Andrea and David B. Collinge's trip to Japan, July 2011

Birdlist to 7/8-11: 109 species, 44 lifers - and some sounds to sort! Gallery Specific locations: Yatsu Higata, 30 minutes from Tokyo Station, and on Hokkaido: Kushiro wetland reserve - Kawayu - Nemuru

Central Tokyo is essentially devoid of birds. There are crow (Large-billed), pigons and tree sparrows and the occasional swallow and Black-tailed Gull. The Imperial Palace and area round Budukan Concert Hall gave a few other species (including our only Japanese Whiteeyes of the trip and a flock of White-cheeked Starlings), but the only real birding we found was at Yatsu Higata, 30 minutes by train to the east. This was excellent for waders (mostly too far away for photos) on our visit and gave two lifers: Azure-winged Magpie and Grey-tailed Tatler.

Train trip (sadly the planned ferry was cancelled due to a typhoon - OK under the circumstances!) to Hokkaido: north Honshu and Hokkaido were more bird rich, and we awoke to several trip spp. This "limited express" night train was more user friendly than a Shinkansen (later), but is a little frustrating! Nevertheless we saw both peregrine, kites, gulls and a bull-headed shrike to satisfaction.

Sapporo boasts both botanic gardens and a Historic Village. Both are bird rich and we saw many of the same woodland species both places. A nice lifer was Pygmy Woodpecker at the former and a good view of Eastern Crowned Warbler.

The train journey though Hokkaido to Kushiro goes through varied scenery from farmland through forested mountains, only coast at the end. The highlight was a glimpse of a Brown Dipper in a river below.

Kushiro (23 to 25/7) is the gateway to the east - we visited the huge wetland reserve and crane proejct, and changed trains here for Nemuru 27/ 7 & for Sapporo 29/7. The tour's only Kestrel flew by the 10th floor breafast window, about 3m away.

25-27/7 were spent at Kawayu in the eastern highland region: Click here for our mystery sound (the wazoo whistle, not the obvious birdsong) heard at about 4 am on the dawn forest walk suggested by Mark Brazil! Another nice little videoclip: of a Narcissus Flycatcher

27-28/7 Nemuru, Furen Lake and Cape Nosappu. Both excellent, though disappointed by few waders (only two Grey-tailed Tatlers) all day. Cape Nosappu gave hundreds of Rhinocerous Auklets and a single Tufted Puffin, some dolphins and a couple of small whales. And the tour's only Hobby.

29/7 and 30/7 Added pheasant and Latham's Snipe to the list during the 8 hours train journey across Hokkaido, and Streaked Shearwater as the only seabird seen (about 40 in all) on the 22 hrs crossing from Otaru on Hokkaido to Maizuru on Honshu.

We spent nearly a week in Kyoto from 31/7 to 6/8 - and only saw about 10-15 species a day, total 25 spp, nothing new until 4/8... Birdwise pretty dead. Perhaps the fact that we did not go in for any dawn birding accounts for the lack of observations. The most productive area for us was the river, with up to 15 herons (of 4 spp.) visible just crossing by bus. The Shinkansen trip back to Tokyo yielded masses of egrets including a flock of 22 Cattle Egrets following a plough.

Our plans were spoiled by two things: a typhoon scuppered (though not literally) our plans to take the Pacific side ferry to Hokkaido. The Sea of Japan ferry was a please trip but hardly rewarding. We chose not to take the Pacific ferry down for two reasons: the interesting section at the north is passed after nightfall and it lands north of Tokyo, giving a complicated journey to our next destination, Kyoto. Secondly, you need an international drivers permit - this is issued at home (by motoring organisations) is is basically an certified translation of you drivers licence. I have hired cars on 4 continents with my Danish licence over the last 20 years (which says "kørekort" on it) and it simply hadn't occurred to either of us that this would be a requirement in such a well developed country. Although it is stated clearly in the Lonely Planet. Obviously this restricted our plans on Hokkaido - though the train travel was considerably cheaper and relaxing.

Books and maps: we used Lonely Planet and Mark Brazil East Asia guide and a coupl of maps bought at ScanMaps in Copenhagen. Stuart Reeves kindly sent scans of some of the Hokkaido pages from mark Brazil's unobtainable site guide and various reports were perused: Petri Hottola's "East Hokkaido June 2010" and Haynes Miller's Kyoto were both very helpful and Charles Harper's "Easy-Access Tokyo Area Birding Locations" on bird forum were helpful A request to Birdforum in January disillusioned my expectations with respect to Steller's Eagle (I would have thought that the odd yound bird would hang around for the summer. They don't)