Juvenile shrike? (Japan) (1 Viewer)

[misikuru]

I saw this bird today in a park in the eastern part of Japan. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the head was brown with a slight greyish shade while the back was reddish brown.

As it doesn't have a black mask, I'm inclined to ID this as a juvenile tiger shrike. What do you think?

 

[MacNara]

Hi Misikuru: I can see where you are coming from on this.

However: Tiger Shrike is 'very scarce' in this region, so I think you would need a much better photo to claim the ID.

(Actually it would also be useful if you specified the location more precisely, since depending on the person, Eastern Japan could be anywhere east of Nagoya, and include most of Honshu and all of Hokkaido.)

I don't see how you could confidently separate it from juvenile Brown Shrike which does apparently breed in northern Honshu. Or even from very young Bull-headed Shrike, which is the default species. I think you can see a faint mask behind the eye in both photos, but it's not really possible to be sure what is artifact and what true in the photo.

I'm assuming that you didn't see adult Tiger Shrike in the location, otherwise you wouldn't be asking. Did you see any adult shrike of whatever species? If it's a park you go to often, what do you usually see there?

I don't have appropriate photos of my own, but I have scanned photos from Japanese books (which I hope is fair use).

The first shows a September young Brown Shrike on the left and a January bird on the right. I think the September bird could look a lot like yours in the shade with a faint pale brown mask. The head is as you described - brown with a slight greyish shade - and the back is reddish brown.

The second shows a young Bull-headed Shrike being fed. As you can see, the mask isn't there at the beginning.

Maybe someone else will be able to find some feature in your photos that gives a confident ID, but if it was me, I would just leave it as unidentified.

I'm sorry to be negative, but I think you would need a much clearer photo (or other evidence, such as adults being there) to claim a very scarce bird.

 

[misikuru]

Hi Misikuru: I can see where you are coming from on this.

Thank you MacNara for your comment! That was very informative. I didn't even know that the Tiger Shrike is that scarce.

The lack of the mask and the grey shade of the head made me think that it might be a Tiger, but now I see that young Bull-headed and Brown Shrikes do have faint pale mask. Now come to think of it, the bird had a whitish patch on its wings. So it might be a young Bull-headed, rather than a Tiger.

Unfortunately I didn't see any shrikes other than this one in the pic, but if I will get the chance to go the park again, hopefully I'll get to take better pictures.

Thank you again for your help, MacNara!

P.S. I'd love to know the title of the book!

 

[MacNara]

The first photo (Brown Shrike) was from an interesting book called in Japanese 'Separation and Discrimination, of Japanese Wild Birds Picture Book'. This specifically tries to show the small points that you need to see to separate species that look alike or are closely related. I have found it helpful but even here, there are often not enough photos of each species. The English title is nonsense, in that I don't think you could use it in the field, but on photos it's very helpful. But like a lot of photo guides, I suspect the detail for some birds is because the authors have a lot of photos, and the lack of detail for others is because they don't - rather than being the actual difficulty of identifying the species.

The other book was a guide from almost thirty years ago - in two volumes, Land Birds and Water Birds. It has more photos than some guides, and I like it. Anyway, it just happened to have a relevant photo.

You didn't answer my question about where you mean by 'eastern Japan'. I'd be interested to know (at least a general area).

Hope this helps.

 

[MacNara]

If you are in Eastern Japan, then I assume the typhoon yesterday was of no concern. From inside our house, it didn't seem particularly bad compared to others I have seen over several decades.

But when I went to check my local birding patch this morning (only a couple of km from home), hoping that some special birds had been blown in by the winds (no, nothing), It seemed the wind had been stronger there. And we also had the #8 highest August one-day rainfall ever. And also the strongest ever gust of wind for August, which maybe explains my photo. Western Pacific typhoons usually hit farther south in August, and hit Japan in September, so the strong wind records are almost all from September. And indeed the typhoons which hit Japan usually go west over Kyushu or east over eastern Honshu (Izu or Tokyo). A moderately strong typhoon in mid-August is strange, and one hitting us right in the centre is strange also.

Regards

 

[misikuru]

Thank you! I'll take a look at the book!

On my first post I've decided not to mentioning precise location as I've realised that birders in Japan prefer to keep the locations "secret". I hope it's ok to say I was in Tohoku area!

And as you said, there wasn't any damage from the typhoon here. I hope things are back to normal soon in your region.

 

[MacNara]

Thanks.