For the past one month, I’ve finally been getting back to birdwatching. The first return was a month and a few days ago, and I was still on crutches, but able to balance enough without them so I could take photos between walking from place to place on the Tama River. Since then, I’ve made it to Inogashira Park, Seiseki Sakuragaoka a few times, and to the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park. I just never got around to posting any of the photos. I got a few Life Birds along the way, but mostly just revisited species I’d spotted many times before. Still, there was some good birding in there, and I’ll try to give a good sample of all the species. None of the photos in this series will have larger versions on clicking.

First, the late February Tama River birding. Along with the usual assortment of crows and sparrows, there were:

Eurasian Wigeons. These Wigeons have been congregating at this particular stretch along the Tama River in Inagi since late last year. There are several dozen of the birds, always in the same spot.

And of course, the Great Cormorants. These birds are present in the area year-round, and were among the first birds I spotted when I started birdwatching here a little more than a year ago. These big fellas are almost as ubiquitous as the crows, but not quite. Still, you see them everywhere along the river and the bay.

Not quite as numerous but still nice to see are the Green Winged Teals. Pretty birds. Although Inogashira Park is flush with ducks, neither the Teals nor the Wigeons show up there, for some reason–but they are usual visitors to this part of the Tama River in Inagi.

Even more ubiquitous than the Cormorants are the inevitable Spot-billed Ducks. If you see a duck in Japan, odds are it’s one of these.

Less expected was a small group of Little Grebes. I haven’t seen these guys so much on the Tama before, but they’ve been regulars here for the past month or longer.

Returning after a short absence are the Egrets, in this image, a Little Egret (yellow feet). They’re always graceful and nice to see.

And where there’s water, there are Wagtails–a White Wagtail, in this case, the more common type. Japanese Wagtails (similar, but with a black head and white brow stripe) are less common. Wagtails are easily spotted by their signature slow-wagging tail, as well as their swooping up-and-down flight path and their peep-peep! peep-peep! call.

Not an exceptionally exciting collection, but a nice welcome back to birdwatching. Next: Inogashira Park.

Although my broken foot nixed most of my plans for birdwatching on my trip home, that doesn’t mean that birding is out altogether. My father took me to Redwood Shores yesterday, to a spot recommended by a serious birder friend. We used “the rig,” my folks’ mini-camper, which had the advantage of height and amenities, and parked by the side of a pond aside a sewage treatment plant (didn’t smell) where there were a large number of birds.

The most impressive was the Hooded Merganser, which really makes you look twice:

Quite the headgear, eh? The following two include blowups upon clicking:

That last one expands to include a female merganser, though only viewed from behind.

There was also a variant of a bird I’ve seen before in Tokyo, the Black-necked Stilt (the Japanese variant is the Black-winged Stilt).

There was a similar bird present, the American Avocet, in winter plumage (click for larger image):

And similar to the Merganser, there was a Common Goldeneye, also a large-headed duck. In this shot, it’s close to what appears to be a Ruddy Duck (also expandable):

We also spied what we later learned to be a Ruddy Duck (winter plumage), though it was diving so much and for so long, we thought it might be some kind of Grebe.

Not a bad catch for a quick trip. Today we’re going to close to the Dumbarton to see if there are any good spots around there.

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. I got up at 6:00 in the morning and set out early. I went to Yatsu Higata in Chiba, doubled back to Sanbanze (I finally found the beach park which is considered the “real” Sanbanze site, after trying a few other locations this morning), then stopped off at Kasai Rinkai Park before heading home at about 2:00 in the afternoon, getting home by 3:00. Unfortunately, I don’t have much to show for it. Yatsu Higata had one species in the Sandpiper category I haven’t nailed down yet, but otherwise zilch, birding was poor there today. Sanbanze wasn’t great, either–the sun was behind the few interesting birds, and most of that location is for people with serious telescopic power–tons of birds, but all of them far off. There was a flock of Eurasian Coots, which I’d never seen before–I’d only seen them in twos or threes. But again, nothing new.

