwatching blog entries and take my PowerBook into the Japan Wild Bird Society shop near Shinjuku. They could probably help me identify the ten or so species I haven’t been able the get yet. For later.

And then there were the swallows. Everywhere. These things are out on the river en masse, and they’re flying around all over the place. Hard to get images of them like that, too–but I found a spot where they were resting. A recently-bulldozed slope along the riverside, where the end of land suddenly slopes down maybe 30 degrees until it hits the water. The swallows were flying in there to rest, and I was able to catch a few shots.

All in all, a pretty productive few days, birdwatching-wise.