The Science of Birds - From the Field: Japan

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

👕 Bird Merch —  Get yourself some bird shirts!~~~This is Episode 121. In this unscripted “From the Field” episode, host Ivan Phillipsen takes listeners on an immersive, unscripted journey through his recent month-long travels in Japan. Splitting his time between scouting for a future birding tour and exploring for fun, Ivan revisits the country for the first time since spending a formative summer there as an 11-year-old. He reflects on Japan’s geography, climate, and rich biogeographic history, from its tectonic origins to its unique mix of endemic species, setting the stage for the birding adventures that unfold.Ivan’s travels span Tokyo’s green spaces, the slopes of Mount Fuji, the rice paddies and alps of central Honshu, and the wild northern landscapes of Hokkaido. Along the way, he shares encounters with both common and rare birds—species like Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, Japanese Grosbeak, Masked Bunting, Narcissus Flycatcher, and the iconic Red-crowned Crane.Link to this episode on the Science of Birds websiteSupport the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is episode 121. unscripted from the field episode, all about my recent experiences traveling here in Japan. Now, if you're new to the Science of Birds podcast, if you're a new listener, maybe this is your first episode or you've listened to the last several episodes, you should know that I've been

traveling a lot in Asia, so I've been doing these unscripted episodes, but in general, I tend to do these longer form scripted episodes, so that's kind of my normal schick. But it's also been fun to do unscripted episodes while traveling. And I've also added some recent shorter episodes called Random Bird Thursday, and those are also unscripted. So that's just letting you know if you're a new listener. And hey, welcome if you are. So yes, I have been in Japan for about a month and I'm here for a couple reasons. First off, I'm here to scout for a future birding tour that I will lead most likely in 2027. And so I'm here checking things out like looking over the itinerary and checking out lodging and different natural areas to go birding in, that sort of thing.

Just considering lots of logistics. And the other reason I'm here in Japan is for fun! So I was leading a trip in China and then I was scouting in Mongolia and I decided just to stop over in Japan and appreciate a few birds with one stone rather than kill and spend. time in Japan because I'm here in this part of the world. Now I've been traveling the last 10 years to many different places on the planet as a birding guide, but this is the first time that I've returned to Japan since I was 11 years old. So I actually spent a summer in Japan in Tokyo with my mom when I was 11, long ago, and that was a very special experience, as you can probably imagine.

my mom was working in Tokyo and she invited me along and of course it was you know a definite yes and I loved it and it had a really profound effect on me I had this you know it was overall just very positive and I have long had a special place for Japan in my heart so it has been wonderful to return finally and it's been interesting to see how much of it feels the same and how much of it feels different and I got to say in a lot of ways it doesn't feel that much different from what it was like decades ago, which is kind of cool. That definitely got the old nostalgia juices flowing. It really was not hard to be nostalgic walking around in Tokyo. So today I'll just be talking about my experiences with the birds and birding in Japan and some observations along the way. And then I'll be back home pretty soon and I'll be back to producing more of what I would call my normal episodes.

All right, so let's go ahead and get into it and talk about Japan and its birds. So we'll kick off with some background. Let's talk about the geography, that sort of thing. Japan is, of course, an island nation, one of the largest island nations in the world. Get this, there are actually 14,125 islands that make up the Japanese archipelago.

That's pretty wild. But there are really only four main islands, the so-called mainland of Japan, and the rest are relatively small. So the four main islands are from north to south, Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Shikoku. You're going to find that my pronunciation of Japanese words is not going to be perfect. Anyway, Japan is about the size of the state of Montana. Very, very similar in size to that. a little bit smaller than the state of California.

And in terms of countries, probably the one, the familiar country that would be the most similar in size would be Germany. But of course, Japan is stretched out in a north to south direction. It spans from 20 degrees latitude in the tropics all the way up to 45 degrees north latitude, right square in the temperate zone. And in terms of longitude, it spans from 122 degrees to 153 degrees east. Anyway, from north to south, that's about, well, it's almost 2,000 miles or 3,000 kilometers.

And that's including all the little tiny islands that extend way down to the south. So it has just a very interesting geography, a very interesting shape that has had a major influence on the natural history as well as the human history. In terms of its climate, Japan ranges from having a humid continental climate in the north to more of a subtropical or even tropical. rainforest environment in the south. But in general, across the entire thing, it tends to be humid throughout most of the year. And one reason for that is that there is a current, the the Kuroshio, Kuroshio current that starts way down near the Philippines and Taiwan, and it flows northward past Japan on the east side. So that's a tropical current bringing warm water from the south to the north, and so that's going to bring a lot of moisture, and thus

the humidity. Now, interestingly, though, so even though summers are hot and humid, as I discovered, actually, I discovered when I was a kid, because that's when I was there when I was 11, but also, yeah, it was hot and humid, and I'll probably be mentioning that a few times today. But in the winter, especially in the north, there can be quite a bit of snow and also in the mountains in central Japan. So there's a lot of climate variability, and there's also a lot of environmental variability, a lot of different habitats. And so let's talk about that. talk about the ecology, the biogeography. So of the world's biogeographic realms, Japan is squarely within the Palearctic biogeographic realm. And that also includes Europe and Asia,

Northern Asia. Now, because we're talking about biogeography, it's important for us to talk about the geology of Japan, just the basic history of its geology. Now, once upon a time, maybe 15 to 23 million years ago, Japan started to break away from the east coast of mainland Asia because that's where it was. For some reason, I'm thinking it was like, it's kind of like Asia was a piece of toast or bread and Japan was like the crust and you get a fussy toddler that doesn't want the crust and so you got to peel it off before you eat it. Well, that's Japan.

Japan got peeled away from the mainland by tectonic forces again between 15 and 23 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. So Japan started to move eastward and that opened up this new body of water and that became the Sea of Japan, which lies between Western Japan and China and Russia and Korea. The Koreas.

