Choshi Port, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
30 January 2006

Birding options in mid-winter in the Tokyo/Narita region are fairly limited if you’re on a short trip - like northern Europe and the northern parts of North America there are relatively few passerines around (most are struggling to find shelter in what’s left of the equatorial rainforests further south), and unless you’ve a private jet getting to the wonders of distant Hokkaido and flocks of Steller’s Sea Eagles are something that can only be dreamt about.

However, mid-winter in East Asia is a great time for gulls, and the famous river-mouth town of Choshi on Chiba Prefecture’s east coast is supposed to be as good a place as any locally to look for them. According to Mark Brazil’s (admittedly rather long-in-the-tooth) “A Birdwatcher’s Guide to Japan” (Kodansha International 1989), Choshi attracts every one of the region’s commoner gull species (eg Black-tailed, Slaty-backed, Vega, Glaucous, Glaucous-winged and Black-legged Kittiwake), and has even produced records of genuinely rare or hard-to-see species like Red-legged Kittiwake and Ivory Gull (though breeding populations of the latter are in such sharp decline that the chances of seeing one here must be getting increasingly slim).

I’d never been to Choshi before, but getting there by train from either Tokyo or Narita (where we’re based on trips) is absolutely straightforward. Trains are hourly, and Choshi is the last stop on a direct line from Tokyo which passes through Chiba and Narita. There doesn’t seem to be an express train, so journey times are quite long (about 90 minutes from Narita station) but tickets don’t need to be ordered in advance, are issued by invariably helpful station staff, and (at the time of writing) cost just 1100Yen/each way - about 6GBP/10USD - which is cheap by anyone’s standard. I must admit I do prefer to rent cars when I can, but chugging through the Japanese countryside on a warm train and not worrying about my credit card bill made a pleasant change…

Could I have done with a car at the other end? That’s always going to be the question of course. I had intended to spend half my time looking at gulls in the port area, and half scanning the seas from the famous lighthouse on the Cape of Inubo (where apparently a flock of Rock Sandpiper used to (still do?) winter) - but I ended up looking at thousands of gulls until the sun went down and walked about 6km while doing so. The lighthouse is actually a lot further away than it looks on the map in Brazil’s book, and isn’t walkable (at least if you’re planning to do any birding before it gets dark). I could have got a taxi there and back of course, but I decided to concentrate on the port area instead, and Japanese taxis are expensive: besides I figured that now that I knew how easy Choshi is to reach next time I’m in Narita in winter I could always try again…

Once in Choshi finding the port area and the fishing boats is, again, very easy. Walk out of the station and in a straight line until you reach the Tone-gawa (Tone River) about 800m away, turn right (ie away from the huge 1,450 meter long Choshi Bridge which spans the river connecting Choshi and the neighbouring Ibaraki Prefecture.) and walk out along the main road/sea-wall towards the sea.

Having been to a small fishing port in South Korea a couple of times I don’t think I was quite prepared for the scale of the operation here: the whole town is dominated by the boats and the fishery buildings. It’s a huge, noisy, dirty industry at this scale, and this is not the ‘pleasant walk along the coast’ I’d been hoping for. There’s nothing natural or attractive about this place at all sadly. The entire coastline is built up as a sea-wall, and just offshore are huge concrete breakwaters (lined with Temminck’s Cormorants incidentally) that run unbroken for a couple of kilometres towards the sea. Trucks are constantly moving and there are hundreds of large fishing boats piled with mountainous piles of nets - if you’ve ever wondered whether fishing really can empty the world’s oceans come and have a look at the scale it’s being done here and wonder no more *.

Having said that the horrendous waste associated with the fishing industry does inevitably attract gulls, and there are literally thousands of them, so despite the built-up nature of the site from a birding perspective it’s still worth visiting.

As a first-time visitor to Choshi, faced with such a huge area it’s difficult to know where to start birding. I walked the entire length of the port and back again and with hindsight this was not the most productive way of doing things, as the first kilometer is pretty disappointing - though I did see one of two Harlequin Duck (a non-breeding male, photo right) amongst the commoner Eurasian Wigeon and Common Pochard, and two osculans “Eastern” Oystercatchers - a fairly scarce taxon in Japan .

