Kyoto and Osaka, July 2013 (1 Viewer)

Just a bit of a pre-amble here, part of the reason I'm posting this is that in my pre research of this before going, I didn't find lot of information - all the limited number of trip reports in English I did locate were for Winter, or early Spring at best, which isn't that helpful for the Summer.

That being said, this wasn't a bird-watching holiday, my Girlfriend who I went with isn't a birder and given the fact that we had 36 degree heat and 80%ish humidity every day except the last meant that spending long periods of time outdoors in the same place wasn't an appealing option, as such, this is very much a skim of the species found rather than an in-depth survey.

I'll list all species seen, even the boring ones in BOLD, a lifer for me in BOLD RED.

Day 1:
Largely consisted of jet lag. We arrived at 8.30 local time following an 11 hour flight on which neither of us had had much sleep. First on the agenda was meeting up with my Girlfriend's Uncle for lunch who conincidentally arrived at Kansai airport a few hours after us at a nearby area of outlet shops known as "Rinkutown". Just as we left the Airport I saw my first LARGE-BILLED CROWSmaking my first species of the trip, and which would be an ever present feature of the birdlife thereafter. After getting a bus to the mainland we loitered at Rinkutown in the awful heat, but a stretch looking over a small patch of scrub and the sea beyond it produced a small flight of LITTLE EGRET, in addition to my first sightings of BLACK KITE, ORIENTAL GREENFINCH and BROWN-EARRED BULBUL. The Kites I generally saw at least 1 of each day but weren't especially numerous, I saw a few of the greenfinch throughout the trip and the Bulbuls were more often heard than seen, I never got a good view of them at any point of the trip but were often around causing a racket.
After returning to the airport we got the quick train to Kyoto, from which I might have seen wonderful and rare birds, but was unfortunatly asleep shortly after getting on board until our stop at the end of the line.

Day 2:
After sleeping late we didn't get moving until about lunchtime, and not really near any bird habitat of note for a while. My first new bird for Japan came in the form of a very friendly TREE SPARROW near the station. As advertised when researching this trip, they basically fill the same niche as house sparrows do around where I live in the UK. A quick trip around a nearby temple revealed more crows, and the everpresent FERAL PIGEON.

After spending the afternoon in Nishiki Market we headed along the Kamogawa where BARN SWALLOWS and ASIAN HOUSE MARTIN were immediately apparently. Shortly after I picked out a JAPANESE WAGTAIL and SPOT-BILLED DUCK around and Megan found our first ORIENTAL TURTLE DOVE which proved to be fairly common in parkland. The highlight for me however was 4 species of heron along one small weir, most notable for me BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON, but also GREY HERON, LITTLE EGRET AND GREAT WHITE EGRET. A further exploration of Maruyama - a hillside complex of Temples, Shrines and Gardens would have probably yielded more with a more thorough investigation, but as it was, contained another spot-billed duck, a MALLARD, CARRION CROW in addition to their large-billed cousins and another grey heron, in addition to a selection of dragonflies and some turtles. We returned back to our hotel via Gion and along the river, but apart from at least 2 species of bat and some calling frogs from the reedbeds, this marked the last of our wildlife for the day.

TO BE CONTINUED

It's not an area of Japan I know well - done the temples and shrines at Kyoto - as I tend to concentrate on the Nansei Shoto and Hokkaido, thanks to work. Large-billed Crow, in Japan, is now usually split to Japanese Crow. Look forward to hearing more about the area.

Chris

Thanks for the feedback, particularly the Crow splitting - hadn't seen any mention of that anywhere!

PART 2

Day 3:
This was the first day where we started visiting some of the historical sites of Kyoto in any sort of planned way. First up was Nijo-jo - the Castle of the Shoguns with some extensive gardens. Unfortunately, this was about the hottest and most humid morning of the entire trip meaning that I think most birds were being sensible and not coming out that much, both crows were about, as were the ever-present tree sparrows some better views of the Oriental Turtle Dove. The only new species of the morning was a brief flyover by a flock of WHITE-CHEEKED STARLING - a species which proved frustratingly difficult to get a good look at - I never saw them except in flyover. Again, I suspect these Gardens probably hold more that I never saw, which would be better looked for at when not on such a hot day or a small holiday.

The second half of the day was spent in the Gardens of the Imperial Palace, a huge area of park in the middle of the city. Early sightings were the regulars - sparrows, crows, bulbuls and so on. My target however was a small waterpump area which I'd heard of being where a lot of the birdwatchers go - on the way we spotted more regulars including Black Kite, my only other sighting of Oriental Greenfinch, and my only sighting of COAL TIT. When we arrived at the little pond it was a bit overgrown - clearly this wasn't the prime time of the year to visit. However, I quickly racked up a couple of new species - JAPANESE WHITEEYE, JAPANESE TIT (unless it's being counted as the Japanese species of Great Tit now) and VARIED TIT.

However, the after a while and Megan was getting a little fed up, we moved on, however, as we were leaving via a different train we left this area, we stumbled upon a cordoned off area which contained what looked like the kind of next box you occassionally see kestrels or owls in at home. There was a man there with a huge camera who kindly pointed out the focus of this little area, despite not speaking any english - a handsome BROWN HAWK OWL who made a nice finish to the day.

Day 4:
Nothing new this day, we spent it in Osaka doing the Aquarium and the Castle, I had hoped to go to Osaka Nanko reserve only one train stop from the Aquarium, or even walk along the river a bit, but it was too late by the time we finished unfortunately. Most surprising thing was being by the sea and not seeing a single gull whatsoever!