So eventually Japan became relatively isolated. But its degree of connectivity to the quote-unquote mainland has varied over the millennia or over the millions of years. Because during the Pleistocene, epic, between, you know, or at least, you know, in the last couple million years, as a lot of the world's water became locked up in ice, sea levels dropped, sometimes by quite a lot, a few hundred

feet. And what that did was that exposed land that connected Japan to mainland Asia. There were two points of connection. There was one in the north and one in the south. So the northern one connected Hokkaido to the mainland, to what is now Russia, and in the south, the island of Kyushu was connected to the Korean Peninsula. So these were land bridges, and they didn't last necessarily millions of years. They kind of came and went as the sea level rose and fell during different glacial cycles of the Pleistocene. But those periodic connections ended, as the Pleistocene ended about 10,000 years ago. Sea levels rose and then that was that. So Japan has been truly isolated for about 10,000 years. But what's interesting about Japan's biogeography is that those

land bridges allowed for an exchange of animals and plants between the Japanese archipelago and mainland Asia. So in the north you had these cold adapted boreal species coming down from Asia like brown bears, red-crowned cranes, coniferous trees, those would be exchanged with Japan in the north. And so even to this day, the species in Hokkaido share a lot of similarities with those in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Now, related to that, interestingly, there is a biogeographic barrier. There's a line called Blackistan's Line, named after Thomas Blackistin.

And this is a line that passes through the Tsugaru Strait. which is between Hokkaido and Honshu, two of the major islands in Japan. And what Blackistan noticed was that there is a distinct difference between the flora and fauna of Hokkaido north of that line and everything to the south. And the idea is that the Tsugaru Strait was somewhat consistent. Even as sea levels rose and fell, the seafloor was so deep there that there was a persistent straight body of water that prevented the movement of animals and plants between those two islands for much longer than elsewhere. So that's a biogeographical or zogeographical boundary. Birds, of course, aren't as

restricted in terms of getting across those lines because most of them can fly, but even still, you do see differences in the ava fauna between Hokkaido and the rest of Japan. So in that southern or western route connecting the island of Kyushu and the Korean peninsula, that's where there was more of this sort of subtropical influence between Asia and Japan. So we have these connections, but there has been enough isolation in Japan for endemism to evolve. And when we talk about endemic species, we're talking about species that are found only in one place and nowhere else. So Japan has a variety of endemic animals, plants, and even some birds. So you would get this exchange of animals and plants throughout the ice ages, but then at various times they would get isolated,

either on the mainland islands or oftentimes on some of the smaller Japanese islands. And so the isolation plus the different climates and habitats eventually caused there to be genetic differentiation and new species to evolve. And so Japan has quite a few endemics. And endemics are always exciting if you're a naturalist or a birder when you visit a new place like that. It's exciting to see something that is found only there and nowhere else in the world. So we talked about some tectonic movement there, Japan pulling away from mainland Asia. And there's a lot going on with the tectonics. There are three or four, I think it's four tectonic plates that are interacting around Japan.

And so it is very active geologically. There are, I think about 10% of the world's volcanoes are found in. Japan. And just in general, Japan is about 80% mountains when you look at the land area. And simultaneously, about 66% of the land is covered by forest. So very mountainous, geologically active, lots of forests, but there's different kinds of forest. So just thinking generally in terms of like biomes, there's a lot of temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, as well as temperate coniferous forest and even sub-tropical forest. And in the southernmost islands, a little bit of tropical rainforest. So as you move north in Japan, you tend to get more of, again, those northern

type species. So that's where we would see more coniferous trees, for example. But the same effect happens if you move up in elevation, up into the mountains, you get more coniferous trees, more of that boreal vibe. So what about birds? Let's talk about birds. That's what you're here for, I suspect. So overall, about 750 species have been recorded in Japan. Now, does that mean that you go to Japan and you expect to find 750 species at any given time? Absolutely not. That's like the number that has been recorded ever. So that number includes a lot of species that showed up like once. But if we think about the number of species that breed regularly in Japan, we're talking more like 250 species. Which, you know, isn't bad. It's only the size of Germany after all,

Right? Or the size of California. It's smaller than California. So 250 breeding bird species ain't bad. Now, I was looking at data on I Naturalist for the birds that have been seen most regularly reported on I Naturalist most commonly. And those include the eastern spot-billed duck, gray heron, brown-eared bull-bull, Eurasian tree sparrow, white wagtail, large-billed crow, black kite, oriental turtle dove, and great cormorant. So in my journey here, I have seen something on the order of, I don't know, 75 species or something like that. I haven't been birding super intensely, and also this is midsummer, really, like, not ideal for burning at all. But in any case, I've seen 23 lifers, so species that I've not seen anywhere else before, so that's exciting. But more generally, remember we talked about endemics before, Japan has 22 or so full endemics. species that are restricted entirely to Japan.

Now, that said, only a few of them are actually restricted to the mainland islands. And those include the copper pheasant, green pheasant, and Japanese woodpecker. Pretty much all the other endemic species are restricted to small islands. And that's not entirely surprising. I mean, you've got 14,000 islands. And as we all know, speciation tends to happen more readily on small islands, especially those that are isolated. So that makes sense.

But in any case, in Japan in general, there are another seven species that are endemic breeders. So what that means is that they breed only in Japan, but you can find them elsewhere when they're not breeding. So maybe in Korea or China or something. Examples would include the Japanese leaf warbler and the yellow bunting. They breed in Japan, but then they move elsewhere at other times of the year. And just FYI, there are 16 bird species that have the word Japanese in their name. names. So like the Japanese woodpecker, Japanese leaf warbler. There's 16 of those, and not all of those are endemic. Interestingly, there are no endemic families in Japan. So if you go to Japan,

you're not going to see any representatives of families that are found only there. Now, which species you find in what region varies quite a bit. There are species that are widely distributed across Japan, across all of the main islands, for example. But in general, there's going to be some major seasonal differences. A different suite of birds exists in the winter versus in the summer or spring, because there are birds that visit in the winter that are gone in the summer, that they go northwards, or vice versa. Birds that spend the winter in the south, maybe in Southeast Asia, and then they come to Japan to breed. Or maybe they just pass through on migration, moving between, let's say, Siberia and Australia or Indonesia or something.

