It turns out that birding in central Tokyo’s parks and nature reserves was pretty tough work at the start of May. Yes, it’s spring, but that actually means that a lot of cool birds that spend the winter in Japan have mostly left. You might be lucky to find some spring migrants or winter-lingering birds in the city (like Brown-Headed Thrush). We didn’t venture very far afield (locations are noted in the captions below), and only had three full days in Tokyo (our time there was an extended stopover from Bali), half of which we spent sightseeing.
Turns out we had also unwittingly visited during “Golden Week” in Japan, a week which mostly consists of public holidays. While this made the streets and subways in some areas eerily quiet, and parks and gardens rather crowded, it also made for some head-scratching when deciphering the opening hours for some birding places (Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park, I’m looking at you)… some places were closed on public holidays, or closed every Monday, unless the Monday fell on a public holiday, in which case it was open the next day, but what if that was also a public holiday? Oww, my head.
Anyway. We did see some nice birds around the place.
I have wanted to see an Azure-Winged Magpie ever since I found out the species existed (years ago), and despite it being supposedly fairly common around the city, Tokyo really made me wait for it. This one is on the edge of Shiba Park. Freaking cool bird though.This Blue Rock-Thrush was a lucky find when we had popped up from a subway station and crossed a bridge over a canal – and there it was. Unbelievable.You know it’s urban birding when you see a sparrow in a hollow pipe behind traffic lights. Perhaps looking for a snug and obscure nesting site?White Wagtail at the large gardens of the Imperial Palace. We saw half a dozen of these wagtails there, and also enjoyed a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flyover of a Northern Goshawk.White-Cheeked Starling was actually the very first lifer we saw in Tokyo… it was seen at Ueno Park in Taito Ward, a location which was pretty good to us, despite not quite being one of Tokyo’s top-tier birding sites.This Brown-Eared Bulbul (at Ueno Park) is very common all across the city.A Warbling White-Eye in Ueno Park gave us plenty of excitement as we tracked this tiny fast bird’s movements through a huge tree and then down into a hedge, when it finally gave us a decent look. Thanks, warbler!Spot-Billed Ducks look very much like Pacific Black Ducks… but with a big yellow spot on the end of their billsA Grey Heron stalks the reed beds at Ueno Park. What will it find? Who knows.Another wetland stalker, the Great Egret. Should it be called Long-Necked Egret? Something worth thinking about.Little Grebe is kinda indistinguishable from Australasian Grebe, if you ask me. At Ueno Park (again).This Little Egret was having a great time plucking out tiny fish from water flowing fast across these concrete steps.Eurasian Tree Sparrow at Ueno Park. You have to be relatively unafraid of humans to survive in this very busy park, I reckon.Here’s a Black-Headed Gull at Ueno Park, with some juvenile wing markings.Another Ueno Park gull, the Black-Tailed Gull, mostly found on the Japan/Korea/China coastlines.An Asian Tit at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. We also saw some Long-tailed Tits, but they were fiendishly hard to get a photo of.Close-up of another Asian Tit, ‘cos I like ’em.Everyone loves kingfishers, methinks. I know I do. This one is a Common Kingfisher.As per the name, Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker is really small.A not-particularly-good photo of a really great bird – the Hawfinch. I mean, check out that beak! It looks like a cartoon bird come to life.We saw Oriental Turtle-Doves in two different locations (Kasai Rinkai Park and Hamarikyu Gardens), and in both places we thought they were the most chilled out, unfazed bird ever. They just didn’t care how close you were.Any ideas why they call it “Large-Billed Crow”? Anyone? There’s got to be a good reason, surely.
Summary
Uh, there isn’t really much of a conclusion here. This wasn’t a hard-core birding expedition, more a do-some-birding-while-doing-tourist-stuff-in-Tokyo sort of thing. Hence the quick, mostly-photos write-up. It was nice to see some new birds, though it also felt like there were long stretches of peering into trees without seeing much.
Bird Spots 