TO BE CONCLUDED

Looking forward to hearing how you do Alex as I was in Kyoto last week. It was sauna hot then too, and I struggled to find many birds - even when heading out to the hilly fringes of the city.

I also tried birding to the south-east of Kyoto in the Kumano Hongu area and was frankly amazed at how few birds there were in what looked like pretty good forest habitat. Predictably I had a much better time in Okinawa and am now enjoying Nara which is a much greener town, and thankfully not so baking hot as Kyoto.

I'll start posting my report shortly.

Cheers
Mike

MKinHK said:

Looking forward to hearing how you do Alex as I was in Kyoto last week. It was sauna hot then too, and I struggled to find many birds - even when heading out to the hilly fringes of the city.

I also tried birding to the south-east of Kyoto in the Kumano Hongu area and was frankly amazed at how few birds there were in what looked like pretty good forest habitat. Predictably I had a much better time in Okinawa and am now enjoying Nara which is a much greener town, and thankfully not so baking hot as Kyoto.

I'll start posting my report shortly.

Cheers
Mike

Click to expand...

Yeah that was when we were there - Monday through to Sunday morning, baking hot until the Friday, I'm kind of surprised I found as many birds as I did, if I was them I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be out in that! Hope you are enjoying things out there!

Day 5:
This was my designated "see some countryside of sorts" day, so we headed out to Arashiyama which is right on the edge of the city and was much more of a small-town feel to it. We started the day by walking from the train station to the river, and then over the bridge, all the regulars were present - sparrows, crows, starlings, egrets and grey heron. We started the day by heading up to the Monkey Sanctuary at the top of the mountain - personally I'd have liked to stretch this whole day in to soak in to try and see some wildlife, but Megan was suffering a bit from the huge number of bites shes sustained in the Imperial Palace Park and I didn't think annoying her would do me any favours. The trip up the mountain had a lot more birds heard than seen, and apart from the Martins at the top, didn't get a clear view of anything, though Bulbulls were certainly present.

After lunch we went along the river where I encountered a few new birds for the trip - a EURASIAN KINGFISHER and even better, JAPANESE PYGMY WOODPECKER. Again I would have personally stayed a lot longer if I could get away with it, but I didn't want to push my luck too far. I could hear plenty of bulbulls, and got glimpses of small passerines I didn't get a good enough look at to identify, plus a roadkill snake of some sort I foolishly forgot to photograph for later identification. There was some kind of warbler sounding thing in the reeds beneath the bridge, but couldn't pick it out and the song wasn't very memorable.

We went the long way back via the bamboo groves which were pretty, but at the time largely devoid of animal life. The only other notable animal of the day was my sole lizard of the trip a 7-inch gecko scuttling around on a railway bridge.

Day 6:
This was the shopping day - we did pass over the river again a few times, but nothing turned up we hadn't seen already. We did squeeze in a nighttime trip to Fushimi Inari temple just after dusk, where we heard some owls, no idea what type.

Day 7:
Our flight was at 10 so we literally jumped on the train to Kansai airport as soon as we could - however I had a little bit of luck on the journey, as we passed over the bridge to the Airport a number of large gulls were flying about separatly. As far as I could work out from appearance and the fact they were present at all from my research, these were BLACK-TAILED GULL. A sole japanese race WHITE WAGTAIL was pottering around the airport.

Total List in vaguely chronological order (lifers in capitals)

1) JAPANESE WAGTAIL
2) JAPANESE CROW
3) ASIAN HOUSE MARTIN
4) SPOT BILLED DUCK
5) ORIENTAL GREENFINCH
6) BROWN EARRED BULBUL
7) BLACK KITE
8) BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON
7) Grey Heron
8) Tree Sparrow
9) Great Cormorant
10) Little Egret
11) Great White Egret
12) WHITE-CHEEKED STARLING
13) ORIENTAL TURTLE DOVE
14) Feral Pigeon
15) JAPANESE TIT
16) Coal Tit
17) VARIED TIT
18) JAPANESE WHITE-EYE
19) BROWN HAWK OWL
20) Barn Swallow
21) Mallard
22) Carrion Crow
23) JAPANESE PYGMY WOODPECKER
24) Eurasian Kingfisher
25) BLACK-TAILED GULL
26) White Wagtail

Not a bad hall for a trip with only very vague specific birdwatching bits, though I am a little disappointed in some of the things I missed which as far as I understand should have been gettable - Green Pheasant, Japanese Thrush, Bamboo Partridge, Kentish Plover, Japanese Grosbeak and Grey-headed Lapwing sounded fairly achievable in my research, but saw neither hide nor hair of them once out there.

Pretty sure Brown Hawk-Owl in Japan is split as Northern now

birdboybowley said:

Pretty sure Brown Hawk-Owl in Japan is split as Northern now

Click to expand...

Yup. Northern Boobook / Hawk Owl now. If the owl you heard on Day 6 sounded a bit like an insect it'd be Collared Scops, a fairly frequent resident in shrines, gardens and parks in Japan.

Chris

Just a few photos to finish off here.

Nice report Alex.

Inspired by your report I spent way to much time searching every big tree I came across for Northern Boobook . . .

Cheers
Mike

As a side note, I don't suppose anyone is familiar with anywhere I could try to identify the butterfly species I saw on my trip? Either a guide to Japanese Butterflies, or a butterfly equivalent of this forum?

You could start in the BF section...

http://www.birdforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=463

Cheers
McM