Only Kasai Rinkai had anything noteworthy, and that was not a new bird, but a good look at a familiar one: a Kingfisher that perched close this time. As usual, click for enlargements:

I was lucky with the focus for those shots, not to mention that the bird obliged well for posing. But even better, I got a great movie of the Kingfisher doing its thing: sitting on a branch, diving down, catching some food, eating, shaking off water, then flying off again. The movie was in full-size mode, 640 x 480 pixels and 30 frames per second. The focus wavers a bit, but stays sharp for most of the clip. It’s a 17-second movie, a 2.2 MB download. You must have the most recent version of Quicktime (version 7, free download) installed in order to see it. Click on this image to go to the movie:

The clicking and beeping you hear in the movie is the other birdwatchers excitedly but quietly photographing the scene. This was kind of special because the bird was no more than fifteen or twenty feet away, and feeding–not a common sight.

I know it might be a bit of a pain to have to download Quicktime 7 to see this movie, but I’m doing it this way because frankly I am very impressed with Apple’s new H.264 compression, intended for high-definition movies. The original movie, in AVI format (which has until now given some of the best compression) was almost 30 MB in size–but with the H.264 compression, as you can hopefully see, there was very little loss in image quality, but the compression got the file down to only 2.2 MB, less than 10% of the original file size. As I said, impressive.

In the next day or two, I’ll go back and post some other photos from today and last Wednesday.

I went to Kasai Rinkai yesterday, where there were a lot of birds, but no new ones, really. There was a Kingfisher, a Snipe, and a ton of ducks (I think I’ve got all of them already, but I’ll have to check on a few). There was even a Tanuki, a Raccoon Dog. I’ll have some photos from there soon. But I also dropped by Sanbanze, what would be a tidal flats, had the high tide not been in since late morning. I wasn’t able to catch the area at its best–but I did get two new birds, both Grebes–and both surprising to me.

The first I saw was the Black-necked Grebe (Hajiro-Kaitsuburi • ハジロカイツブリ), which stood out from its form and its bright red eyes. Its propensity to dive made me figure it was a Grebe; it was hard to keep up with it. When a Grebe dives, it tends to go in a certain direction. Once you see the direction, when it dives you have to walk thirty feet or so in that direction to be in the right spot when it surfaces. And then to get a photo, you have to lock the focus and shoot fast, else it’ll dive again. These are two shots I got of it, both with enlargements when clicked:

But the big surprise was the second one. I thought I was shooting the same bird as the first, though this one was much farther off and almost in front of the sunset, so I didn’t see much detail until I got home and looked at it on the computer. It was a Great Crested Grebe (Kanmuri-Kaitsuburi • カンムリカイツブリ), a beautiful bird if you can get a clear, well-lit shot of it. But here are my shots, distant, blurry, and backlit…

And this last one, with no enlargement:

These two make #81 and #82 on my photo-life list for Japan. Sanbanze will definitely be next on my list for birding when I get out to a Tokyo Bay location again.

Here are a few photos I picked up yesterday along the Tama River. First, I was able to get some gull shots; it turns out that the flock of Black-headed Gulls that were scared off by the fisherman last time tend to return to the same spot. So this time, without the disruptive piscatorial intruder, I was able to get closer and snap off a few nice portraits. Again (and I will do this as often as I can), all the pictures have 1000 x 8000 pixel blow-ups when clicked.

I also got a good shot of a Grey Heron, and only after looking at the shot later did I realize that a few Wagtails, one of them flying, by pure chance were caught in the frame. Furthermore, one of the Wagtails is a White and the other is a Japanese (less common).

Another, closer shot of the Japanese Wagtail:

I also got a few nice shots of Black Kites:

There were four, and they were cavorting about and landing on the riverbank… but I’ve had less than stellar luck getting sharp focus on the birds when they fly against the sky as background, for some reason.

And finally, I got a pretty fair shot of a Meadow Bunting.

I went to Kichijoji today, and visited two parks: Inokashira and Kichijoji Parks. Kichijoji Park was new to me, and while there were a lot of ducks and a few other good birds, what I saw there was really just a subset of what I could see at Inokashira. And there were some pretty nice birds there today. Not any new ones for me, but I got some nice photos of ones I’ve seen before.

