awash with wagtails

Citrine Wagtail was a Japan tick for me on the Yonaguni trip and it almost didn't seem a surprise because there were simply so many 'exotic' wagtails on arable land and playing fields. In fact I saw a rather remarkable eight taxa. Arguably, the rarest taxon of all was lugens White Wagtail. I only saw a single individual of this, the default taxon in Kansai. I didn't see any Japanese Wagtails, the second most frequently encountered taxon here, only Grey Wagtail seemed in similar numbers to Kansai expectations.


I had frustratingly come across a possible Citrine earlier in the week. It had been mixed in with a flock of Eastern Yellow Wagtails on the rocks below the towering cliffs of the eastern headland but unfortunately the flock flew round the headland, impossible to follow without a boat (or wings). I went back over the next two days and though there were always about 30 Eastern Yellow Wagtails present I never again saw the possible Citrine.

A possible Citrine Wagtail, I got several equally bad record shots but the following image is the only clear shot I managed before the bird dropped out of view amongst the rocks. 

I've never seen a taivana with yellow cheeks like this and a pre-breeding Citrine seemed more plausible at the time. It's a pity I never saw the bird again.

The Kubura school playing fields are extensive and attract a lot of migrants, my only Greater Sand Plover, Dusky Thrush , Richard's Pipit and lugens White Wagtail were all here. The problem is birds tend to be distant but by some miracle the Citrine was not only the closest bird on this occasion but the closest any bird ever came.





A couple of minutes after leaving the school I stopped at the pond and no sooner had I done so than the Citrine followed me down. It was there for no more than three or four minutes then flew back towards the school. At the time I was unsure whether it was the same bird but after looking at the images, it clearly is. 

Taivana and tschutschensis were both very common, probably in equal numbers, more or less, with well over 100 birds seen each day if I went to two or three favoured spots. It wasn't until the seventh day (same as the Citrine) that I found my first thunbergi/plexa Western/Eastern Yellow, two of them in fact. Perhaps it was never likely to be a Western Yellow, but it was nice to dream for a while. The following morning I was able to catch up with one of them again and heard a typical Eastern Yellow flight call.

The vast majority of taivana weren't close to full breeding appearance yet but this one wasn't far away.

This individual wasn't too bad, most looked even more untidy than this.

My feeling was tsuchtschensis were more advanced, a small majority looked very smart whereas the same could be said of only a very small minority of taivana. 

These two plexa never came any closer than this but even at this range their appearance was striking because of the black mask and fine post ocular supercillium. 

The following morning one of them had made it to the road. There is limited white before the eye, which I hadn't been able to see yesterday, but the lores are largely black.

Neither Grey Wagtails (too common) nor the lugens White Wagtail (too distant) make it into this post. The other two White wagtail taxa were leucopsis and ocularis, the former was surprisingly scarce with only eight seen during the week while the latter was very numerous with well over 100 per day.

leucopsis

leucopsis

Typically distant ocularis on the school playing fields.

Black on the chin doesn't reach the bill on this bird, presumably it will soon. 

The huge numbers of wagtails that I infrequently to rarely see were a delight,they were widespread on the island, and but colourful and approachable. Collectively they were one of the highlights of the trip.

Himalayan Swiftlets on Yonaguni

I made my first trip to the Yaeyama Islands six years ago and my initial impression still holds true: Yonaguni is a rarity hotspot and not really worth considering if looking for Yaeyama specialties, Ishigaki's saving grace is Banna Park which has a fantastic network of quiet footpaths allowing easy access to the forest but on the whole it's not worth spending much time there as Iriomote is a far better for both native birds and a far superior away-from-it-all experience. That said, Ishigaki now has breeding Black-shouldered Kites... but they can be seen without actually leaving the airport.


After about three months of zero birding my schedule suddenly opened-up allowing me nine days of uninterrupted birding. Heaven. With just a couple of days notice I didn't think I'd be able to make reservations for a repeat of my previous trip covering all three main islands. So it proved, but with flights and Yonaguni car rental confirmed it didn't matter too much as I was quite happy to spend the whole time on Yonaguni. I'd day dreamt about finding Himalayan Swiftlet for ages, and now I'd have the chance to give it a good go. Though car rental on the island was no problem, the only accommodation I could find was for the first two and last three nights. So I was facing three nights in the car but as luck would have it my Ryokan had a cancellation resulting in only one uncomfortable night. One uncomfortable night, good grief I must be getting soft in my old age!


