Arasaki Crane Observatory (Izumi)
Seeing the wintering cranes at Arasaki was one of my main "goals" for Japan. It's not a difficult goal to achieve, you just need to go there in winter and you'll see them, but not all goals need to be difficult!
There is some accommodation actually at Arasaki which would be ideal if you wanted to spend as much time there as you could just photographing cranes (say,
@Lafone), but I couldn't figure out how to book it in advance, and I didn't know how I'd get there from town when I arrived at night on the bus from the airport, and it would have been awkward getting
back to the train station to catch that bus at 6am on my departure morning.
The Hotel Wing International was more expensive but logistically in a better place, and it could be easily booked online (on booking. com) before leaving New Zealand. They have a free coffee machine in the lobby which was appreciated, as well as free bicycles which I thought about but didn't use, and a free laundry room. There is a restaurant by the lobby which I only used for breakfast (12,000 Yen and it's a buffet so eat as much as you like). For other meals I just bought the takeaway meals they sell at Lawson and FamilyMart, which get discounted at the end of the day. They are good meals, lots of selections, and they only cost a few dollars so eating was quite cheap (roughly about 300 to 600 Yen per meal, depending on what it was).
In the little park directly opposite the hotel I saw my first Japanese Grosbeaks while having breakfast. They are huge! Like bulbul-size. I didn’t think the Yellow-billed Grosbeaks in China were
that big, although they were also bigger than most finches.
Brown-eared Bulbuls, one of which I also saw outside the hotel on the first morning, are also very large, like thrush-sized (so, quite a bit bigger than the "bulbul size" that the Japanese Grosbeaks were!). Every time I saw one flying I thought it was a thrush at first. They are everywhere around Izumi, and sound like a dog’s squeaky toy when they aren't hissing.
Brown-eared Bulbul
Speaking of thrushes, I was seeing about equal numbers of Dusky and Pale Thrushes here. The Pale Thrushes are really nice.
Dusky Thrush
Pale Thrush
...............................................
From internet sources I had thought there was a dedicated crane bus going from the train station to the Crane Observatory each day in winter, but this seems to not be the case any more. The chap at reception looked up the local bus timetables on his computer, and found that there is a regular bus Monday to Friday with limited times, which (from what I gather) stops on the main road not at the observatory itself, although it isn't far to walk. At the information centre inside the train station they told me the same thing. Because my first day in Izumi was a Saturday that counted that bus out.
The alternative I chose was to get the hotel to call the special taxi service for the Crane Observatory, which costs 2000 Yen. This is advertised on the flier as being half the price of a regular taxi fare, which seems to be a genuine thing - when I went out there the driver had the meter running and it came to somewhere around 3600 Yen but he only charged me the 2000 Yen. The taxi driver, incidentally, was dressed in a uniform like a chauffeur with white gloves and hat. Very classy.
When we got to the Observatory the driver asked me what time I wanted him to come back to pick me up, but as I had no idea how long I'd be out there for I said I would just walk back to town. I figured I'd probably be able to find a bus somewhere along the main road heading towards Izumi, although in the event I did not. I mean, I found bus stops with (I assume) weekend times listed but they were so infrequent - as in, hours apart - that I ended up walking the whole way.
It is a trouble-free walk and it’s all flat, but it is a long way. When you reach the main road south of the Observatory you simply walk east in a straight line for about 10km, and when north of Izumi turn right and walk another 5km or so. Simple as that.
...............................................
Arasaki is the main wintering ground for two species of cranes, the Hooded Crane and the White-naped Crane. Something like 90% of the world's Hooded Cranes winter here. There are up to 15,000 of them here each winter, and maybe 1000 White-naped Cranes. Both species are extremely easy to see here. When driving to the Observatory they are in fields all about, but it is directly around the Observatory that the numbers are greatest. They spend the night right here, and in the morning fly in flocks across the river to the east to feed. They are fed artificially at the Observatory though, so even in the middle of the day there are hundreds of cranes in plain view.
White-naped Cranes
Hooded Cranes
The Observatory has telescopes on the upper deck and they also provide binoculars if you don't have your own. I spent maybe an hour up here when I arrived, scanning through all the cranes trying to find the few rare ones which I knew were also here.
