Talented Birdlife on the Kodaira Green Road

A key feature of Kodaira City is the Green Road, a popular 21km tree-lined walking path which rings the city and which for 8km runs along the historical Tamagawa Aqueduct (Tamagawa Jōsui) that since 1654 has carried water from the Tama River to the capital. The Kodaira citizens’ charter (shimin kenshō) starts with the words, "Let’s build a green verdant town to which small birds will flock"(わたくしたちは みどりを育て 小鳥の来るまちをつくりましょう) and there is indeed an abundance of bird-life along the Green Road. Today, I spotted a beautiful Varied Tit. Called a Yamagara (山雀) in Japanese, literally "mountain sparrow" (sparrow is suzume in Japanese), it is also common in Korea and China. The colouring is rather remarkable, with a black throat and head, white face, bluish-grey beak, wings, and tail, and a striking chestnut breast. It is also very tame: I was able to stand very close (with a dog!) and watch the bird first peck hard in woodpecker fashion to open a nut and then slowly eat its prize (partly captured in the video below).

The Varied Tit apparently has a long history in Japan: there are accounts of the bird being bred and raised in special wooden cages (Yamagara kago) as far back as the Heian Period (794-1185). A highly intelligent bird, it has also been trained to perform various tricks, most famously delivering fortune papers (omikuji) which was apparently a common sight at Japanese shrines up until the 1980s. This video shows a Varied Tit that has been trained to drop a coin in the offering box of a small shrine, ring the shrine bell, open the shrine door, and bring back an omikuji to the owner.