In early February we travelled to Japan to join a three week comprehensive winter birding tour. Organized by Tropical Birding Tours and led by their outstanding guide Charley Hesse, it followed their standard public tour itinerary but was done as a private trip for us and 3 friends (Bob and Diana from Florida, and Kathy from Minnesota). We did exceptionally well overall with birds seen, far exceeding the totals from Charley's over a dozen previous trips with 207 species. Japan has 17 endemics of which 15 were possible on this trip. We got them all. Susan and I got 57 life birds on this trip. And it wasn't all just about the birds. We saw lots of great mammals, travelled a beautiful country, ate amazing food, and thoroughly enjoyed the culture.
This eBird Trip Report details our birds and locations. As usual, eBird hides sensitive species, like the Blakison's Fish-Owl, from public view.
The tour started on the island of Okinawa hunting for the three endemics there - Okinawa Robin, Okinawa Woodpecker, and the iconic Okinawa Rail. This flightless rail is a symbol of the island, adorning buildings, cars, signs, and even roads. The people love their rail. And why not, it's absolutely delightful.
Okinawa Rail
The local post office
There's even rails on the donuts!
I didn't have much luck photographing the other two, but we did see them well. We spent most of two days on the island and had a good start to the tour.
Japanese beef, yum
Cape Hedo, northern Okinawa
Okinawa Pitviper
Next up was a short hop to the largest of the Amami Islands. Like Okinawa, Amami is also part of the Ryukyu Island chain with many more endemics species and subspecies to be found. We spent most of three days here with plenty of time to find everything we were after. A night drive and some luck got us excellent looks at one of the toughest - Amami Woodcock. Along the way we found a few of the incredibly cute nocturnal Amami Black Rabbit. From Wikipedia: "Often called a living fossil, the Amami rabbit is a living remnant of ancient rabbits that once lived on the Asian mainland, where they died out, remaining only on the two small Japanese islands where they live today."
Food delivery robots are ubiquitous in Japanese restaurants
Amami Woodcock
Ryukyu Robin
White-backed (Amami) Woodpecker
Amami Black Rabbit
Ryukyu Scops-Owl
Ryukyu Flycatcher - a very rare find at this time of year
Lydith's Jay
Time for another airplane ride, this time back to Tokyo where we would begin our ground journey on the main island toward Karuizawa on the slopes of Asamayama volcano in the Japanese Alps. Forest birding, even in winter can yield some excellent species. This was our first chance for Copper Pheasant, a terribly difficult forest species that Charley only gets on about half of his tours. To make a long story short, we hunted this species for an afternoon and morning before finally getting unsatisfying looks at a couple of females scurrying far up slope before flying off over a ridge. It was countable (barely) but not what we had hoped. Then later on the second afternoon while just out doing some general birding we bumped a pair off the side of the trail in a totally unexpected location. It was an incredible sighting of a very difficult bird. Unfortunately no photos, but I'm still happy. The sighting of a Japanese Serow (a goat-like even toed ungulate) on the side of the road was super cool. Lots of great birds in our two days there adding several endemics to our tally.
Japanes Serow
Japanese Accentor
Long-tailed Rosefinch
Japanese Waxwing
Japanese (Green) Woodpecker
Green Pheasant
Eurasian Treecreeper
Next up was one of the most anticipated events of the trip, and had nothing to do with birds. We were going to the Snow Monkey Park where Japanese Macaques soak in the hot tubs. In the early 1960's, macaques began mimicking humans by entering hot springs to escape the cold winter temperatures. The problem was these hot springs were at hotels and resorts, and there was conflict. By 1964 a dedicated area had been established for the monkeys with their own hot pools constructed. Thus, the Jigokudani (Hell Valley) Snow Monkey Park was born. Today the park draws tens of thousands of visitors each year. It was a bit of a Disneyland experience as we knew it would be, but still super cool to see the monkeys hanging out in the hot springs. It's a mile+ walk on an icy trail up to the hot springs which tends to spread the tourists out a little. Viewing platforms around the pools limit substantial interaction.
A quick little video of the monkeys
Email subscribers can click this link to view the video on YouTube: Snow Monkey video
After lunch we had a bit of a drive to get over the Japanese Alps and down to the western coast at Komatsu. Charley said this is typically his worst day of the trip with the potential for storms and horrible driving conditions. On his tour only a month before it had taken the group over 12 hours to make the drive. We got there in 3 hours - clear sailing with dry roads and partly cloudy skies.
The western coast of Honshu is waterfowl paradise and we weren't disappointed. We spent the day checking out some of the best waterfowl and coastal seabird spots adding many new species (and life birds!) for the trip.
Green Pheasant
Black-tailed Gull
Black Kite
Great-crested Grebe
Falcated Duck
Taiga Bean-Goose
Baikal Teal
Tundra Swans
At the end of a great day of birding Charley took us to our first conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. This is an experience not to be missed in Japan. Even if you don't like sushi, there's lots of other choices. At the table is a digital ordering menu with dozens of choices, and Charley was a pro at ordering for us all. Within minutes of entering an order (there were many) the small dishes would come scooting by on the conveyor belt on color coded dishes. Just keep ordering until everyone was stuffed. Too much fun. Looking at our empty plates piled up afterward, we did a great job!
The next morning we flew to Hokkaido (Japan's Alaska), but that's a tale for another day.
