Imperial Palace Park

For the first time in eight years I'm not spending a week during spring migration on an island in the Japan Sea. If that isn't depressing enough, continuous rain yesterday tipped me into a severe case of bird deprivation. So I dropped into Gosho for a couple of hours this morning in the hope of finding something... anything of interest. Pleasant as it might have been to get out, things of interest were predictably thin on the ground. There had been Japanese Robin there last week but the best I could come up with today was an all to brief glimpse of a male Eye-browed Thrush, and the only other birds that don't actually breed in the park were about seven singing Narcissus Flycatchers and a White-bellied Green Pigeon. I sometimes see Green Pigeon in Gosho in winter but I don't think I've had one this late. It's certainly the only one I've heard singing in the city, a sound I always associate with mountain forests.

So, apart from a rotten shot of the Eyebrowed taken through the undergrowth all the shots below are of the usual city centre suspects.

Eyebrowed Thrush

Large-billed Crow

Olive-backed Pipit

White-cheeked Starling