Now let me tell you a little bit about my itinerary. What have I been up to here in Japan? So as I said, I've had about a month. It has gone by really fast, which is just crazy. And I feel like I'm just getting started. So I definitely look forward to coming back. But in any case, I started in Tokyo, as one does. And this is in one of the eight regions of Japan, the Kanto region.

And it's the smallest of the main regions covering just about 8% of the land area of the country. But this is where Tokyo is. So you've got roughly 40 million people living in this region, which is about a third of the nation's total population, which is pretty amazing. So yes, Japan is densely populated. Because, remember I said it's 80% mountains. and we'll get to this a little bit later but people tend not to live in the mountains they live down in the valleys

in the flat areas and there just aren't a lot of those so wherever there's flat land people are packed in there so I get to Tokyo and it's all exciting and wonderful and immediately I'm riding the trains around and I'm sweating in the summer humid heat

and it's wonderful it's great I mean it really again having been there as a kid you know I just it just felt great to come back And so I got settled in. I spent more or less my first week in Tokyo. And I didn't do a lot of birding at that time. I was catching up on some work and recording podcast episodes and also just doing general sightseeing, just being a tourist. So, you know, going to places, for example, like the Tokyo Sky Tree Tower, which is the third tallest structure in the world, which I didn't realize when I was actually in the thing looking down over the city of Tokyo. Only later didn't realize it was the third tallest structure in the world. I didn't realize it was the third tallest structure in the world, which I didn't realize it was the third tallest structure in the world, which I didn't realize. I was the third tallest. I was the third tallest. I was the third tall as building in the world. It at about, or actually exactly 2,080 feet, which is 634 meters. And I went to, you know, shrines and restaurants and just various tourist things. But I did incidentally get to my first lifer in Japan just walking down the street in Tokyo. I looked up and there was a black-tailed gull. But eventually I did make my way to some green spaces. So there's this

large green space, which is one part of it is set aside for the Meiji Jingu Shrine, which is this really beautiful Shinto Shrine in the middle of this park with what seemed like really old trees and nice forest. And then next to that, there's a big park, a public park called Yo Yogi. So I had a really nice time walking around in there. And I remember when I was a kid walking through the Meiji Jingu Shrine, the grounds, passing underneath one of these massive Tori gates, and that is the iconic Shinto shrine entrance where you have two posts and then a crossbar on the top that kind of has a upward curve, really beautiful. Those gates are at the entrances to Shinto shrines, and there's a really, some, several really massive ones at the

Meiji Jingu Shrine, and I remember those from being a kid, and I remember these large black birds that were making these horse sounds. And as a kid, I wasn't super knowledgeable about birds, so I think I thought they were maybe ravens because they're big and loud. But it turns out they are large-billed crows. And yes, the park there and Yo-Yogi Park, those spaces are crawling with large-billed crows. And the crows have a lot to say. They are quite vociferous. I mean, sometimes you're just sitting there. I sat on a bench to write my journal in Yo-Yogi Park and there were some crows around. And that's great. And I love the crows. And they're wonderful. But, you know, I was just trying to think and think about life and deep stuff.

And I just really couldn't even think straight because the crows were just getting so loud and making so much racket that I just, yeah, it was kind of just driving me crazy. And eventually I just had to throw my hands up and decide that I wasn't going to have any deep shots because of the world. So Tokyo was great and I returned there here towards the end of my trip. But I got out of town and that's when things got more interesting from a birding perspective. So I took the train to the west of Tokyo to a town called Hakone, which is on the shores of this beautiful lake called Lake Ashi. And at this point, then, I rented a car. And that really was wonderful because that gave me the freedom to go pretty much anywhere I wanted.

That said, Japan has a famously wonderful public transportation system. There are trains going pretty much all over the place around the country and then a nice bus system and all that. So you can really get around without a rental car. But if you like nature stuff and you want to go hiking and birding and have access to those places, then renting a car is really the way to go. The catch is that if you're from America or some places in Europe and whatnot, they drive on the left in Japan. So if you've never done that, then it can be intimidating and even dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

And I was a little intimidated, but the good news for me was that I'd done that quite a lot in other countries. I'd done it in Australia and Uganda, Fiji, the U.K., so I felt like I was going to be able to be okay. But, you know, it's not just driving on the left. If you go to a country like that and you don't know what you're getting into, it could be that maybe you can't read the street signs or maybe the other drivers are really aggressive and things are crazy or the roads are really bad. Well, I am happy to report that driving, for me, on the left side in Japan, was a breeze. first of all Google Maps works really well in Japan so I just had that running all the time

and many of the signs do have English on them as well so the off ramps and things or at least the you know the Japanese names of things in English characters in Romanii I think it's called and the roads are good you know the infrastructure is good the drivers are all quite polite and respectful and yeah it was it was just fine there were never I never had any whatever I would call close calls or scary moments. So I'm in Hacone on this lake and now we're in a kind of mountainous area and there's forest everywhere and it's really pretty. Now on a good day from Hacone you get some classic views of Mount Fuji in the distance but I was there on a cloudy time during a cloudy time and so I didn't get views of the mountain quite yet. But anyway I went

birding on some trails through the forest along the margins of the lake and started to see some cool stuff. And one of my favorite birds of the entire trip has been the Japanese pygmy woodpecker, and that's where I saw my first representatives of that species. This is a teeny tiny woodpecker that's super cute. It's mostly black and white, and it has a really round little head and a short bill. And the head, the feathers on the head, the dark feathers are more brownish than black, and there are contrasting white patches on the head. And male Japanese pygmy woodpeckers have a little dot of red behind the eyebrow. And this woodpecker is so small that it can forage on really small twigs and branches, and it clambers around like a little