First, the Common Moorhen. You can spot these easily along the main bridge across the lake, the same bridge where you line up to rent the pedal-boats. The Moorhens are among the ducks taking food from passers-by along the bridge, on the side opposite the boats. The Moorhens tend to hang back. Before, I saw only an immature one; today, a family of three were out (all images today have enlargements when clicked):

The other nice catch was the Mandarin Ducks. These tend to stick to an area close to the west end of the lake in the park. You can usually find them on the last footbridge before the end of the lake. You might have to detour around a small building, taking a dirt path off the bridge, to find their hiding spot. But when you find them, they are close, and they are glorious. First, a mating pair:

Then one from behind; I like the angle, and the color and texture of the water:

It’s also very interesting to catch them preening and fluffing out–you see more about what their feathers are doing:

Maybe some more later, from Kichijoji Park.

Today I got back to Seiseki, and spent some time at Sengenyama / Tama Reien. At Seiseki, I arrived to see an impressive array of telescopic equipment, including what looked like no fewer than two professional television-studio-quality video cameras. The birders had their heavy artillery out.

What were they watching? As it turns out, a Peregrine Falcon (Hayabusa • ハヤブサ) had settled on the riverbed some distance away, and everyone was excited about it:

After sitting there for about half an hour, it took off, and I managed a few nice shots of it as it did, the first being the best:

Not spectacular photos from my teensy camera, but good enough to identify the bird, and so good enough to add to my photographic life list for Japan: #80.

Not much else was happening there, however, so I went to Sengenyama and Tama Reien, adjacent parks good for birding, to see what I could see. However, the birding wasn’t too great there, either. However, there is one area on the northern border of Sengenyama Park (where the park meets the houses) which is fairly productive. I found one place where I could stand very still and a lot of birds (no new ones) would come in numbers, mostly Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers, Great and Varied Tits, and Japanese White-eyes. Alas, all of these birds are highly active, and rarely sit still for more than a few seconds, making photography problematic. But here are two photos that came out OK–a Pygmy Woodpecker hanging upside down with his head pointed at me, twisting up to feed from a knot in the branch:

And a Great Tit, showing the yellow-green coloring on his back well (even if, as usual, I had trouble focusing on this species–strange, as they contrast so much):

I’m thinking of coming back to that spot with a plate and a bag of bird seed to see if I could attract them to come down and feed in the open…

Apparently, Winter is the best time for birding in Japan. I’ve been going to the small park in Seiseki Sakuragaoka in the mornings this week, having found it to be a good birding spot, close to where I live. There are always a half dozen or so birders there (usually older gentlemen), and one of them mentioned this morning that while about 10% of the birds found in Japan can be seen during the summer, more than 40% can be see during the winter. So I’m birding more recently, for that reason and because I got a small book this week that details the best birding spots in the Kanto area. By the way, here’s a nice shot of the fellows at the birding spot:

Last Monday, I was able to spot a few interesting bird views along the Tama River. One of them was a flock of Cormorants that had taken up residence along power lines strung across the river. What was impressive was their sheer number. Click on the image for a larger version:

I also spotted some Eurasian Wigeons on the river, which is what prompted me to visit Inogashira earlier:

This morning, I was able to catch a few birds at Seiseki, though none of then new life birds for me. One of them was another Bull-headed Shrike:

Another was a pair of what the other said was another Shrike, but I think they were fooled by the tiny LCD display on my camera–I’m almost certain these are Meadow Buntings:

I also spotted a Kingfisher, which excited me a lot more than it did the others; these birds are always very pretty:

After that, I went down the river closer to home, and spotted some Azure-winged Magpies:

This image has an enlargement when clicked:

Further on down, I spotted a flock of gulls having landed in the distance. I spent a good ten minutes walking down to the river bed to get a good shot at them. Now, at first, I saw fishermen on the river as quaint, but since I started birding more, they’re just getting downright annoying. They’re all over the place, and take up spots where birds might be, and tend to keep them away. But today, after having walked and climbed so far just to get a shot at these gulls, this one fisherman went out of his way to walk up to them and scare them off. Pissed me off quite a bit, I am not shy to say. He probably figured he’d catch more fish with them gone, but how would he like it if he went to trouble to find a good fishing spot and I came up and threw rocks in the water and scared off his fish?

Nevertheless, I was able to walk a bit more down the river and catch a few gulls that hadn’t been scared too far. And it turns out they’re a new life bird: the Black-headed Gull (Yuri-kamome • ユリカモメ), which get their name from their Spring plumage, not their November appearance.

