I'm back from my four-month exodus to Japan. It wasn't a time when I was
able to travel much, so my report is about more casual birding in rather
ordinary places. Also, it turns out that spring and summer are not the
great times for birding in Japan anyway. Well, maybe in spring, but at
that time I wasn't able to contact anyone to go birding with. And travel
is not easy in Japan unless you can read the signs, written mostly in
Kanji (adopted Chinese characters), and speak enough of the language to
ask questions about where to go and understand the answers. Anyway, a
large share of the interesting birds one can see in Japan are winter
visitors or are only seen during migration.

My birding experiences were very frustrating at times because I was able
to hear so much and see so little. I don't understand why there should
be such a difference, but I don't think this is just my imagination. My
experience is North America is that as I walk slowly through an area,
birds fly away from me but frequently perch for a while where I can see
them; in Japan, birds commonly flew far away and hid. My experience in
North America is that if I stand for a while where I hear birds in the
trees, they will often be hidden by the foliage but now and then I'll get
a look at them; in Japan, I could stand for a long time with little
voices in the trees all around me and not see a thing; and I had this
experience with other people, as we all searched the trees in vain,
unable to see anything. One of the most common birds there is the Bush
Warbler, Cettia diphone, which you can hear singing from many patches of
woods; it has a loud, piercing song that starts with a low whistle
building in intensity to a "wheet-a-wheet" or something like that. (The
Japanese describe those final syllables as "hot-ket-kyot.") Even though
you hear this bird just about everywhere you go, it is almost impossible
to see; I finally got a couple of looks at them as they sang, but they
were not very satisfying looks.

I found the parallels between our birds and theirs very interesting. Here
we have House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) and European Starlings (Sturnus
vulgaris) all around our buildings, and of course both are imports. They
have European Tree Sparrows (Passer montanus) and Gray Starlings (Sturnus
cineraceus) in the same places, and both are native. Their Dusky Thrush
(Turdus naumanni) is an exact parallel to our Robin (Turdus migratorius);
they feed in flocks until breeding season, moving across the lawns just
like Robins, and they sound just like Robins when disturbed. In place of
our Common Crow, they have Carrion Crows and Jungle Crows. And the
Oriental Greenfinch seems to be the ecological equivalent of our
Goldfinch.

Brown-eared Bulbuls are everywhere; what first seemed exotic soon became
tiresome. I saw quite a few Japanese White-eyes, charming little birds
with big, white eye-rings. Bull-headed Shrikes are common, and it's easy
to find both White and Japanese Wagtails. I wasted a lot of time trying
to get a good look at birds sitting high in trees that always turned out
to be Siberian Meadow Buntings, the only emberizid I found. Oriental
Turtle Doves are all over the place, and one often hears their call, "Deh
deh po po." But I never found the Japanese Green Pigeon, which I really
wanted to see. I only found one woodpecker, the Japanese Pygmy
Woodpecker. The one raptor you see everywhere is the Black Kite, which
seems to always be sailing overhead even in the most built-up areas.

>From my apartment house it was easy to walk down to an agricultural area
with a small river. The rice paddies are inhabited by a beautiful bird,
the Gray-headed Lapwing; it's a bird of medium height, with long yellow
legs, and when it flies it displays a beautiful black, white, and brown
pattern on its back and wings. In the same region, it was easy to find
Little Egrets, Gray Herons, and once a Great Egret.

Shortly before leaving Japan, I went with some people to a park where a
pond promised Common Kingfishers, a gorgeous iridescent blue-green bird I
was dying to see. After waiting for a long time, I saw one of them fly
into a cove across the pond, then dive in for a fish, and go back into the
woods. We waited and watched for a long time again but were never able to
get a long, satisfying look with binoculars. But at least I know I've
seen one.

I would love to go back sometime as a tourist, with enough time and money
to travel to the more remote places, perhaps guided by someone who knows
the language and the area. The field guide shows a lot of exotic-looking
birds that I still want to see.

Burt Guttman guttmanb at elwha.evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College Voice: 360-866-6000, x. 6755
Olympia, WA 98505 FAX: 360-866-6794

Reunite Gondwanaland!