chickadee or a tit or a nut hatch. And then I had my first experience with Japanese bush warblers. Let me talk about this bird. It's in the family Skodocercody, which is the family of bush warblers and their allies. And that family includes about 32 species distributed across Europe, northern Africa and Asia. The Japanese bush warbler known as Uguisu in Japanese, which I probably didn't pronounce right, Uguisu, but that means warbler apparently. This is a small brown secretive bird. It hides in the undergrowth and you don't often see them. But if you do, then you've got this little brown warbler-like bird with a thin, dark line that passes through the eye and a bit of a white line above the eye, but not super distinct. But the song

is very distinct. These are very loud birds and you hear them all over the place. Like I've heard this bird all across Japan, everywhere I've gone, seemingly at every elevation. And I really like the sound of them. It's a, it's a lovely song. It's to me now kind of an iconic sound of Japan. And I got some recordings, so I'll play those for you here. The key thing is there's this long introductory tone that's followed by a rapid warbling sound. And then there's also this other call that's kind of this teeter-tottering, up-down, up-down sound. All right, so here you go. Let's listen to the Japanese bush warbler.

The Japanese bush warbler is so common and you hear it so often. I think that it should be the national bird of Japan. I'm going to start a campaign and I'm going to rally the people. We're going to make it the national bird. I mean, America, the U.S. only finally just officially designated the bald eagle as our national bird. So anything's possible. Japanese bushwarbler for the national bird of Japan instead of the real one, which is the green pheasant. Because everybody finds small, nondescript brown birds way more interesting than beautiful large pheasants.

So I had a nice time walking around in Hacone and that area. And then I got on the road and I went up to Mount Fuji. I'm sure you can picture Mount Fuji. beautiful conical shape. It's kind of the iconic volcanic mountain. It's the largest, excuse me, it's the tallest mountain in Japan at 12,388 feet, which is 3,776 meters. Not only is it iconic showing up in artwork all over the place for Japan, but it's also sacred in many ways to the Japanese people, especially in the Shinto religion. People make pilgrimages where they climb to the top. So it's just a very special place to visit. So I took some walks on the slopes of Mount Fuji

through the forest. And it was kind of hot and warm, which is the running theme of my trip here. But it was really nice. I had a nice time. I went on a trail where there were no other people, which is always nice. And I saw, you know, some nice birds, but I will say that the highlight was definitely the Japanese gross beak. This was the only one I saw on the whole trip, and it's a gorgeous bird. It has a really beautiful gray body with a black head, black tail, and black wings. The black on the head is almost like a hood or a mask. And then the bill is, as you might expect for a gross beak, very large and chunky, a big seed cracking bill, and it's bright yellow. So I was just excited to see any of those 16 birds that have the word Japanese in the name. So Japanese

gross beak, I was very excited to see. But it's also a really nice looking bird. And like I said, wasn't very common, at least in my limited experience, I have not seen it elsewhere in Japan. And I should point out that because gross beaks are in different families, that's a name that's been applied to birds in different families. This one, the Japanese gross beak, is in the fringility family, which if you listened to that episode of the Science of Birds, you would remember that's the family of the finches, the sort of classic finches. So even though I was hiking around on the sides of Mount Fuji, I only really got a glimpse of the mountain itself in its totality as I was driving to it as the clouds cleared a little bit. And because it was

midsummer, I did not see snow on the top. So, you know, when you see the classic images of Mount Fuji, it is shrouded in snow at the upper elevations, and that was not the case. Just a big gray volcano, but still really cool. So then it was time to continue onward. And so I took the beautiful expressways of Japan and drove to the northwest of Mount Fuji into Gide. Gifu Prefecture. And as I was going along, I was exploring the Japanese Alps for a week or so. I was staying mostly at Airbnbs and some of them were really cool. They were like these old Japanese houses, kind of more traditional with the tatami mats and the sliding paper walls sleeping on the floor on a futon, all of that stuff, which is just really cool. And so I got to

Gifu Prefecture, spent a couple nights there, went to some historic looking towns. Well, I shouldn't say historic looking. I mean, they look historic, but they are historic. And one of the things I found there was in the valleys and the lowlands, there are lots of rice patties, a lot of rice fields surrounding the homes. And at this time of year, in midsummer, they're bright green, really beautiful. And in some of the pools that were in these towns around the rice patties, there were some amphibians, which was exciting for me. I still love Herps. That was my love as a kid.

And perhaps the most exciting was I saw in several places Japanese fire-bellied noots. Any newt is exciting, but the Japanese firebelly nude has a special place in my heart because I had some as pets when I was a kid. They used to be sold in the pet stores. I don't know if they still are, but they were. And so I had a handful of them in this 20-gallon aquarium. They were quite aquatic swimming around. They were really charming, really charismatic.

I love just watching them seemingly for hours at a time. So, to see them in the wild, quote unquote, wild in a rice paddy, that was really exciting. Now, what I did not find were any Japanese giant salamanders. That would just, like, blow my mind. That would be really exciting. And they're out there. They are there. If you know where to look, and if you get lucky.

So maybe someday, but not on this trip. Right. So I continued on into the Japanese Alps, and this is in the center of the island of Honshu. Honshu. And there are several national parks up in these high mountain air. areas. So the first one I explored was Miyoko Tokaguchi-Renzan National Park. I think I said that right, Miyoko Tokoguchi-Renzan National Park. And this is northwest of Nagano. And maybe you remember the name of that city. That's where the Winter Olympics were held in 1998, Nagano. So in that national park,

there is a botanical garden that I did a walk through. You know, I looked on e-bird, of course, first. I'm scouting, looking for places that are good for birding. And so it seems like there was a fair bit of diversity in birds at this site so I went to this botanical garden and mercifully the temperatures were a lot cooler up there because I was up at elevation and there was even a little bit of rain so that cooled things off but I had this really lovely walk through the forest and once again not sure why but there were hardly any people around. That's great for birding and that's also great if you are an introvert like me. So I had several interesting birds along that trail the first of which was the Asian stub tail. So this

This bird is in the same family as the Japanese bush warbler, that is, scotocercity, or scotocercity. It's a tiny little songbird that people sometimes describe as being a head with wings, or I think more like a little feathery ping pong ball with long legs. The Asian stub tail has a pretty long bill and long legs and a very, very short tail, so the name stub tail is appropriate. But this is a little brown bird. if you do happen to see it, and I did see one, it has a bit of a buffy supercilium,

which is, remember the eyebrow line? And that's somewhat distinct, but, you know, having no tail, that was pretty helpful. So that was exciting. That was a lifer for me, new species. And a couple more lifers on the trail were to come that day, one of which was the Japanese thrush, got to hear it singing.