Before the fisherman did his dirty deed, I was able to snap off a few long-zoom shots of the flock, moments before they got shooed off; this is just park of the flock:

The above two gull shots, by the way, have enlargements when clicked.

That’s all the stuff I had backed up; tomorrow I’ll probably be at the Oi Wild Bird Park, and so there’ll probably be another bird blog entry later.

So I finally found the birding spot in Seiseki-Sakuragaoka that everyone’s been talking about. There wasn’t too much action, though there were a ton of birders there. But everyone was spying a Northern Goshawk (Ootaka • オオタカ) that was perching very close by. First, it was obscured by the trees, then (after a 45-minute wait) it came out a bit:

Then if flew to a nearer tree, and I got a better shot at it:

There were also a pair of Common Ketsrels (Chougenbou • チョウゲンボウ) across the river, but they were so far away that you couldn’t tell from my photo alone–I had to see them through another birder’s scope.

They’re not defined enough for me to count this as a “get,” so I won’t add that one to my life list (which I’m limiting to successfully photographed birds, not ones just spotted or heard).

The distance of the birds today reinforced my desire to get a scope with camera attachment, so I looked into it more closely after birding in the morning. However, the camera I have is not good for that–apparently, the scopes work better with cameras that have minimal zoom themselves, and my 10x zoom camera isn’t a good match. The guy at Yodobashi set up my camera on a scope so I could get the feel of what I’d be getting, and it wasn’t very good. The field of view was tiny, I had to zoom the camera all the way in and still there was a vignette (circular shadow) at the edges; it would be impossible to find anything without a small spotter scope. The focus was poor, and for ¥60,000 worth of extra equipment, the additional zoom was hardly more than the total digital zoom using my camera and the 1.6x teleconverter (for a total 50x zoom). Looks like I’ll have to wait until I’m ready to lay out more than a thousand bucks for a whole new system, and that won’t be too soon.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll get by somehow–but I’ll have to curb my optics envy when I’m around other birders.

And the Japan Life List (photographed) gets to 77. I went down to the river not expecting to get much, and my expectations were met–a ton of Tree Sparrows, a few Great Tits, two common Spot-billed Ducks, one Egret, some Crows and Bulbuls, and a few Wagtails. Very pedestrian. But then a bird flew into a nearby tree and nearly posed for me, and I could see from its size and basic shape that it was probably something new–and it was. It’s not too rare a bird, but it’s the first time I have seen the Bull-headed Shrike (Mozu • モズ).

Here’s another one of the same bird, deeper in the tree. If you click on it, there’s a 1000-pixel-wide blowup.

At first, I thought it was a Brown Shrike (harder to tell from behind), but there’s a very small white spot on its wing which tells the difference.

Or, more accurately, the Kingfisher, or more specifically, the Common Kingfisher (Kawasemi • カワセミ), though its appearance is anything but common. I finally got some great shots of this bird, after several attempts that only gained small, fuzzier images. For a “common” bird, it’s not so easy to catch. But I got two good looks at the little guys yesterday at the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park.

The first one sat on a post maybe fifteen meters away, in the direct light. This first image has a beautiful 1280×854 blowup version if you click on it–the water reflection behind the bird is just great in the enlargement.

Then this guy flew up within perhaps 8-10 meters of one of the blinds, sitting on a rope across the water put there for just this purpose: to attract Kingfishers. Note the beautiful blue-green stripe down its back.

I got two new birds today: a Common Snipe and a Striated Heron. That along with some other nice photos, but the two new ones first. I should note that this brings my Japan life list to 76–I mistakenly thought I’d had 75, but I had 74. These two then bring me to seventy-six.

You may have heard of a “Snipe Hunt” before, a practical joke where a hapless mark is taken out into the forest late at night with a gunny sack and told to find and capture a “snipe” using the bag. As it turns out, the Snipe is a shorebird, and is not nocturnal, as the joke would have it. And I just caught my first one today, actually one of a group of four Common Snipes (Tashigi • タシギ) at the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park.

The second new bird, the Striated Heron (Sasa-goi • ササゴイ) was hard to see–I only was able to find it because someone from the Wild Bird Society (they had a group tour there today) had spotted it and pointed it out to me. It’s kind of like a Black-crowned Night Heron, but its colors are not quite so contrasted and it has yellow and not red eyes. I wasn’t able to get too good an image because of how far it stayed from the viewing points in the park.