The ryokan only provided breakfast, no dinner, which was a bit of a concern because on my previous stay the shops weren't that well stocked and according to the ryokan owner the few local places to eat required pre-booking. However things have changed and it's quite easy to get a wide range of food in the shops now, there was even fresh fruit daily throughout my time there.


There are only two ferry sailings per week to the island so to get around all the last minute planning problems I chose to give sea-birding a miss and fly this time. I arrived on Ishigaki in the morning and had booked on the last flight to Yonaguni to give me time to look for the Black-shouldered Kites. It took 35 minutes to locate a rather distantly perched bird from the airport car park but after a few further minutes another bird gave excellent fly-by views. I'd actually allocated the final night of the trip to on Ishigaki just in case the Kites had been harder to see than I imagined. At least this would give me the opportunity to get a photo tick and visit Banna Park for owls.


The additional time I'd budgeted between outward flights meant I arrived on Yonaguni in the late afternoon and by the time I'd sorted out the car and found my accommodation there was no light for birding. Well, just enough to make out Common Mynas coming to roost on the cell tower outside my room. Day one and already the second Japan tick of the trip, I'd only managed two in the whole of 2018!


The weather was overcast next morning, indeed that was true of almost the whole time on the island, overcast with plenty of light rain. This was great, great for bringing in birds and keeping temperatures down. I spent the morning as much refamiliarising myself with the island as doing any serious birding. The first place I stopped and took a walk was at the eastern headland. On returning to the car I found the car lock didn't work. Really! The key may as well have been for a different vehicle, and of course my phone was inside the car. I once locked myself out of a rental car in the freezing pre-dawn of the eastern Turkish mountains, I was able to take out the windscreen on that occasion but cars are far more difficult to break into for a non-professional nowadays. There was nothing for it but to walk back to town, I was now even more pleased the weather was overcast. My car rental man wasn't a professional car thief either. Despite picking up the necessary tools to do the job at another garage he finally had to resort to a trusty hammer that he'd brought along from his own garage. Hammer and glass, only one winner there.


Not the greatest start to my time on the island I'd have to say, but unbeknown to me it wasn't all the doom, gloom and exasperation it seemed at the time... a Himalayan Swiftlet was on its way.


At some point in the afternoon I was at the opposite end of the island, not far from the island's, large pond. The number of hirundines was amazing, mainly Barn Swallows but also Red-rumped (c30), as well as Asian House (1) and Sand Martins (c10). There were also House (c12) and Pacific Swifts (2) zooming around too. This was what I wanted, this was surely my chance to find a Himalayan Swiftlet! Thinking something is so and it actually being so are more often than not two entirely different things but on this occasion... BOOM! There it was! At once obvious even to the naked eye, a bit like a martin with House Swift wings. It was fairly high and would often disappear for a few minutes but always came back. After the shock had worn off I set about getting the photographic evidence. This wasn't quite as straight forward as it might sound, now because it was quite high it wasn't too difficult to follow with the camera but the downside was the resulting images would never show any detail. The following two images is the most compelling of the evidence as gathered on that first afternoon...

It would sometimes fly below the line of hills in the centre of the island allowing a better appreciation of how remarkably nondescript the plumage was. Basically greyish-brown with a slightly paler rump but I could never get an in focus shot.


At some point I must have lost the bird and picked up a head-on House Swift by mistake because when I later checked the shots on the back of the camera, there was a good shot of a black-looking swift with a bold white rump. Cue self-doubt. It didn't matter how well I'd seen the bird in life, immaterial how plain the plumage had been; I was worried. How could I possibly have photographed a House Swift if this Swiftlet had been half as as eye-catching as I'd felt?


Needless to say I was back in the same area promptly next day, the weather was showery, drizzly, wet and grey. Terrific. There weren't any hirundines sailing round higher up, everything was close to ground level and in no time I'd found my Swiftlet again. Just as obvious as it had been yesterday though the small size was even more apparent. How could I have doubted this? With the bird dashing around so low my lack of photographic skills were about to face a much tougher challenge. Thankfully I was able to get a small number of shots which proved to myself it wasn't a House Swift and is in fact basically a martin with House Swift wings just as I'd first thought.