This is a relative of the American Robin. It's in the same genus, tortoise. It's a nice looking bird. the male is a mostly slaty gray, dark gray color, more almost blackish, and then the belly is white but has spots. There's a yellow eye ring and the bill is yellow. So I'm sitting there listening to this Japanese thrush sing and admiring the bird and then this other bird comes swooping through the forest at high speed and I see a flash of what seems like a slaty gray color as it's passing through the trees. But what I noticed was right after that bird swooped through,

all of the other birds that had been calling or singing, including the thrush, went dead quiet. So at first, even though I thought the flying bird was the thrush or another thrush, I found it in my monoculars and lo and behold, it was a Japanese sparrowhawk. I think it was a male because it had this slaty gray back and a finely barred belly breast with this kind of brownish orange wash. So yeah, that was a predator that eats birds. So it's not surprising that as it came through entered the scene, everybody shut their mouths and tried to hide. So that was cool. Another quote-unquote Japanese bird to tick off, one of the 16

that has the word Japanese in it. And always exciting to see a raptor. Now this species, the Japanese sparrow hawk is what you, you know, if you picture an occipiter, it's something like that, something like a Cooper's Hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk. And for a long time it was considered to be a member of that genus, Excipiter. But more recently, molecular genetic data has caused ornithologists to reclassify it in the genus Taki-Speza. So it's accipiter-like, but it's not actually in the genus Excipator. So there are these interesting birds, and I'm walking along this trail, and the vegetation is really pretty, lovely trees, nice ferns, and there are warning signs that say, you know, in Japanese, but also in some English, saying, look out for bears. and these would be Asian black bears

onto certain sections of the trail there's this large mounted bell that you can grab a rope and bang the bell to presumably scare off the bears or let them know you're coming let them know to start salivating and get ready to attack you know it's like a dinner bell for the bears

anyway I didn't see any bears I didn't see any sign of bears but I believe it I believe they're there which is cool it's cool that there are still black bears in central Japan that's pretty amazing and the other place I went went a couple days later in the Alps. The other major site I went to is a place called Kamikochi.

This is a high mountain valley that's about 11 miles long or 18 kilometers long. It's in Chubu Sangaku National Park, and it's roughly at an elevation of about 5,000 feet or 1,500 meters. So this is a very famous place to go. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous. You've got the Azusa River flowing through the middle of it, forest on either side, mountain slopes, mountain peaks, just really pretty. And a lot of tourists go there. They don't let you drive your cars in there, so I couldn't just drive directly. You go to a

parking lot, and then you pick up a shuttle bus, and that drives you for like 40 minutes into the park. So I did that. I almost didn't because I got to the, I got up super early in the morning, and I got to the parking lot thinking I was all super cool and getting there early, and it was just already slammed with people at like 5 a.m. And so I was like, screw this. You know, I'm out of here. I don't want to deal with this. But I just calmed myself down and I just parked the car and got on the bus. And I'm so glad I did because Kamikuchi was really cool. I got off the bus and I started walking the trails. It was still pretty early in the morning. The temperatures were nice. And there were some good birds. It was pleasant birding. Nothing too mind blowing in terms of

the birds. And there were lots of people. So the introvert in me just had to try to stay zen and not get frustrated with all the people that were around me. And, you know, everybody was really cool. I mean, it was pretty chill, which is nice, despite there being so many people. So I just had this lovely walk taking the trails. And the bird highlight for me was probably the masked bunting. That was a lifer. I got great looks at several males. This bird is mostly brown and kind of streaky on the upper parts. The head is grayish and the underparts are kind of a pale yellow with a bit streaking. But the males have a black face and a black chin, which kind of stands out to me. So I got some nice looks at the masked bunting, and I was very pleased. But that bird is not

restricted to Kamakochi or even the high mountains. It's distributed all around Japan, and I did see some elsewhere later, but it's just, it's just that's, those were my first ones, and so that was exciting. So yeah, Kamakochi was really cool. I do recommend it. There are hotels and everything right like right in there and there was you know there's some so there's some development a lot of people I think do mountain climbing and backpacking out of there so you can definitely get away from the crowds if you're able to hike farther I was just there for half a day or whatever but you just got to know that there are going to be some other people when you go there I drove around through the alps in central honshu for or honshu keeps in hanshu honshu honshu for the

better part of a week and then it was time to head north and fly to the island of Hokkaido. So I took a little flight, landed, picked up a rental car, and the adventure began there. So I was in Hokkaido for another week or so. Hokkaido is really cool. It's quite different than the rest of Japan.

So bioregographically, as we talked about earlier, it has much more of a boreal or northern influence in the birds, in the plants, in the mammals. It also has less history in terms of ethnically Japanese people. There's a long history of the Ainu people, which are the indigenous people there but you don't find as much you know it's not like you're going to go find

samurai castles and stuff in Hokkaido it has a different cultural vibe but really the main attraction of Hokkaido is nature it's much less developed than the rest of Japan there's a lot of agriculture so in the lowland areas there's lots of agriculture open space but there's also a lot of preserved land in terms of forests

and mountains and wetlands and things so speaking of wetlands. One of the highlights is Kusiro Shitsugan National Park. And this is where the Kusiro wetlands are, which is the largest expanse of this kind of habitat in the country of Japan. The Kusuro River flows through the wetlands and it's a really vast area. And there's lots of what you would imagine is there are lots of birds, not so much in summer. And also the birds that are there are kind of harder to see because the grasses are tall. So there could literally be like a crane walking through the grass and maybe you don't see it because the grass is so

