How to get to know Japan's birds

One spring morning, as I was walking through the park on the edge of Teganuma Marsh in Kashiwa City, I came around the edge of a thick hedge and nearly stepped on a green pheasant. I don't know who screamed louder, me or the bird. He ran off to a rice paddy and we watched each other at a distance. What a way to get to know nature!

The green pheasant, national symbol of Japan, is sometimes underfoot! photo coniferconifer

This encounter got me more and more curious about bird life in my region which is bordered by the Edo and Tone River systems. It’s become a habit to listen to and identify the birds by song. I’ve gotten to know dozens of calls and songs and gradually learned who all these creatures are.

How to identify birds

The NPO Bird Research has a treasure trove, their Sound Collection of Japanese Birds. For those not quite literate in Japanese and unfamiliar with bird names, the collection is a real help as the web page has an English version. Each bird is described with its common English, Latin, and Japanese name accompanied by sound recordings, a photo, and a text description of the bird calls and songs.

The collection covers all of Japan, including rare and common birds, but it’s just a running list on a webpage. To supplement it, I downloaded the Merlin Bird ID app to my smartphone. This is a free app provided by Cornell University’s ornithology lab. The app supports over a dozen languages, including Japanese. When you start the app, download the Japan pack which takes a few minutes. The pack has photos, recordings of songs and calls, and data about the birds. You can identify birds by photo, audio, or description.

How to find birdwatching spots

I’m spoiled for bird watching spots as my own neighborhood is teeming with wildlife. Noda City hosts an oriental stork preserve and release program at Kounotori No Sato and occasionally the storks fly over my house. Even if you’re in an urban area in the Kanto region, you can find great birding spots. Japan Nature Guides has a comprehensive resource, A Birdwatcher’s Guide to Japan Online, based on the out-of-print book with the same title. The guide lists birdwatching sites by region and prefecture.

Some of my favorites are right in Tokyo. Mizumoto Park, the largest in the city, has observation huts around the bird sanctuary on the north side of the park. At Kasai Rinkai Park’s bird-watching center, there are blinds for photography and a loop trail through the seaside habitats. Shinobazu Pond in Tokyo is filled with birds in the winter, especially ducks. You might see visitors standing stalk still with birdseed in their hands with perching birds swarming them.

Have you got a favorite bird-watching site? Have you got a soft spot for a particular species of bird?