It became much more visible when contrasted against a darker background:

Like I said, the quality of these images are lacking. I really like the camera I have now; however, this guy had the kind of equipment that I really want:

His camera was a very simple, plain digital job just costing a few hundred bucks, but he had hooked it up with a mini-video screen, a shutter cable, and a monoscope on a tripod. He had to carry with him a boxed set of maybe a dozen double-A batteries to run the monitor, but the setup worked, an beautifully–he could aim using the viewscreen and take great long-distance shots. Not so good, he admitted, for moving birds, but for stationary ones, it was very impressive. Though I have to temper that desire with the knowledge that it would take a car to conveniently carry all that gear around…

Here’s a close-up of the setup, with an enlarged image (you can see he’s shot the heron) available if you click it.

One of the birds that surprised me when I went to Enoshima was the Black Kite. It surprised me not just in how close one could approach it, but more so in what numbers it was present in. When I first appeared on the beach, more than a dozen were immediately visible. A half dozen or so perched close together in a tree on a nearby cliff; three or four more perched on masts of docked small ships and on lamp posts close to the shore; and another more than half dozen circling in the air. I rarely saw one swoop down and take anything, so it didn’t seem like there was an abundance of prey that would attract them. And they persisted in the area, from the coast beach to Enoshima to Kamakura; they were everywhere.

So here are some of the images, several having blow-ups when you click them–like these first two, nice portraits of Kites on ship masts:

And here’s a close-up shot of the first bird’s head:

Here’s the best shot I could manage of the Kites in the trees; if you look closely, you’ll see five Kites in this photo; more were perched in the area, but it wasn’t so easy to get all of them together.

I was able to get some nice shots of Kites circling against the cliffs on Enoshima, near where I spotted the Blue Rock Thrush. Usually, the birds are silhouetted against the sky, making it hard to see light detail on their undersides. These photos had the cliff in the background, bringing less of a contrast and a better image. The first has a large version when clicked:

Notice the white patch near the ‘finger’ feathers; that’s a key identification point for the Black Kite. But look at this other, less-detailed shot:

The white area seems different. A different species? Hard to say, I’ll have to look into that.

Finally, I got a gorgeous look at a Black Kite that apparently had snagged some chicken skin or something. It had perched unsuccessfully on slippery, angled lamp post, which led it to land on a railing for the main walkway on the Enoshima ocean view, very close to me. Note the food in its right claw, and how it’s not using the claw to perch. A large version available on clicking.

Some pretty birds here.

I decided to take one last day trip to go birdwatching before my vacation ends next week. This time I figured I’d head down to the southern Kanagawa coast, visiting Enoshima and Kamakura. Kamakura was less than productive bird-wise, but Enoshima gave me a lot to look at. There wasn’t much variety, though; most of the birds one could see were Black-tailed Gulls and Black Kites, the latter of which were in surprising numbers. However, I’ll post on the hawks in another entry as there’s a lot to show. This one I want to showcase a new bird for me: the Blue Rock Thrush (Isohiyo-dori • イソヒヨドリ), which I spotted on the island Enoshima, a small resort island just off the Kanagawa coast.

These two photos really show up the thrush’s colors. The white edge to the feathers is not usual, or so it would seem from the many photos I’ve found of this bird; none had them like this. But it definitely is the Blue Rock Thrush, just perhaps still getting its colors in. The bird is usually blue with a red belly, the colors solid and a bit deeper than you see here. Females are brown, and there is a completely blue sub-species. Below is a female:

So a very interesting bird. Other than that and the Kites, there were a good number of Gulls, but most if not all were Black-tailed Gulls (in Japanese, “Umi-neko,” or “Sea-cat” likely because of their mewing calls). I’ve gotten them before, but there were a few new photos that came out well:

And a close-up, or unreduced image from that last one; note the back- and red-tipped bill.

Coming up: the Kites of Enoshima.

Some of these are about birds, and some are just shots I took. Nothing important here. Two or three will have larger versions available if you click the photo.