tall. But nevertheless, I had some nice walks, nice experiences there. In the forests, on the margin of the wetlands, I got a couple new species that I had never seen, including the eastern crowned warbler, which is a species of leaf warbler in the genus Philoscopus. And then the other lifer, a new species that was exciting. And one of the more colorful birds I saw is the Narcississus flycatcher. This is a member of the old world flycatcher family Musca Capiti. The male Narcissus flycatcher has some really striking plumage. It's generally black, but it has a vibrant orange throat, an orange breast, and an orange supercilium, right? Again, that's the eyebrow line. And these flame-colored orange and yellow parts are contrasting with those black upper parts,

and there's white underparts and a white wing patch. So yeah, just a really colorful, very high-contrast bird. One of the birds I was, of course, looking for in the wetlands was the red crown. crane. Hokkaido is famous for the red crown cranes. And of course that species is one of Japan's iconic birds. It's the one that shows up in Japanese and Chinese paintings and on pottery and things. These elegant, beautiful birds that are black and white with a red patch on the crown. In Hokkaido, in winter, that's when the cranes are displaying and going through courtship and it's on a backdrop of snow. And so that's when a lot of photographers and people just go to see the cranes is in the winter or early spring. By summer, by this time of year, they have done their

thing, they've bred, and they've dispersed, and so it's a lot harder to find them again because also you have all of the vegetation that gets in the way. So, unfortunately, when I was exploring the wetlands, I was keeping my eyes out for red-crowned cranes and did not see any. But I had a nice time, so that was cool, but it was time to move on and head to the north. One of my stops was Lake Kusharo, K-U-S-S-H-A-R- maybe I'm pronouncing that right, Kusharo. Big beautiful lake, and I did this walk

through the forest on the shores. And it was actually one of my most enjoyable walks, but I almost didn't do it because it was so bloody hot outside. I don't know what the temperature actually was. It might have been like 90 or something. And I almost just got back in the car and cranked the air conditioning and drove off,

but I said, you know, let me just check it out. Let me check this trail out because I had been looking at Ebert. saw that there were some cool things there, and so I gave it a go. And once I got into the forest and it was shady, I was like, you know what, this ain't so bad. The trees were gorgeous and right off the bat, I started to see some good birds. I had this moment with a couple great spotted woodpeckers that came in right alongside some gray-headed woodpeckers. And they were forging all around me, and that was really neat. And then I just kept going. And once again, I ran into hardly any people. And then I encountered this mixed species flock. And that was really

exciting. There was a great spotted woodpecker again, but then several members of the Paradis family, right, the tits and chickadees. So there was an Asian, well, multiple Asian tits, coal tits, and varied tits. And that was a new species for me. And I'll come back to that in a second. And there were also Eurasian tree creepers, Eurasian nut hatches, Eurasian bullfinches, also a lifer, Eastern crowned warblers, warbling white eyes, a couple other things. a lot going on all of the sudden all around me. And then you've got to love a good mixed species flock. So as I said, the varied tit, that was my first time seeing that species.

Again, this is a fairly widespread species, just hadn't seen it yet, and that's where I saw it. A very colorful tit. It's a combination of bright orange underparts, bluish-gray wings, and it has these cream-colored cheek patches. So real high contrast and an orange and black and white sort of pattern. not typical for birds in that family. So as a little aside, I'll tell you a little thing about the varied tit. So these birds have been trained in some cases to be a little fortune tellers. You see, in Japanese shrines, I think only in maybe Shinto shrines,

there are these Omikuchi, I think they're called, these little stations where you can go get a fortune. So you go up and you put like a hundred yen coin in a little box, and then there's this cylinder thing that you shake and then you shake out the stick and the stick has a number on it and then you open up a little drawer that has the corresponding number and inside is a piece of paper that has your fortune and it's got it in Japanese and in English if it's like a touristy area

so that's fun I did that on my first day in Tokyo you know just a fun little cultural thing and it told me some really cool stuff was going to happen to me on July 15th and July 15th came and went and I remember like thinking okay it's the 15th what's going on what's happening where's my good fortune. And honestly, I can't remember what I was doing, but it was good. I mean, everything was cool. Life was good. So yeah, I guess it all worked out. I didn't die. So there's that. So anyway, so these varied tits have been trained to basically, I don't know where this is at. I really want to go do this, though, is you give the bird a coin, a 100 yen

coin, and it'll take that coin, puts it into a box, it rings a little bell, and then it opens the doors of this little miniature shrine and then it pulls out a piece of paper and then it gives it to the person now like yeah I believe this is a real thing it was a reputable source

that I read this in so on my next trip that is like that is a must do activity is get my fortune from a varied tit at a little shrine I hope that the bird gets

at least a cut of that of the income not sure what the bird would buy with it but you know whatever he can invest it in the stock market onward to the Shira Toko Peninsula. That was my next major stop. I spent several of my final days in Hokkaido on this peninsula. And this is where it's at. This is where nature gets to its wildest extent in Japan, one might

argue. This is a mostly undeveloped peninsula. It kind of sticks out to the extreme northeast of Hokkaido and therefore pretty much the northeastern extent of Japan. And it's a long thin peninsula that's pretty much forested all the way, very mountainous with volcanoes and all that jazz. and the seas around it are just teeming with marine life, fish, invertebrates, birds, mammals. So you can do a lot of things on the Chirotoko Peninsula. It's a national park, a national, what is it called, world heritage site. You can go hiking, you can, of course, go birding, and you can do activities on the ocean. So I did a couple boat trips.

You know, again, I'm scouting for this future tour, so I would probably include these boat activities in my future tour. So I did one boat tour on the west side of the peninsula and another on the east side. And both of them were very cool. The one in the west kind of stayed close to shore. We had an opportunity to see some nice seabirds, the most exciting of which for me were the Japanese cormorants and the spectacled Gilamots. Gilamots are members of the family Alcadi, which also includes the puffins.

