Hegurajima: November 1st

There have been an amazing four national firsts this autumn, two of them on Hegurajima; Claudia's Leaf Warbler and Amur Paradise Flycatcher. Though no doubt the latter has been overlooked in the pre-split past. The last week of October saw continuous strong north westerlies flowing from the continent, what might they have brought? No boats out to the island of course in those conditions and no birders out there either. Even the more reliable Tobishima service wasn't operating meaning no possibility of anyone chasing the Ruby-crowned Kinglet there, the most recent of the four new birds for Japan.


The winds eased on Thursday 31st allowing sailing the following day... and more time for birds to leave. The problem with a day trip to the island from November onwards is that you only get 3.5 hours of birding because of the ferry's earlier winter return timetable. In effect only a little over three hours birding which makes the 404km each way drive seem much further than when I'm staying on the island.


I used to think there must be a good reason why the ferry schedule changes in winter. Now I'm not so sure. Why does it need to leave the island an hour earlier and be back in Wajima at 15:30 back in Wajima 1.5 hours before sunset at this time of year? It's not as if they have a lot to do once back in port and they surely don't require daylight to do it... Wajima is on the grid. Perhaps they don't realise the port has lighting because they've never been there after dark. Strange as it may seem now, when I first went to Hegurajima we drove all round Wajima looking for a convenience store... there were none! For many subsequent visits I had to be prepared and provisioned before getting out into the sticks then there was one, and the following year they were all over the town. A bit like Daurian Redstarts in mid-October. And another thing while I'm at it... did you ever wonder why the ferry leaves Hegura five minutes before the 15:00 (now 14:00) scheduled departure time? It seems departure time is as the ferry leaves the harbour not the quay. Thank goodness other forms of public transport don't follow the same logic, even other ferry services I use for that matter.


What about the birds then? I'm coming to that.


There were enough birds on the island to encourage the thought that a mega was just around the corner. Perhaps there was. Unfortunately you can't turn all the corners in three hours and I obviously didn't choose the right one(s).


Highlights were Eurasian Skylarks, ie not japonica, and a couple of Pine Buntings. Neither are unexpected here but equally they aren't birds I'm going to see staying at home in Kyoto. Red-throated Pipit I might see once in a blue moon in Kyoto while Stejneger's Stonechat, White's Thrush and Eyebrowed Thrush are birds I could see but usually don't. I'd sum it up as a low number of species with a high degree of scarcity from the Kyoto birders perspective.


It's actually worth going for the Pine Buntings alone! I didn't see them until five minutes before boarding the ferry, they were just hopping around on the road in the harbour.

Great birds, great family.

I definitely could have seen Rustic Bunting staying in Kyoto. But not on a rugged rocky headland with red berries!

There were at least 10 Eurasian Skylarks that I flushed from long grass along the west side of the island. This bird at the southern end of the island was the only one that perched briefly in the open allowing an all too distant shot before it dropped back into cover. In flight they looked slightly larger than Japanese even without direct comparison, they were cleaner white below and the flight calls were also sufficiently different to attract attention. 

In the harbour area a couple of people were trying to get good views and photographs of O Hibari (large skylark). Maybe I'm totally wrong on this but I often feel the name O Hibari is used as a catch-all for the various races of Eurasian Skylark that could turn up here in autumn/winter due to the difficulty/impossibility of confirming racial identity; I am told by a friend that O Hibari refers specifically to pekinensis and that lonnbergi is Karafuto Chu Hibari but it's always the former name I seem to hear mentioned. Incidentally, I'm told Chu Hibari intermedia hasn't been recorded in Japan which, again, is presumably is down to the difficulty/impossibility of separating the races of Eurasian Skylark in the field rather than it never reaching these shores.



Female Stejneger's Stonechat, probably a first autumn with the heavy white tips to the primary coverts.





As there wasn't a great deal of interest sufficiently close to photograph on the island, good images of the skylarks would have been very welcome, I'll add some shots of a first autumn Asian Brown Flycatcher taken on Oct 12th during the previous visit. This was quite a strikingly marked bird which I first saw in heavy rain making observation and more particularly photography difficult. I was struck by flashing white about the wings as I first glimpsed it dash away between the trunks of some pines ahead. Ever the optimist, I was excited by the possibility of Pied Flycatcher and in true ficedula-style it vanished. Fortunately I did relocate it some time and though that brought spirits down on a par with the weather it was a relief to sort it out. I found it again the following day in much better weather conditions about 400m from the original site and was able to get a few closer shots. I assume the the discrepancy between this and the Asian Brown Flycatchers I expect to see at this time of year are all due to retained juvenile body feathers. According to Leader (British Birds 2010), juvenile Asian Brown Flycatcher undergoes a complete body moult before migration and only the exceptional bird will retain any juvenile feathers beyond August. Certainly I've found very few online images of Asian Brown showing any of the features of this bird and none with all of them.

