Mr Wren

These photos were all taken on Sunday 6th, this month. I went birding in the forest near Beppu Ropeway again and there were still quite many birds singing. One of these being this tiny and cute Winter Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). This bird has a really loud and metallic song which can be recognised very easily. I found two singing individuals along the way uphill. The subspecies in southern Japanese Archipelago is T.t.ogawae. I've seen this bird once in Arunachal, India but it was a subspecies T.t.nipalensis, which has much darker plumage.

I was surprised that this tiny bird wasn't afraid of flash light at all. I actually didn't want to use it, as I normally don't, but the forest was so dark and I didn't bring the tripod with me, so I just had no choice other than putting my external flash on.

Sometimes it also climbed up to the top of the trees.

Below are some photos of a different individual with no flash on. Another interesting species which I heard lots of different singing individuals was the Asian Stubtail, which is another cute and tiny bird of a bush warbler family. It has a very strange, super high-pitched, insect-like song, but I couldn't find any obvious individual. I'll try my best next time.

I found a nice video clip of a Japanese Winter Wren singing nicely on a mossy rock in YouTube. Thanks to okriver1956 for sharing such a nice video with us. This video really shows the cuteness of the bird and its wonderful song. Wish I can upgrade my camera to have a video function soon......