And I absolutely love that family. I can't wait until I do a podcast episode on it. Stay tuned for that, but any new member of the Al-Sid family that I get to see and experience up close is just super exciting. So that was great. And then we stayed along the shore and we kept going out to the tip of the peninsula. And one of the big things that people are looking for that tourists want to see on these boat trips is bears. In Hokkaido, you have brown bears, ursus arctose. The same species that we have in North America, the grizzly bear, brown bear, codiac bear, those are all ursus arctose.

big giant brown scary monster wonderful animals and yeah Hokkaido has them still again to me kind of miraculous that they're still there and they weren't killed off and sure enough right at the tip of the peninsula on the beach we saw a couple of them actually three of them I think so that was just super cool

I've seen them you know the same species in Alaska and Montana but to see them in Japan I mean wow and then the next day on the other boat trip on the east side. Instead of staying close to shore, we just beeline it straight out to deep water out into the open ocean. And what people are typically looking for there are whales. It's kind of a whale and dolphin watching situation. But I, of course, am looking for birds. And the highlight there for me was the blackfooted albatross. I'd never seen blackfooted albatrosses. We got some nice, close looks, and that was superb. But we did see some whales, and we

saw sperm whales, which was amazing. I've seen them before, but like, wow, sperm whales, right? I mean, that is a very special thing. So really wonderful, you know, driving around the peninsula was very picturesque, very beautiful landscape. And so, yeah, I wish I had more time there and I look forward to going back at some point. So then it was time to leave Hokkaido, head back to the airport. I had a long drive ahead of me. So I just enjoyed the sea. So I just enjoyed the scenery, the contemplative nature of long drives by oneself, but I was richly rewarded as I was driving a quiet country road, lo and behold, there in a field was a red-crowned crane. I was so excited.

I pulled over, just snaps pictures with my phone, got some video, just spectacular. Seeing any crane species is amazing, and this was a new one for me, and it's so iconic, and I would hate to have left Japan without seeing one. And it was just, it was very relaxed, just foraging around in the field. Great success on the crane. And so then I fly back to Tokyo. Now, I'm back in Tokyo. I have a couple nights at a hotel.

And then I think what I'm going to be doing is taking a overnight ferry to a small island to the south of Tokyo called Miyake. And this is one of the Isu Islands. That's a chain of islands south of Tokyo, the Isu Islands. I, Z, you. So I check out of my hotel, I'm heading to the ferry, and I happen to check my email, and one of the contacts I have on the island is like, hey, so, you know, there's a typhoon approaching, right, and the waves are getting really big, and the ferries are probably going to be delayed, and maybe you should think about canceling your trip.

And I was just about to get on the ferry, so I'm like, ah, dang it, you serious? But, you know what? That's what I did. I canceled. And good thing I did because that was Typhoon Croza and it passed like right through that island came right through there towards Tokyo through the Isu Islands.

Now I don't think there was any major damage. I didn't kill anybody. The typhoon did not kill anybody anywhere. But still, that would have been scary to be stuck on a very small island with an approaching cyclone, typhoon, hurricane. And get this, right at that same time, there was that big earthquake in far eastern Russia, the Comchatka megathrust earthquake with a

magnitude of 8.8, making it one of the most powerful ever recorded, or at least in recent history. So that happened, and then there were tsunami warnings everywhere all across not just Japan, but Alaska and the west coast of the U.S. all the way down into Peru and Ecuador. So I would have been on this tiny island with a cyclone approaching, a typhoon, and a tsunami. warning. Now, once again, thankfully, the tsunami was not devastating, did not do a lot of anything, but I wouldn't have known that when there was just a warning. I would have been freaking out. So, didn't go to Miyaki Island. A bummer, but I kind of dodged a couple of bullets there. But why was I planning on going there? What's the draw? Well, remember that I said earlier

that many of the endemic birds in Japan are found on these small islands. And that's true for Mayake, so it has some of the Isu Island endemic species, so I was hoping to see birds like Izu Robin, Isu Thrush, and Austen's tit. So yeah, kind of a bummer that I didn't get to do that, but hopefully we'll be

heading back. I'm wanting to include that on the future tour. So what happened instead was I just stayed in Tokyo and kept exploring the city, doing fun stuff. But one thing that happened that worked out that might not have had I gone to Mayake Island was that I actually

got to meet one of the listeners of this podcast, a Japanese birder that was, you know, just reached out to me and said, hey, you know, I saw that you're in Japan. And I was like, well, let's go birding. And so we did. We went birding at a park near where she lives. And it was cool. It was, you know, we went early in the morning and yet it was still really hot. So the bird life was not super active. But yeah, we still saw quite a few nice species, some azure winged magpies, which I hadn't seen in Japan yet. Those are always cool birds. Some little grebes. and the pond, and yeah, just some fun stuff. Anyway, it was great to meet a local Japanese birder,

so hello, Miyori, Konichua. And so that was just a nice sort of final activity that I had there here in Tokyo. And then I head out very soon, and that is that. I have some general thoughts as we wrap up this episode here. A little bit random, but first of all, Japan, in the summer anyway, is green, brother. Like, that's just one of the impressions I was left with,

just driving around in the countryside. You know, on the expressways, the expressways, many of them are elevated. And so you really, you just look to the left or right, then you just see mountains. You're looking at mountaintops. And these are kind of low mountains that are completely covered with dense forest. And you're not really seeing as much of the habitation that might be down below, below the expressway. And then just walking through the forests and also the rice patties are just vibrant green. It was just green everywhere.

So cool. It's my favorite color. But, as I've said a couple times, summer was not the ideal time to be here. And I knew that. I knew that going into it, but I happened to be in China and Mongolia, and so I just wanted to make the most of it and spend time in Japan. So when I return for the tour, we would do that more like in late spring, early summer, rather than the depth of deep summer.

