Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park

Last week, I finally got around to going to the Oi Park. As usual, few shorebirds were there--seems to be the norm for my visits. I'm told that April will see more birds there--but then, my first visit was April 15 last year, and there were few birds there--a swallow and a plover, aside from the ever-obligatory cormorants. Hopefully, I'll be luckier this year. But not so far. Still, the lack of water birds didn't mean there was nothing there. I did actually get a new life bird:

That is a Daurian Redstart. A female alone, unfortunately--the males are much more colorful, with a full red breast, black back and face and a white cap. What marks this bird as a Daurian is the white patch on the wing. This bird is related to one of my first finds a bit more than a year ago, the Red-flanked Bluetail. Both birds are about the same size and shape.

Actually, there was one other life bird, though I'd seen it before. I simply had not been able to identify it with certainty. It's the Buff-bellied Pipit (also called the Water Pipit):

Also at the park, but not pictured here because I so recently showed them elsewhere, were Tufted and Spot-billed Ducks, Pochards, Mallards, and Northern Pintails, as well as Coots and Moorhens, Cormorants, Bulbuls, and Wagtails. There was also a Kingfisher, an Oriental Greenfinch, and a Grey Heron, not shown here because I couldn't get decent shots.

There was one bird that I couldn't get a good shot of because it was maybe half a kilometer away, across the park. I did manage to shoot an image through an available spotting scope to get enough of a shot of this Northern Goshawk:

There was also a Herring Gull, though this one was on a rock in the Tama River, I spotted on the way in:

Near the gull was a wagtail, this one the less common Japanese Wagtail, with the black head and white brow:

On my way out of the park, I saw a few Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers in the trees:

And almost as if to console me for not seeing so many nice birds, a big flock of Azure-winged Magpies escorted me out of the park, flying and perching right above me for the last hundred meters and more to the exit.

One other note: there are cats in the park, which when you think about it, is kind of natural. But this one cat was super-friendly. It walked straight up to me and demanded to be petted. After giving it a good neck-scratch and petting, I got back to the birdwatching. And the cat not only followed, it jumped up onto any available surface near my hands and started going back and forth. When I walked away, it chased after me, walking between my legs. Probably the friendliest cat I've ever met in Japan--or perhaps the most attention-starved. I practically had to run off to leave it behind.