The largest congregation of gulls is around the fishery buildings almost at the end of the point, and therefore just in from the waters of the sea itself. If I ever do come here again I’ll get a taxi from the station and give my feet the day off - it’s a long (and smelly) walk! It’s worth noting though that I had no problems at all walking around the harbour: I wasn’t challenged or made to feel that any particular area was off-limits. That may be because the Japanese are notoriously unconfrontational, particularly with non-Japanese speakers, but there are also plenty of fishermen here casting off from seemingly any place they feel so inclined - so there is a relaxed accessibility to the site anyway.

It’s been over two years since I saw big numbers of East Asian gulls (the last time was in Korea with my brother Nial) and the first time since I “went digital”, so the temptation to give the Canon’s shutter release mechanism a healthy workout was just too much to resist. I took an awful lot of photographs, some which came out and some that didn’t - and some I took so that I could refer to a detailed reference/ID book when I got home!

As expected the two commonest gull species by far were the eastern Pacific endemic Black-tailed and the sibiricus race of Black-headed (interestingly I didn’t see a single Black-headed with breeding-type dark head feathers - back in the UK many are already in a far more advanced state of moult with many showing largely dark heads).

Adult winter Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris

Adult winter Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris

2nd winter Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris

1st winter (moulting into 1st summer) Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris

1st winter Black-tailed Gulls Larus crassirostris

Adult winter Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus sibiricus

Adult winter Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus sibiricus

Also present in reasonable numbers were both Vega and Slaty-backed Gulls, both of which breed only in East Asia - and both of which are sought after as vagrants in North America - and small numbers of the far-eastern race of Common Gull Larus canus kamtschatschensis and Mongolian Gull Larus (cachinanns) mongolicus.

Identifying most adults here is no problem (I would seriously question whether an extra-limital winter adult Vega in a flock of eg smithsonianus is identifiable with any certainty); three of the four taxa above are the only common representatives of “Herring-types”, “dark-backed”, and “Common” gulls likely to be seen.

Adult winter Vega Gulls Larus vegae (for a photo gallery go to Vega Gull)

4th winter Slaty-backed Gull Larus schistisagus (note dark markings on upper mandible)

Adult winter Common Gull Larus canus kamtschatschensis

These are the relatively easy birds to identify of course: there are some others which are much harder - notably immature Vega, Slaty-backed, and Glaucous-winged Gulls. Some of the immatures - especially in worn late-winter plumages can be very tricky…

I’m lucky enough to have seen a lot of immature winter Vega (both vegae and birulai subspecies) and Slaty-backed Gulls on trips to South Korea and Glaucous-wingeds in East Asia and North America, so am fairly experienced with the range of plumages and sizes that they come in, but inevitably there were a few that were hard to place.

Immature Vega Gulls in particular are a variable bunch, and when this is coupled with the range of sizes and plumages shown by immature Slaty-backeds and Glaucous-winged Gulls there are some birds that are just best left unidentified (by me anyway). I’m not going to try to go into the full identification criteria here - if you’re interested we’ve posted lengthy articles on Slaty-backed and Large “white-headed” Gulls (inc Vega) on the Birds Korea website - but here’s a selection of immature gulls to be going on with.

1st winter Vega Gull Larus vegae

 

1st winter Vega Gull Larus vegae

 

1st winter Vega Gull Larus vegae (note ‘pale window’ on inner primaries)

 

2nd winter Vega Gull Larus vegae (note grey mantle)

 

 

1st winter Mongolian Gull Larus (cachinnans) mongolicus

 

1st winter Mongolian Gull Larus (cachinnans) mongolicus

 

 

A trickier bird: either a very worn 2nd winter Vega Gull Larus vegae
or a 2nd winter Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens. Comments welcomed…

 

 

1st winter Slaty-backed Gull Larus schistisagus (note hint of ’string of pearls’ on outer primaries)

 

1st winter Slaty-backed Gull Larus schistisagus

 

Heavily worn 1st winter Slaty-backed Gull Larus schistisagus

 

 

1st winter Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus (note dark-tipped pink bill)

1st winter Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens (note all-dark bill)

1st winter Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens (note all-dark bill)

 

Presumed 1st winter Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens - though typical in most respects, the darkish feathers on the mantle suggest some Slaty-backed genes may be present?