I think autumn would be really beautiful as well, and of course winter could be appealing for a number of reasons. I know a lot of birding tours go to Hokkaido, for example, in the winter because, again, you get to see those beautiful red-crowned cranes dancing around in the snow. And also in Hokkaido, you have an opportunity to see Stellar's sea eagles that are hanging out on the sea ice around the Shuritoko Peninsula. So you get some really neat winter highlights if you come to Japan. Oh, which I should mention also the snow monkeys, right? The world famous snow monkeys. That's another thing you could see is to see those guys hanging out in the hot springs. It's a very touristy thing. Now, I did not see them hanging out in the hot springs

because it's summer and so they don't really need to get in hot springs. But I did see them. I did see the Japanese macaques, right? They're not technically called snow monkeys. They're Japanese macaques. But I did see some and they're cool. They were just cruising around on the side of the road and very charismatic. So that's really neat that there is a native primate in Japan. So yeah, summer was hot muggy, and in fact, just recently, on August 5th, there was the hottest day ever recorded in Japan in the city of Isisaki, Isisaki, northwest of Tokyo. It was 107.2 degrees Fahrenheit, 107.2, which is about 41.8 degrees Celsius.

Friggin hot! Oh, but, you know, speaking of mountains, right? I was talking about everything being green and the mountains being covered in forest. That is another takeaway, is that looking at the mountains and not seeing development over them is surprising to me. Now, I know there's forestry. Those forests have probably all been cut down and regrown at some point in Japan's long history. But interestingly, there was a long established taboo against developing on the mountain slopes for religious reasons because of Shinto beliefs that the mountains were the realm of the gods, of deities.

and so it was a no-no to go into the mountains and do stuff, mess with stuff. And that taboo has kind of carried forward into modern times. Again, other than maybe forestry, there's not a lot of development on these mountains. So people, again, are concentrated in the low elevation areas, and the mountains with their forested slopes have been left relatively untouched, which is cool. What about other animals? Right?

So I've mentioned some along the way. Yeah, I kind of kept track of the different. things I was seeing. In terms of invertebrates, a couple outstanding species were the Japanese peacock swallow tail. This is a large, very dark butterfly with some beautiful blue and red in the wings, just really pretty. And then another notable insect was the giant, no, the northern giant hornet. So when I was hiking around in that botanical garden, I saw one of these things, and my first reaction was, oh no, got to run, because if you remember this, a few years ago, these things showed up in the Pacific Northwest, which is where I live.

And at that time, they were called murder hornets by the news. Not northern giant hornets, which is the actual name, but murder hornets. But these things are massive. It's like, it really is an enormous, scary hornet. And they were showing up, like, this hit the news around 2020. And I remember thinking like, oh, not something else in 2020. I mean, we already got all this other stuff going on. Not murder hornets, too.

But I am happy to report that apparently in December of last year, the murder hornets were announced to have been completely eradicated. They're gone from the United States, and I guess Canada. But yeah, I saw one of those guys, and it was just going about its business. It wasn't like trying to kill me or anything. So that's, yeah, it was neat to see. So my first reaction was fear, but then I was like, oh, how cool. So as far as amphibians, I mentioned the Japanese firebellied nudes.

And I should have mentioned that it's a very dark brown, almost black, salamander with kind of granular, bumpy skin, but on the belly, it is indeed bright red with black patches, really cool looking. Just a really charming little critter. I also saw some Japanese tree frogs and some wrinkled frogs. And then in terms of reptiles, I think the only species I saw, I saw a far eastern skink and a Japanese keelback snake. Sadly, I did not see the reptile I was really hoping to see, and that was Godzilla. So besides the brown bears and the warning signs about black bears, other mammals I saw were the Sika deer, saw those in Hokkaido, and in a couple places I saw red foxes, which are called Kitsune in Japanese. And that was really cool because I know red foxes are really important in the folklore and mythology of Japan.

The red fox is often considered like a shape-shifting trickster with sometimes benevolent behavior, sometimes malevolent behavior. So, yeah, just neat to see red foxes. And they were just like on the side of the road walking around, like pretty nonchalant, neither benevolent nor malevolent, just kind of right down the middle of the road, literally and figuratively. Overall, just, yeah, Japan has been great. The people have been friendly. Other than Miori, my birding friend, I talked to hardly any people, but those I interacted with were invariably friendly, courteous. And I never felt unwelcomed, you know, no, no seeming outward disdain for being a tourist. The food has been great. I didn't eat out at a lot of restaurants, some. Most of the time I just got like grab and go stuff from 7-Eleven, believe it or not.

Actually, the 7-Elevens here are really good. They've got a lot of pretty healthy stuff, I would say, if you choose. And yeah, just there are so many fascinating cultural sites, both really modern things and ancient things. Japan is clean and safe, and it's easy to get a around, whether it's on the public transportation system or if you drive. And there are many, many natural wonders to explore. I just want to put that out there like, yes, Japan has lots of nature. I know we see lots of stuff about Tokyo and the city and how densely populated it is, but there is a lot of open space. There's a lot of nature. You would never run out of things to see if you spend an entire lifetime exploring Japan. You can go hang out on tropical beaches. You can go up

and hang out on the pack ice in the winter with the stellar sea eagles, get attacked by brown bears, black bears, all kinds of good stuff. So without a doubt, I am excited to go back to Japan, and it has been a pleasure to tell you a little bit about my experience here. So hopefully that inspires you to learn more and consider visiting yourself if you haven't already. Now, before I go, I just want to thank some new patrons, people who have signed up recently to my Patreon community. I talk about this pretty much every episode, but Patreon is the main way that I keep this podcast going. That's how I get support to do what I'm doing here. So thank you to the newest members, Nathan Burton, Susan Artis, Christina Bon Tempo, Max McBride, Athena Flack, James Stringer,

Corda Cordes, and Nick Glover. Thank you, thank you for signing up. Your support is super helpful. If you're not already a patron yourself and you're interested in what that might look, like then go check out my patreon page over at patreon.com slash science of birds and there's a link in the show notes in your podcast app this is episode 121 you can check out the show notes for the episode and some photos of these birds i've been talking about on the science of birds website science of birds.com i'm ivan phillipson and i wish you a lovely day Thank you.