First, the birds: I’ve been able to get shots of Little Grebes before, but nothing big and sharp. When I went to Ueno a few days ago as part of a multi-stop trip (Akihabara, Ueno, Shinjuku and Shibuya, to run errands), there were some Grebes in the rowing lake, and they were very close to the shore. Plus, it was direct daylight, so they came out pretty well. This first shot is of an adult, with a blowup on click:

Here’s a cute youngling in mid-quack:

Also spotted is what must be a Northern Shoveler, though the colors are too dark. Still, the bill is unmistakable, and the colors mean that this is a female.

Also in Ueno Park were a number of cats. They seem to love these markers, gravestones or otherwise, using them as basking thrones:

Also on that day, I stopped by the Tama River. The typhoon that was supposed to slam into us actually just grazed us. There were maybe 20 minutes of torrential rain and high winds and a lot more of just regular rain, but not the deluge that was promised; the storm veered off into the Pacific again instead of heading straight over Tokyo. Nevertheless, when I visited the river, the waters had risen more than ten feet! In this shot, you can see the middles and tops of trees that got drowned in the rising waters:

In the photo above, about an inch and a half from the left edge, you can see one of the taller, bushy trees just off the banks, with a dark area at its base, and if you look hard, you might notice a tiny white speck in there just above the waterline. This is what that was:

So not everyone was challenged by the rising waters, some seemed to like it.

Also unusual at the river were the bats. Bats are common in Japan, especially near rivers, but usually only after dusk. This was mid-afternoon on a hot, sunny day, and there were bats flying around. Kinda strange. It’s really hard to catch these guys–they flit around and change direction all the time to you can’t take any time to focus or set up a shot, not to mention that they do not land anywhere. This was the best shot I got:

And one more flying beast: a jet of the Japanese SDF. What kind, I don’t know, but maybe a sub chaser with a lot of radar bays, or a cargo jet. More bumps on this thing than a toad. Click on it for a blow-up.

This is one of the three parks I made it to late last week. It’s the largest of the mud flat parks I’ve visited along the bay, at least that I’ve visited. Located in Funabashi, not too far east of Kasai Rinkai, the birding is mostly along the south-western edge. There’s an observation center (not very well air-conditioned), and some outdoor sighting spots which were much better for birding the day I went.

One bird I saw better than at the Oi/Port Wild Bird Park was the Black-tailed Godwit (Oguro-shigi• オグロシギ):

A new catch for me was the Grey Plover (Daizen• ダイゼン):

And this is likely a Sanderling (Miyubi-shigi• ミユビシギ)–identified with some help from members of the Bird Forum:

Next, there was a flock of Ruddy Turnstones (Kyoujo-shigi• キョウジョシギ) towards one corner of the park. An elderly gentleman explained to me in English about how they got their name by, of course, turning over stones to get at the morsels below. I saw one of these at Oi/Minato a few days before, but it was only one, and it was a good distance away. These guys were very close up, and as you can see, in good number (this photo is only one part of the flock):

Here are a few of the better close-ups:

However, I had some trouble: these birds blend in to the background surprisingly well sometimes:

So not bad–two new life birds, and the first good look at two others, in one visit.

Unless an issue interrupts, expect the next two or three posts to be a further listing of birds and information about birdwatching in Tokyo. I’ve gotten quite a lot of that done in the past several days (waking up real early as well as catching the low tide), enough to do me for a little bit, at least. In September and October there are supposed to be a lot of migrating birds coming back, so on Wednesdays and Fridays, when my work schedule for the next semester doesn’t start until the afternoon, I may make it a habit to drop by the Yatsu salt marsh and the birdwatching area at Kasai Rinkai to see what’s there.

Okay. First, let’s finish with the wild bird park (東京港野鳥公園) near Haneda. There was quite a variety of birds there, including one I’m not at all sure about. That one was hard to distinguish, probably in large part because with changing plumage, a lot of the sandpiper/plover varieties can be hard to tell apart. This one was by itself (as a species) sitting amongst a horde of other mixed birds:

Here it is with other birds in the shot:

By the way, on that last one, you can see a Ruddy Turnstone in the center and a Lesser Sand Plover on the right (more on them later). But the bird I’m not sure about is some kind of sandpiper–but which one I have no idea. The white stripe from above the eye to down the neck, the dark legs, and the barred/spotted tail all seem contradictory to a half dozen different possibilities. If anyone knows this one, let me know.