Every year there are a bare handful of Common Cranes and Sandhill Cranes at Arasaki, a lone Siberian Crane used to turn up yearly, and very very occasionally there are Red-crowned Cranes and Demoiselle Cranes. There is a whiteboard inside the Observatory with daily crane numbers, so I knew there were five Common Cranes and two Sandhill Cranes here somewhere.
Amongst the flocks of cranes squabbling over the supplementary food were Grey Herons, Little and Great Egrets, and Black Kites. Spot-billed Ducks and Northern Lapwings dotted the fields, and a pool in the back held Common Shelducks. There were also lots of little birds like pipits and buntings down in the grass but I only saw them when I was walking around the roads leading to and from the Observatory, and that was only when they flew suddenly up into the air so I never managed to identify any of them.
The fields were also covered in Rooks, which like the cranes appear here only in winter. I checked through the Rooks as well, until I found a Daurian Jackdaw. These jackdaws come in two phases - all black, and black and white - but I only saw the black phase. The other two black corvids here are the Large-billed Crow and Carrion Crow, so I made sure I kept checking until I'd definitely seen all four.
Rooks
The time spent in the Observatory was well-spent, and eventually I even saw one of the Common Cranes although it was too far back for any of the photos to turn out well. It was a very angry sort of bird, too, and kept chasing any of the smaller Hooded Cranes which came near it.
Once I felt like I'd seen most of what I could from the Observatory area, I walked to the river (about a minute to the east), seeing a Bull-headed Shrike on the way, some Japanese White-eyes, and a flock of Russet Sparrows.
Bull-headed Shrike
Russet Sparrow
It was really cold out here due to a biting wind. Out of the wind it was okay, but in the fields there was nothing to break it. Back in Izumi it had been so still and warm that I, like an idiot, had left my bush-shirt at the hotel and was just wearing a sweatshirt. A bush-shirt, in case that doesn't translate, is a thick woollen shirt worn when tramping. It's mostly what I've been wearing in the "cold" places because most of them haven't been cold enough for anything more than that.
I crossed over the river and walked along the road towards the cranes' feeding grounds. I could see a large flock congregated much further down the road. I didn't really want to walk down there because the wind was chilling, but cranes were why I was here and I hadn't seen the Sandhill Cranes yet.
I walked down, stopping all along the way to check out other cranes and take their photos, and trying unsuccessfully to see pipits before they disappeared into the grass. Once at the main crane flock I started scanning. Hmm, those ones look too grey to be Hooded Cranes. All morning I had been getting scammed by Hooded Cranes looking different - they are so variable in plumage with age (and probably other reasons). Were these ones actual Sandhill Cranes? They were almost the first ones I'd looked at in this flock.
Both of them had their heads tucked into their back feathers but they definitely looked small and grey. Then one popped its head up. That looked like a Sandhill Crane head! I took some photos to zoom in on to double-check. Then a Hooded Crane walked past them and I realised just how small these two cranes were. I had no idea Sandhill Cranes were that small!
Hooded Crane and Sandhill Cranes
Seeing a Sandhill Crane won't sound that exciting to a North American, but they are really rare in Asia and with only two birds amongst many thousands of other cranes I wouldn't have been surprised if I hadn't see them at all. Also, of the four cranes I saw today only the Sandhill Crane was a lifer because I had seen all three of the others very recently in China.
Three species of cranes in one photo: Hooded, Sandhill, and White-naped Cranes
After that success I wandered around some of the other roads in the area, seeing numerous Common Snipe and Dunlin along a canal-like river branching off the main river, and an Osprey and various ducks on the main river. On the walk back to town I also came across a pair of the endemic Japanese Wagtails on another stream, making a three-wagtail day (along with the ubiquitous White Wagtails and an Eastern Yellow Wagtail).
Today was an excellent start to my Japan trip. Technically yesterday was my first day but that was entirely a travel day, so I'm counting Arasaki as my first "real" day in Japan. I saw 41 bird species today, with five being lifers (Japanese Grosbeak, Bull-headed Shrike, Sandhill Crane, Dunlin, and Japanese Wagtail), but even without those just the spectacle of the crane flocks was something else to behold. I'm really glad I started out in Japan with Arasaki.