The first good view of the bird in the rain on the first day, I was more or less using the camera inside a plastic bag and could hardly see the bird at all through the view finder. The uppertail coverts are contrastingly dark, the longest with bold rounded pale spots, according to Leader the ground colour of retained juvenile feathers is blackish and much darker than the next generation feathers.

The median coverts bar is quite arresting and the dark and white streaks in the crown are just visible here, there's an almost Spotted Flycatcher feel to the head in this view. The pale area in the primaries remains a mystery as it isn't visible on the closed wing but it may have contributed to my initial impression of a very white-winged flycatcher as I glimpsed it in flight. Fortunately I could get better views the following day.

One of the most obviously different to the norm features is the presence of large, round spots longest uppertail coverts, the darker appearance of the lower rump and uppertail coverts is noticeable but not nearly as pronounced as in the wetter conditions of the previous day. Less eye-catching but no less interesting are two lower rear scapulars which also have large pale spots. 

The white markings on the forehead and crown are formed by white tips to some feathers.

This Japanese Bush Warbler shot is also from mid-October when they were very common on the island. I'm uncertain whether they are far less common now or simply less vocal.

Hegurajima bookends for May

Unbelievable, already the 27th... where did May go?


Well, wherever it went, Northern Hawk Cuckoo singing over my house a few nights ago spurred me to visit Ashyu Forest (central Kyoto prefecture) for the first time this spring as soon as I had time. Time turned out to be the weekend, when I also managed to get out to Hegurajima for only the second time of the season.


I didn't have any offshore plans for Golden Week this year but instead I had hoped to make day trips to Hegurajima. This isn't ideal for several reasons. First, the huge number of birders/photographers present during Golden Week means you're never alone on a trail, the best you can hope for is that you aren't part of a shuffling line spaced about 30 metres apart - that actually happened when I was there on May 1st, I almost felt I had to indicate and wait for a gap in the birder traffic when I exited woodland onto the main north/south trail. Second, the ferry only gives you the least optimal midday period on the island to find the birds. Finally, and worst of all, will the ferry even sail? Ferry cancellations aren't unexpected in autumn when the Japan Sea is less friendly, whereas spring is usually less risky. Of course 'usually less risky' doesn't mean sailings can be relied on as spring of last year proved and this year hasn't been any better, last week was the first time there were more sailings than cancellations.


My visit to Ashyu was really enjoyable, it was great to be in the field and not see another soul in 18 hours! Of course I heard many more birds than I saw but Grey Nightjars were good with two birds sitting on the road in the early hours and a third high overhead in display flight after first light. The heard only highlights were a Japanese Night Heron and a Japanese Scops Owl.


Ruddy Kingfishers were singing early in the morning but as it was sunny, apart from a few calls, it was as if they hadn't existed shortly after the sun crested the hills. Cuckoos, Northern Hawk, Oriental and Lesser vanished in the same way. One bird that never even appeared was Asian Brown Flycatcher, where were they? But a much bigger question was raised. I heard a Kamchatka Leaf Warbler singing in the forest and for an instant when it started singing I was delighted thinking it was Japanese Leaf. The only previous occasion I've heard 'Japanese Leaf' here was before the Arctic complex was split and now I wonder whether that too was a passage Kamchatka. It seems this area is just outside the Japanese Leaf range.

One of several Grey Wagtails around the car park in the forest. 'Car park' means a broad muddy turning area where the road finally ends.

On the not-a-bird front this monster earthworm was a stand-out.

At about 40cm long this would give any early bird pause for thought. Note the 10 Yen coin next to it for scale. 

Shortly after I saw this hummingbird hawk moth daylight was gone and a bigger surprise was an otherwise invisible bush across steep dark ravine lit up by glow worms like a ghostly Christmas tree.

After nightfall on the second day I drove north to Wajima as it seemed very likely the ferry would be operating the following morning.


There was a time, a long time in fact, I'd be out on the ferry deck from port to port but after multiple sailings each year, year after year, with very little to show for it I tend to catch up on sleep nowadays. Admittedly I visit the island more often in autumn than the more productive spring. When I went out on May 1st I did try for seabirds and the trip produced about 30 Ancient Murrelets in small parties, at least two Japanese Murrelets, ever present Streaked Shearwaters and the Pelagic Cormorants which are still around at that time of year. I had also hoped for good numbers of phalaropes, Red-necked can be common and usually there are a few Grey (Red) thrown in. In the event there were only a handful of Red-necked. This time, two days ago, I did sleep on the crossing but still managed a single Red-necked Phalarope through the window.