[Update: It’s a Pacific Golden Plover, according to knowledgable sources.]

Here’s a Grey-tailed Tattler (Kiashi-shigi• キアシシギ):

There was a Little Grebe (Kaitsuburi • カイツブリ), some of the better-detailed shots I’ve gotten, and as a bonus, there was a young grebe in attendance:

Here are a few of Lesser Sand Plovers (Medai-chidori • メダイチドリ):

There was also a Kingfisher in attendance:

And a Black-tailed Godwit (Oguro-shigi• オグロシギ):

There’s lots more coming. Sorry about how this will likely eat up bandwidth and slow down the page. As I mentioned elsewhere, if this is a problem, one solution would be to get an RSS feed reader and subscribe to this site’s feed, and then view the stories one by one as they are submitted.

Coming soon: nice images of Egrets and Herons, yesterday’s visit to three bay parks, a review of birding spots in Tokyo, and what can be referred to as “shooting fish in a barrel” birdwatching.

When I went to Kasai Rinkai Park a few weeks back, mostly I saw birds that I’d already seen before, though there were a few interesting surprises. One of the first birds I spotted way back when I started was the Black-crowned Night Heron (Goi-sagi • ゴイサギ), which I saw at Inogashira Park, quite to my surprise. I hadn’t seen once since, until I went to Rinkai:

A weird-looking bird, that one is. Almost like a penguin with devilish red eyes. But at Rinkai, I also saw an immature Black-crowned, which appears radically different from its mature counterpart, as you can plainly see:

I did get one new species but did not realize it–I had spotted some Grey-tailed Tattlers, but mistook them for more common sandpipers:

Other than that, it was just ordinary birds, though there were dozens of Egrets in one location:

That’s not all of them, of course, but you get the idea. Lots of big, tall white birds.

One other thing about Kasai Rinkai is the other wildlife you’ll see. I went down one path to a bird blind, and as I approached the structure, a whole bunch of small creatures scrambled away. Startled me, especially when I saw what was scrambling:

Lots and lots of these little crab critters. They were everywhere in those dark and damp corners. And then I also spotted:

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-TOAD!!

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But seriously. I also went to a small park on the bay close to the Tsukiji fish market (which is near Ginza), a park called Hamarikyu Garden, originally a duck-hunting ground for the imperial family. This place was less a bird-watching haven, though, and more just a general bayside park. It also cost 300 yen to get into. I won’t be going back, but I did see some nice birds, including one new species: a Swan Goose (Sakatsura-gan • サカツラガン), an import from China, this one banded and quite tame–you could get within a few feet of it.

I was also able to get very close to a Cormorant:

Click to see larger image.

That covers the Rinkai Park visits up to now and a bit of other stuff. I still have to document the latest visit to the Tokyo Wild Bird Park near Haneda, where I saw several new life birds. However, I might have to extend this series of posts because I may go birding again tomorrow. Perusing the maps, I stumbled upon yet another wild bird park, this one just a little farther out than Kasai Rinkai. I also realized that I should be coming to these places at low tide, and that’ll be before noon tomorrow, so I might just make a three-park run if I have time and if the weather permits (which it should). Some day I’ll have to get out to the Yatsu Higata Salt Marsh in Funabashi, but probably not tomorrow. Once I do, I’ll be able to make a more detailed report on good birding spots in the Tokyo area, having covered a lot of the good places.

Long story short, the birdin’ ain’t over yet.

This will be the first of at least three posts on my birdwatching over the past few weeks. I found a great new spot for birdwatching in Tokyo: Kasai Rinkai Park, just west of Tokyo Disneyland. It’s on the JR Keiyo Line, Kasai Rinkai Koen Station. I went there two weeks ago, and never got around to posting about it. Today, I went to both Kasai Rinkai Park and the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park. But Kasai Rinkai is going on my list of must-see birding spots in Tokyo, equal to and perhaps even surpassing the Wild Bird Park.

The east side of the park is more or less dedicated to a bird sanctuary with probably a dozen well-placed blinds. I went there at the end of July, and despite the late hour (past 5 pm) I saw dozens of Egrets (Great and Little), two and perhaps three types of Sandpipers, a Black-crowned Night Heron (adult and immature, radically different in coloring), Cormorants, Grebes, and some other species. In winter, it’s supposed to be knee-deep in ducks.

