Narita, Choshi Fishing Port, and Narita-san Temple Complex, Chiba Prefecture, Japan
29 - 31 January 2006

Narita High Street - the Temple is ten minutes down this road.

The following report is of a short trip to the small Japanese town of Narita, about an hour’s train ride north-east of Tokyo. Narita is the site of the main international airport in Japan (Tokyo’s Haneda Airport has handled mostly domestic and short-haul flights since Narita International opened in 1978), and consequently many transit passengers (and aircrews) find themselves pitching up in Narita with a few hours - or a day or two - to spare. Hopefully the information here will help future birding visitors decide whether to stay on the plane or not…

Transport from the airport to the town is frequent and fairly cheap (especially if you can get onto one of the hotel shuttle buses which are free), and a taxi will get you to the two sites described below in about twenty minutes. There is also a train service - the Keisei Limited Express, which departs from the airport about every 20 minutes and costs 250 Yen for the one way trip into Narita - which puts you within a twenty-minute walk of the Narita-san temple. There are no “rarities” at either site, but there are good numbers of typical East Asian birds - though note that if you’re into sound-recording that the stream-side area described below is directly underneath the fligh path into Narita International and you can almost touch the planes as they come over - ie it’s very noisy!

January 29 2006: “Stream-side area”, Narita, Japan. Black-faced Buntings are dull? I don’t think so…

Having had very little sleep on the flight from London the night before, all I could manage on my first afternoon in Japan for nearly two years was a short, almost circular walk that takes in a small amount of woodland, paddy fields, and follows a reedy stream just outside the town and close to the airport.

It’s a site I’ve birded quite a lot in the past, and amazingly it has neither been turned into a new housing estate or had a new road put through it - and a good job too, because it’s packed with birds. There’s nothing rare, but it’s always a thrill seeing Dusky Thrush and flocks of buntings - particularly of one of my favourite members of the emberizidae, the very common but very skulking Black-faced Bunting (the title at the top of this post refers to the reaction most people had to the immature that turned up in the UK a few years ago, giving many birders their first ever look at the species - though to be honest, it was a particularly grotty specimen, so washed out it was as if the poor thing was so shocked at having travelled thousands of miles to end up being stared at by a bunch of less-than-enthusiastic Brit twitchers that the colour just drained out of it and didn’t come back…anyway, some of the photos below show what the eastern subspecies personata looks like when it grows up…pretty gorgeous if you ask me…).

Despite the disturbance from the aircraft, the paddy-fields and the reeds here always seem to hold Japanese Wagtail and Long-tailed Shrike in winter, and it’s always worth keeping an eye on the sky for raptors - I’ve seen Northern Goshawk a couple of times, and often see Common Buzzards. (In summer the whole area is alive with the calls of Japanese Bush Warblers.)

I’ve often birded this site simply because it is so convenient and easy to reach, and can be started and finished in terms of ‘hotels’: ie the easiest way to get onto the path along the stream is to walk down to the road-bridge by the ANA Hotel, the easiest way to access from the other end (about 1500m away) is to walk from the Narita Hilton along a narrow road through some woodland and down to the stream from there.

Male Black-faced Bunting Emberiza melanocephala personata

Eurasian/Common Buzzard Buteo buteo - compilation photo of the same bird

Japanese Wagtail Motacilla grandis

Dusky Thrush Turdus naumanni eunomus

“Japanese” Meadow Bunting Emberiza cioides ciopsis

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

Grey Heron Ardea cinerea 1; Mallard Anas platyrhynchos 5; Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis 1; Eurasian Buzzard Buteo buteo 1; Rufous Turtle Dove Streptopelia orientalis 4; Japanese Wagtail Motacilla grandis 3; Brown-eared Bulbul Ixos amaurotis 8-10; Dusky Thrush Turdus naumanni eunomus 2; Brown/Brown-headed Thrush Turdus chrysolaus 4; Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus 6; Great Tit Parus major 2; Japanese White-eye Zosterops japonicus 2; Bull-headed Shrike Lanius bucephalus 1; Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos c)10; Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus 30+; Meadow Bunting Emberiza cioides 4-6; Rustic Bunting Emberiza rustica 20-30; Black-headed Bunting Emberiza melanocephala c)20

January 30 2006: Choshi Fishing Port, Japan - gulls, gulls, and more gulls…etc

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 a quick enquiry to the hotel staff suggested that it would be very easy, and they were right. Certainly getting to Choshi by train from either Tokyo or Narita 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…

In the event I had a great day. 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’ve put a full (ie very long) report online with 37 photos - but if you can’t handle that here are a selection of the many pictures I took…

Adult winter Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris

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

Adult winter Vega Gull Larus vegae

Adult winter Common Gull Larus canus kamtschatschensis

Adult winter Black-headed Gull Larus ridibundus sibiricus

1st winter Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus

1st winter Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens

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 kamtschatschensis 2; Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens 3-4; Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus 3; Vega Gull Larus vegae 100+; 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 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+

January 31 2006: Naritasan Temple Complex

Our flight home leaves Narita about mid-morning, which gave me just about enough time to walk the 1500m or so from the hotel to the beautiful Narita-san Shinshoji Temple Complex in the centre of Narita.

Built on top of a hill (or ’san’) the complex contains the 165,000sqm Naritasan Park, a relatively quiet haven with a good-sized patch of mature trees, winding footpaths and three small lakes (occupied only by a solitary and genetically suspect Mallard and not the Mandarins that are sometimes found here). This is as good as anywhere locally to pick up some of the commoner birds that most first-time visitors to Japan (and January year-listers who’ve been before) will want to see. Like all public areas in Japan it does get busy later in the day, but it is very safe, impressively clean, and very well-signposted (information is in both Japanese and English).

As with the “stream-side” site described above there’s not likely to be anything rare here, but despite some lingering snow and grey and overcast weather I still managed to get reasonable views of Rufous Turtle Doves (which while not exactly approachable are a little less flighty here than out in the fields where they’re normally found) and a selection of near-endemics including Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, a typically wary Pale Thrush, a Varied Tit (listen out for a loud high-pitched call that doesn’t sound quite right for a Goldcrest), and a party of Oriental Greenfinches feeding on seeds of some sort high up in a tree. The near-endemic Brown-eared Bulbuls are everywhere (their bizarre, mechanical screeches and chuckles are the dominant bird sound), as are Large-billed Crows and the very pale minor race of Great Tit (surely a different species to the larger yellow birds in Europe).

In the summer I’ve seen Daurian Redstarts and Common Kingfisher here, so if you are transiting through Narita International Airport with a few hours to spare, Naritasan will definitely be worth a quick visit. If you’re staying in Narita itself an added incentive is that even the walk down to the Temple from the JR Narita Station should get you Grey Starling, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, and lugens Black-backed/White Wagtail…

Brown-eared Bulbul Ixos amaurotis

Male Pale Thrush Turdus pallidus

Rufous Turtle Dove Streptopelia orientalis

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.