Whilst seeing gulls was the main reason I went to Choshi, there are a few other north-east Asian birds present of course.

Rocky coastlines in this part of the world are the haunt of the rather beautiful red-bellied phillipensis form of Blue Rock Thrush, and I saw several pairs. The rough patches of lawn in front of a tiny park held a eunomus Dusky Thrush, and an extremely bright, skulking Brown Thrush (in fact it was so bright that my initial thought was that I was looking at half of an American Robin, and it wasn’t until I saw the whole bird I realised what it was), Black-backed Wagtails are fairly common (they are typically found around harbours and bays in winter both here and in Korea), and I found a somewhat out-of-place Bull-headed Shrike clinging to a plant stem in an open car park.

Winter Black-backed Wagtail Motacilla alba lugens

Female (left) and male (right) Blue Rock Thrush Monticola solitarius phillipensis

Bull-headed Shrike Lanius bucephalus

The full list is below - not bad really given extreme jet-lag and a first-time visit. Given how easy it is to get to Choshi from Narita, I’ll be certainly visiting again…

Day List: English and scientific names mainly from “Field Guide to the Birds of Korea”, Lee, Koo, Park, LG, 2000:

Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus c)20; Black-necked Grebe Podiceps nigricollis 3; Temminck’s Cormorant Phalacrocorax capillatus c)200; Pelagic Cormorant Phalacrocorax pelagicus 5+; Grey Heron Ardea cinerea 4-5; Great Egret Egretta alba 1; Little Egret Egretta sacra 1; Eurasian Wigeon Anas penelope 6+; Spot-billed Duck Anas poecilorhyncha 2; Common Pochard Aythya ferina 16(+); Tufted Duck Aythya fuligula c)10; Greater Scaup Aythya marila 20+; Harlequin Duck Histrionicus histrionicus 2; Black Scoter Melanitta nigra c)15; Black Kite Milvus migrans c)10; Eurasian Coot Fulica atra c)20; Eurasian Oystercatcher Haematopus (ostralegus) osculans 2; Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris 1000+; Common Gull Larus canus kamchatchiensis 2; Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens 3-4; Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus 3; Vega Gull Larus vegae 100+; Mongolian Gull Larus (cachinnans) mongolicus 1+; Slaty-backed Gull Larus schistisagus 50+; Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus 1000+; Black-legged Kittiwake Rissa tridactyla 8; “Japanese” Lark Alauda (arvensis) japonicus 12; Black-backed Wagtail Motacilla alba lugens c)6-8; Rufous Turtle Dove Streptopelia orientalis 4; Japanese Wagtail Motacilla grandis 3; Brown-eared Bulbul Ixos amaurotis 20+; Blue Rock Thrush Monticola solitarius phillipensis 3; Dusky Thrush Turdus naumanni eunomus 20+; Brown/Brown-headed Thrush Turdus chrysolaus 1; Japanese White-eye Zosterops japonicus 1; Bull-headed Shrike Lanius bucephalus 1; Carrion Crow Corvus corone 6; Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos c)10; Grey Starling Sturnus cineraceus 30+; Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus 30+

* (Timesonline 29 Jan 2006) JAPANESE whalers are testing a high-tech fragmentation harpoon, equipped with an enlarged charge of high explosive, to help to slaughter endangered whales in the seas around Antarctica.

The device is being used to kill humpback and fin whales, after Japan’s unilateral decision to break with an international consensus to protect them. The explosive harpoons hurl shards of metal through the whale’s body to sever major nerves and blood vessels and so cause rapid death. Experts from Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research are aboard the whaling fleet of eight catcher boats plus support vessels to determine the effectiveness of the super-harpoon.

Masayuki Komatsu, executive director of the Japan Fisheries Research Agency, [was quoted as saying] “Because new species have been added to the research project this year which are larger than a minke whale, we thought we would need a bigger grenade on the end of the harpoon…”. What a nice man.

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.