One of several small fly-by parties of Ancient Murrelets.

A few were slightly closer.

Red-necked Phalaropes with an Ancient Murrelet.

On the island at the beginning of the month this Sakhalin Leaf Warbler was the only bird of interest I managed good shots of. That was my first ever trip to Hegura when I was glad to be taking the ferry back to the mainland, I've never seen the place so birdless.

Strictly speaking I ought to call this a Sakhalin/Pale-legged Leaf as I didn't hear it but Sakhalin is the overwhelming favourite here.

I wasn't terribly optimistic about this trip, even though there have been some really good birds between my visits, because the weather hadn't looked too productive all week. However the hill behind Wajima harbour was thick with Kamchatka Leaf Warblers which put me in a much better frame of mind before the ferry left. Kamchatka were absolutely everywhere on the island, Asian Brown Flycatchers were pretty common too. No wonder there were none at Ashyu, they're all still on vacation!

Kamchatka Leaf Warbler

A clean looking Asian Brown Flycatcher, even paler in the sun. 

Asian Brown looking dark.

No amount of sun is going to make a Dark-sided Flycatcher look pale.

The best/rarest birds on the island were Black-naped Oriole, a flock of Common Crossbills and a Dollarbird; hmmm so okay, nothing major. But there were so many birds around, and such a variety of scarce stuff, there surely had to be something important waiting to be found. If there was, neither I nor anyone else found it during my four hours on the island.


Cuckoos were fairly obvious, Lesser and Common at any rate.

Lesser Cuckoo.

Black Woodpigeon is ever present but it's not often they sit about in the open like this.

Hegura: a weekend in Ishikawa part 2

The sky is getting light by 3:30am nowadays and I had plenty of time for birding at Rokkozaki before deciding what to do with the final day of this once-to-be three day trip. There were six singing Kamchatka Leaf Warblers this morning, Pacific Swifts and Red-rumped Swallows were passing through clearly there were birds to be found and with the notion of a lazy Sunday having already gone by the board even Hegura might still be possible. If the ferry were running that is.


Still in two minds I arrived back in Wajima and went to check at the ferry office.The boat was going and I had enough time to reach a convenience store for a coffee before departure. What to do: be sensible and drive towards home or go to the island? I had a busy week coming up and I'd get home very late and with little sleep over the weekend. The coffee hadn't helped me make up my mind but I gravitated back to the ticket office anyway. Compared to yesterday there were few cars in the car park, there might not be many birders out there. There might be some good birds out there. There could be a mega out there... not to mention a Swinhoe's Petrel from the boat. Before common sense prevailed I went and bought a ticket, if the ferry was going then so was I.


I hadn't really expect a Swinhoe's Petrel from the ferry of course, so I wasn't disappointed. The Streaked Shearwaters were good though.

 

 

 

 

Once on the island it quickly became apparent the Kamchatka Leaf Warblers at Rokkozaki had been no more than a taste of what could be found on the island. There had to be something else out here.

 

 

 

 

 

The Kamchatka Leaf Warblers were very vocal and unlike in autumn so many singing birds meant identification was that much easier. I suppose it's slightly surprising then that Rokkozaki provided the only Arctic Warbler when there were so many more warblers out here on the island. Unsurprisingly, total numbers of birds were lower than they would have been during peak migration period, or even just a week earlier. One of only two birders I met was bemoaning the general lack of birds, however the variety of species was quite good.


I found:-
Cattle Egret 1
Great White Egret 1
Northern Hobby 1

Eurasian Sparrowhawk 1
Lesser Cuckoo 1
White-throated Needletail 1
Broad-billed Roller (I hate the name Dollarbird) 1

 

Red-rumped Swallow 3
Black-browed Reed Warbler 1
Dark-sided Flycatcher 1

 

 

Asian Brown Flycatcher 2

Eurasian Siskin 1
Hawfinch 1



There were plenty of presumed local breeders to sift through too, Japanese Bush Warblers were performing everywhere.

 

This Black-faced Bunting probably wanted to be Yellow-breasted, it couldn't quite pull off the breast band...

And so many Black Woodpigeons! I saw ones or twos regularly at the southern end, the biggest party was four, and heard a couple more at the northern end.

In fact, though numbers of most species were low, there were new birds at every turn and the species tally grew steadily. My 4.5 hours on the island passed all too quickly and I felt certain there was something really exciting on the island. I still am to be honest. Before going out I'd been concerned I might be totally wasting my time but now I'm sure if I'd been able to stay there and put in the time I'd have found something special.