Imperial Birding

By way of change I’m writing this blog from the comfort of a fast moving train, the Shinkansen, better known as the bullet train. We’ve spent the past few days in Japan, firstly Kyoto and, until 30 minutes ago, Hiroshima. Tokyo beckons – we head that way at 200mph. This is the cultural section of the tour, and we’ve certainly taken in a lot of that; temples, shrines, palaces, castles as well as Japanese customs and general way of life. We’ve both been very favourably impressed with all.

This is a well ordered, clean and decidedly efficient society, based on respect, politeness and a willingness to please. Everything works here. Everyone we have met has been happy and eager to carry out his/her duty. On several occasions we have been thanked in broken English for coming to their country, which they are obviously, justly, proud of. Not once have we witnessed antisocial or boorish behaviour, not once have we encountered litter or graffiti, not once have we felt threatened or uncomfortable. Not something that’s easy to say about home. In addition the weather has been very pleasant, reminiscent of a warm summer day in the UK; it’s been a relief to leave the humid swelter of Malaysia and the Philippines behind. 

But this is a wildlife blog, so we should perhaps concentrate on that. Watching wildlife has not been the priority over the past week, however things get noticed. Inevitably. In Kyoto we were very close to the Imperial Palace which is surrounded by a large urban park. One bright morning we decided to don binoculars and have a quick look around to see what we could find. First up some lovely swallowtail butterfly species together with a large smoky black species impressively floating through the shrubs. Terrapins gulped air from a small pond where bulky koi carp swarmed for free handouts. We speculated that several thousands of pounds worth of fish were swimming around beneath us, as indeed they do at every ornamental pond dotted around the gardens and shrines of this lovely country.

Birding wise, it turned out we were not the only folk abroad. Birdwatching and photography are popular pastimes in Japan it seems, and before too long we came upon a couple of suitably decked out guys looking intensely into the spring green foliage of some cherry trees. There, feasting upon the developing cherries, were  small numbers of Japanese Grosbeaks, much like our Hawfinches, and I’m guessing just as difficult to pin down. These birds were not interested in the flesh of the fruit which they stripped and discarded, but instead they sought the hard stones which they crushed with their impressively stout beaks. We had only just got to grips with these lovely birds when a lady approached beckoning for us to follow her to a large pine tree. She was keen to show us some birds she had found which, after a bit of searching, turned out to be White-bellied Green Pigeons, something of a rarity in this location. Another couple told us they should be in the forests that cloak the surrounding mountains. 

The most noticeable and rowdy by far of the more common inhabitants of the city are the Large-billed Crows, brutes of birds similar to our raven, but with an even more menacing beak. They were also feeding in noisy groups on the cherries, that is between bouts of sparring with the Black Kites marauding overhead. Crows the world over cannot resist beating up a bird of prey. Those dark plumaged raptors seemed to be feeding on large insects and grubs, bees or wasps it seemed, which they would swoop down and pluck from the ground. Time was when kites were common scavengers in the waste strewn cities of England, a niche now filled by Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls. Conventional wisdom considers the birds with an historical penchant for human waste of all kinds, were Red Kites, but surely they must have been Black Kites, a species that still grinds out a living in many urban locations around the world? I’ve never seen Red Kites do that.

Sometimes, birding highlights the relativity of species abundance, bringing home the fact that some species considered ‘threatened’ or ‘vulnerable’ in the UK are globally under no threat at all.  All over Asia we have encountered hundreds of sparrows, not the kind we would associate with towns and cities, no sir, these are Eurasian Tree Sparrows, as abundant as the trees in which they chirpily chirp from. They are everywhere, from parks and gardens to pecking around at your feet for discarded crumbs right in the centre of cities. I can remember when our humble House Sparrow could be found doing this, sadly that is now a rare encounter; one with a UK Tree Sparrow even rarer. It is, of course, right and proper that we try and maintain and, where possible, increase our vulnerable populations, but in a wider context it is of little consequence. Both House Sparrows and Tree Sparrows are still pleasingly very common birds around the world. 

Another thing that I find fascinating is how certain families of birds have representatives, taxonomically separate species, in many different locations around the world that exhibit identical behaviour to one another. The Pied/White Wagtail is a case in point. It has similarly monochrome sprayed relatives evenly distributed around various continents, the only difference between them being the actual black and white patterning. Japan has its own pied wagtail, it’s called the Japanese Wagtail. We watched one catch flies to feed its chick along a Kyoto stream which could have been an English beck with our own Pied Wagtail carrying out the parental duties. Nature is fascinating.

All in all it was a successful morning, bringing the camera into use once more to prevent it seizing up, unlike its owner whose audible clicks and creaks from various joints is becoming akin to distant gunfire. Ho hum.