The question I now asked myself was whether I'd seen one Swiftlet or Two. It was clear on the second day that many birds had moved on. Barn Swallows were still present in huge numbers, as they were on all but the penultimate day of the trip, but lower numbers of Red-rumped Swallows and martins fluctuating daily throughout the trip were easy to keep tabs on and suggested there was a continuous passage of birds through Yonaguni. Barn Swallows were common throughout the island, in the lee of any shelter, but there were no other massive build ups elsewhere, no other locations regularly held Red-rumped Swallows or martins and this was the only site I ever saw either of the two Swift species. The penultimate day of the trip (April 16) was the first hot sunny day and Barn Swallow numbers dropped very noticeably, as if there were few lingering birds and onward movement was continuous. The final day (April 17) was again overcast with showers and either a huge new build up of birds suggesting passage had stalled once more. Not only were Barn Swallow numbers back up but Red-rumped and both martins had their respective highest totals of the eight-day visit.


No sooner had I realised the need to check through the flocks again than another Swiftlet flew past, below eye-level over a marshy overgrown cane field! Unfortunately this one didn't even pause let alone linger. At least I didn't need to embarrass myself with the camera. So definitely two and possibly even three Himalayan Swiftlets in the space of a week. That with just one pair of eyes looking for them.

Two dense wind-break hedges provided shelter for flying insects and immense numbers of Barn Swallows flew back and forth in the lee of each, testament to their aerial maneuverability. There were usually birds resting on the roughly ploughed field between the two hedges and in wetter conditions the field was carpeted with Swallows. I was surprised to see how many of them appeared to be in moult judging by what appear to be feather gaps creating white patches on the upperparts.

One of the far fewer Red-rumped Swallows present.

Blue Concrete Thrushes

The status of Blue Rock Thrush has changed markedly during my time in Japan; when I first arrived it was an almost exclusively coastal breeder as implied by its Japanese name of Iso Hyodori. Inland records were limited to the occasional bird that wintered on tall or prominent buildings, usually meaning in city centres or rural/suburban train stations. I'm unsure when the change began in earnest because they tended, then as they do now, to frequent sites birds wouldn't normally be looked for: not unlike Black Redstarts in the UK. Singing birds in several factory complexes I visited from 2000 were still a novelty but the surprise of finding an inland breeding Rock Thrush quickly changed to one of surprise at finding so many inland breeding Rock Thrushes!


Though quite common inland nowadays, they aren't necessarily obvious and many are probably overlooked. Factories are still a favourite location, one large manufacturing complex I visit in Shiga has two pairs which never seem to leave the confines of the plant. These birds will be quite unknown to the average birder who wouldn't have access to such places, likewise birds way up on roof tops above busy city streets are almost sure to be overlooked unless they are singing. There's a bird that sometimes sings from the roof of my house but its infrequent appearances there, or in the car park to the rear, are no doubt due to a preference for the much taller buildings near by.


Despite their inland spread it remains coastal areas where they are most easily seen. They're common along beaches (with tetrapods), seawalls, canalised river mouths, in other words anywhere with concrete. The more concrete the better it seems. Their affinity to concrete structures is so pronounced as to be off-putting and I rarely bother to stop and photograph them unless I come across an irresistibly posed bird. Consequently I have a lot of random Rock Thrush images disconnected to anything else I might have been looking for at the time which never make it onto the blog. This post starts off with some of the recent ones...

It wasn't really light enough so early in the morning last weekend to take advantage of the opportunity. This bird continued along the roadside until it disappeared behind a truck parked across the street.



Same day, different concrete. A classic bird-on-tetrapod shot. A Dusky Thrush just out of view was naive enough to think it could blithely hop past carrying a corner of rice cracker!

Even sans the reappropriated cracker, the Dusky Thrush wasn't allowed to pass this tetrapod. Time and again, without putting down the cracker, the Rock Thrush would fly at the Dusky until the latter determined there was probably nothing along the beach to the south that couldn't be found with far less effort to the north.

A September male in the same general area. The moth is possibly identifiable but not by me.

Another view of the same bird, the concrete nicely out of focus. Below are two more strongly marked, fresh-plumaged September males.

This is probably my favourite Blue Rock Thrush shot, simply because it's the only one I've taken locally without even a hint of concrete. I was surprised to discover some small island populations (eg on Hahajima, Ogasawara)  are at home in wooded situations completely removed from human structures.  

APRIL on Yonaguni. A worn uniformly blue and red male, compare with the fresh September males above.
And yes, it is on concrete.

MAY on Mishima. A smart looking spring female this time. 

JUNE Wajima. I suppose I don't see as many June birds but I've never seen any other that looks as brown in colouration or has such abraded primaries.

Note to self: look out for Rock Thrushes in June.