Where would they even find enough greenery to do their bird things? Tokyo's Sotobori canal (the former outer moat of Edo Castle) is a popular hangout for gray herons (pictured), little grebes, tufted ducks, Eurasian coots, Northern shovelers and little egrets.Īnywhere, actually. I was sure that this city was no avian paradise. Once in a while, I'd glance up and find a snake-necked, long-legged specimen flapping by. I saw pigeons pecking the ground, crows stealing garbage scraps, and sparrows dashing from curb to tree and back for no apparent reason. There didn't seem to be many birds around. These groupings were of no use to me when I moved to Tokyo two decades ago. Almost everything else got lumped into two categories: big bird or little bird. countless times as a kid, I was familiar with exotic species-flamingos, peafowl, shoebills, vultures, toucans, ostriches, penguins. Having been to the San Diego Zoo in the U.S. An Unexpected Avian Paradiseįor most of my life, I could confidently identify pigeons, sparrows, crows and seagulls. When we finally did, we were in the center of the Japanese capital-at the Institute for Nature Study in Tokyo's Shirokanedai district, a 20-hectare (50-acre) forested patch bordered by the metropolitan expressway, offices, shops and homes.Ī few years ago, if someone had told me that my son, wife and I would one day be traipsing around Tokyo in search of birds, I probably would have snorted in disbelief. We knew that if we heard a kik-kik-kik, like a bicycle brake in need of oil, we would be close to finding one. We'd read all about the kingfisher's precision hunting and its ability to switch from monocular vision to binocular, when underwater. Sometimes, people would tell us that we'd just missed one that only a moment ago it had been right there, plunging for fish from a low branch. We'd been to parks and waterways around Tokyo, hoping to see one. This little bird had eluded us for months. Hall's son scopes out the bird scene at Kitanomaru National Garden.įor my son and me, it was an exhilarating moment. The most pressing thing on this pint-sized piscivore's mind was probably breakfast-snagging something swimming by in the water below. It was a frigid, gray December morning, and the spear-billed, blue-and-orange bird had alighted on a reed in a shallow pond surrounded by woods. The first time I saw a common kingfisher in the wild was at a former Japanese military ammunition dump.
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