I don’t know how this park stayed off my radar for so long–it’s just as good (if not better in a few ways) than the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park, but it’s also free. The only problem for me is that it’s a bit of a distance away–but that’s worth it, once in a while.

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For this post, I’ll describe mostly the new birds I found at Kasai Rinkai today.

We’re having a break between storms right now, and so last night I decided to get to sleep early; if I could manage that, an early start would be great for birdwatching. I was able to wake up at about 5 am, and was out and on my way by 6 am (those who know me will understand what a feat that is). I stopped by the Tama River on my way, and from what I saw, I think I’ll wake up really early again soon–lots of birds out on the river at that time. There were assorted Egrets, of course, but also a Grey Heron and–most surprising because I’ve never seen one around here–a Kingfisher. Unfortunately, Kingfishers in Tokyo seem to be incredibly skittish, and I was unable to get a clear shot of the bird.

I then went on to Kasai Rinkai Park, and in addition to many familiar species (Cormorants, Egrets, Herons, Grebes, Sandpipers, Plovers, Magpies, Bulbuls, Sparrows, Crows, and Starlings), I also got no fewer than five new life birds. There were the usual herons and egrets, but I immediately spotted a Black-winged Stilt and a Grey-tailed Tattler; I later spotted (with help) a Common Greenshank and a Common Redshank. I hate it when birds have the word “Common” in their names–it takes all the fun out of seeing a new life bird. “Hey, look! A completely new bird! It’s, let’s see… oh. It’s a Common something-or-other. Nothing special. Dang.” The fifth was a surprise I uncovered only upon returning home and looking closely: a Eurasian Curlew.

As usual, some of these have large-sized versions (up to 1200 pixels wide) which can be viewed by clicking on the images here.

Here’s the Black-winged Stilt (Seitaka-shiki (literally, “tall sandpiper”) • セイタカシキ), a bird that’s pretty hard to miss:

The Grey-tailed Tattler is one of those many birds that you could easily mistake for a Common Sandpiper. THese birds make it hard to figure out which is which. But in this case, the yellow legs (thus, the Japanese name Kiashi • キアシシギ • or, yellow-legged sandpiper) make it easier to identify:

Then the Greenshank (Ao-ashi-shigi (literally, green-legged sandpiper) • アオアシシギ), easier to spot with its plumage and leg color:

Note that this bird has caught a little fish. I got a video of this, and will try to upload it soon.

And the Redshank (Aka-ashi-shigi (literally, red-legged sandpiper) • アカアシシギ) with its quite noticeable leg color:

Here you can best see the red color at the base of its bill:

And finally, the Eurasian Curlew (Dai-shaku-shiki • ダイシャクシギ)–which unfortunately, I only got in silhouette; it must have flown off after I got this photo. It’s certainly a Curlew because of the beak; but from the size and shape of the bill, it is almost certainly the Eurasian Curlew.

That’s all for today–five new life birds ain’t bad. Next, I’ll have some more familiar birds from Kasai Rinkai Park, both from today and from two weeks ago, and I’ll see if I can fit all the birds I got today at the Wild Bird Park in a third post.

Well, finally. I’ve been trying to shoot one of these guys for a long time, almost as long as I’ve been photographing birds, which is maybe six months now. They’ve been somewhat elusive to me. I got a quick, low-quality shot of one at Tama Reien months ago, and would’ve gotten better had a bicyclist not scared them off. I almost got a beautiful shot of a mother feeding her young on a power line right in front of me, but they scampered off before I could get my camera out.

This time, I wandered into an area where a ton of starlings and pigeons were feeding in a field–upwards of a hundred birds or so–and I noticed a half-dozen or so magpies flying around the fringe of the field. I followed them uphill a bit as they moved, and wound up getting some nice photos.

The first one has two in a tree, and one of them is probably immature, seeing as how the black cap is still somewhat white, probably from baby down.

Here’s what appear to be a few more in intermediate stages:

In this one, the magpie seems rather annoyed at an intruding Oriental Turtledove:

Here are some adults:

And you can really see in this one why the birds are named オナガ (“Onaga,” or “Long Tail”) in Japanese: