Today I went birdwatching up near Yokota Air Base, in a small town called Hamura, along the Tama River. In a birding book I bought a while back, it described the walk as having the potential to see an incredible variety of birds in April and May, so I decided to check it out. And while there was some good birding to be done, it was not nearly as good as advertised–at least not today. Still, the birding trail (really a hiking trail up to Hamura Shrine) was very pretty, and relaxing as well, as evidenced by the photo below.

Actually, they should have called the place “Bulbul Forest,” as the place was teeming with them. Brown-eared Bulbuls, native to Japan, are the bane of birding here. They are ugly birds, your typical “brown” bird with sometimes-spiky head feathers. They also have loud, shrieking calls with enough variety to fool you into thinking that they’re another kind of bird, until you get used to them. And they are everywhere. Especially in this forest, just loads of them; you get tired of them really fast, because when you’re birding, you react to any movement or sound, and when 9 times out of 10 it’s a Bulbul, you start to resent them.

In the forest, I was able to photograph little else. There was this bird, which was either a Black-Faced Bunting, or a Grey Bunting–hard to tell, the lighting was poor:

Then there was this mystery bird, which sang prettily but proved highly elusive visually; I was only able to snap a few images, at extreme zoom. It appears to be a blue-black bird with either a white rump or a white spot on its wing feathers; the closest I can come to identifying it as would be a Blue-and-white Flycatcher:

If the two above are the Grey Bunting and the Blue-and-white Flycatcher, then that’s two new Life Birds, but I can;t’ty for sure if they are.

Also in the forest, I encountered a flock of Long-tailed Tits. Unlike before, I was able to center them in my camera view several times, and had ample time to shoot them. But in a frustrating turn of events, every time I had one in frame, the damn camera refused to focus, even when it should have had no problem doing so. Incredibly aggravating, that was.

However, after I got back down to the river, I was able to get some nice shots. Surprisingly, there were tons of Grey Wagtails around; I had only spotted one before in the past few years, but there was no end to them in Hamura. Pretty birds.

Also pleasingly, there were a good number of Bull-headed Shrikes, with interesting calls no less. Once, I found myself by chance just six feet away from one resting in a tree–and again, the damned camera refused to focus despite having loads of time. I am going to have to get a new camera, I think. Still, I had lots of other chances, and got these images:

As I was chasing one of the Shrikes from tree to tree, I started down a slight embankment, and got startled: apparently, a Japanese Green Pheasant was just a few feet away and suddenly took off in a loud flapping rush. They are fairly big birds, and so they make a lot of noise when they do that; quite surprising. The pheasants have a habit of ducking down and holding perfectly still when they see you coming; you won’t know they’re there until you get too close, and then they’re off and flying–quite a sight, considering the size of the bird and those long tail feathers. No pictures, though.

Finally, I’ll close with a relatively pedestrian, but still nice catch: a Meadow Bunting:

To round off the list of birds spotted: Great Egret, Grey Heron, Carrion Crow, Tree Sparrow, Japanese Bush Warbler (Nightingale; heard, not seen), Mallard, Japanese White-eye, Black Kite, and Barn Swallow.