Shadow Play: bird watching in Sagamihara Park 県立相模原公園

In Kanagawa Prefecture, winter is the time for bird watching. Our prefecture has lots of forest of deciduous trees that was once for procuring firewood. Now they are often a part of city parks, with rather too large trees for harvesting fuels. The tall trees shed leaves in late autumn and lay bare their boughs and branches. Forest becomes “empty” where we can see canopies like beams of large structure under construction. For birds, both migratory and otherwise, tall trees in so-so urban area where humans can provide meals are nice winter places. They perch at the top of trees in a park, and stay there looking for foods in around 360° area. If the park has nearby farmland or pond, the variety of birds is wider. We can find not only urban birds, but also species that loves such field, e.g. Eurasian skylarks (Alauda arvensis), hunts animals in farm land like Bull-headed shrike (Lanius Bucephalus), or water birds, e.g. a group of ducks. Bonus: “city park” means the access is perfect. Sagamihara Park of Kanagawa Prefecture 県立相模原公園 is one of such places.

Sagamihara Park has a large greenhouse as well.

In Japan, we can find land birds (1) on boughs, hopping from one branch to another, (2) tree tops where they stay often still, (3) within bushes where birds can often be recognized only by calls, but if lucky with their figures, (4) in a field for those foraging ground insects et al, and (5) in pond, either on shore or swimming and diving for food. During winter, surely birds don’t sing. But they certainly call. Above all, not many leaves hide their activity high above us on tree tops. Especially for novice bird-watchers like me, it’s a perfect time to ask them their company. So, one day when the first snow fell in urban parts of Kanagawa Prefecture, we’ve been there guided by Mr. Sachiya Akiyama 秋山幸也 of Sagamihara City Museum 相模原市立博物館.

Navi-Station of the Park
 where we can bring questions about living creatures in the Park.

Sagamihara Park is located right next to Sagamihara Campus of Joshibi University of Art and Design 女子美術大学 in Sagamihara City 相模原市. To go there by public transportation, we can catch many bus services to Joshibi campus departing from the north exit of very urban Odakyu Sagami-Ohno Station 小田急相模大野駅, Terminal 3 or 4 (Mon-Sat, 7:20~9:50), or JR Yokohama Line Kobuchi Station 横浜線古淵駅, Terminal 2. Moreover, the park has substantial parking spaces, along a busy prefectural road #52 connected to Sagamihara-Aikawa IC of Ken-O-Express Way 圏央道. There would be no problem going there by your car for weekend stroll on paved flat roads meandering through perfectly manicured French gardens. Er, well, all sounds very artificial, isn’t it? But for wild birds, whether the greeneries and ponds are man-made or not is completely irrelevant. North of the park is Sagamihara Chinden Pond 相模原沈殿池 which is a facility of water authority of Sagamihara City, surrounded by vegetable farms. The impeccably aligned forest of Dawn redwood (Metasequoia) and Sawtooth oak (Quercus acutissima), healthy bushes of forest floors, large pond, and farm lands. Perfect. This is a locally famous place for bird watching. We can meet many kinds of birds from tiny to large, from raptors to vegetarians, and from ambushing to water birds.

Joshibi Bus Terminal, right next to the Park

Mr. Akiyama said for winter bird watching, cloudy sky is better compared with a day of fine weather. As low winter sun could easily create backlit scenery, under sunshine it becomes difficult for us to identify birds. In addition, when weather is not good, birds must concentrate to find and eat meals for survival. We can observe their life from not far while they are too busy to care the existence of humans. The trees are showing off their skeleton of trunks and boughs without leaves obstructing our eyes to spot birds above. When we walked quietly, we were welcomed by tiny calls of Japanese bush warbler (Horornis diphone) from somewhere in bushes of sasa bamboos in forest floors. Here they were! Mr. Akiyama brought several monocles that could show us the details of birds tens of meters afar. On boughs here and there, we met lots of Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes … hey, why is its Latin name so strange?). They looked roly-poly in silhouette of our naked eyes, and had creamy gradation of bright browns in monocles. About Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla), according to Mr. Akiyama, this year is a kind of banner year for Sagamihara Park. They formed a large flock and moved from a canopy to a canopy of large Japanese zelkovas (Zelkova serrata). Watching them at tree tops, they looked like sparrows, and acted like sparrows. “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” … Really? With monocles, we could figure out Bramblings’ slightly mohikan-ish heads and brown chest feathers, which gave us an impression very dandy ... Bird watching under occasional snow was very similar to enjoying Wayang, Balinese shadow puppets. First, we are told the story in shadows in a magically dreamy theatre. After the show, there always are surprises of exquisitely colored puppets welcoming us in auditorium … Birds on tree tops, birds in monocles …

Shadow Play 1.
 A large-billed crow (Corvus macrorhynchos)
 on a top of a perfectly lined Dawn redwoods
 for a French garden in Japan … !!!???

Japanese bush warbler somewhere …

Shadow Play 2.
 Sagamihara Chinden Pond.
 We identified at least 10 species of waterbirds on that day,
 including cute Eurasian teal (Anas crecca)
 and Great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus).

Shadow play 3. Hawfinch!

Shadow Play 4.
Japanese pygmy woodpecker (Dendrocopos kizuki) is here.

In occasionally snow-showering weather, I found the whole process of quiet bird watching very pensive and relaxing … after a busy week, I found myself very sleepy walking in a freezing park forest near cold pond … Then, one of my fellow forest instructors saw me in disbelief. “Unbelievable! I’m always very nervous during bird watching. How could we know what comes out next!” Hmmmmmmmmmm. Well, mental reaction could be different from a person to a person for the same thing, I guess. Everybody told me, “Well, when birds are relaxed in winter, they looked very fluffy. If not, it’s a sign they are alert to catch any signals of danger, and to escape!” That day, all the birds looked downy, even a raptor, Bull-headed shrike. So, they had a freezing but relaxing weekend, just like me. Naomi was flying high in sync during their shadow play. 😌

Shadow play 5, or a chorus line:
 a large flock of brambling is on the top of Japanese zelkova.

If you find any issues in Sagamihara Park, please make a contact with the admin of the Park:

Sagamihara Park

3277 Simomizo, Minami-ku Sagamihara, 252-0335

〒252-0335　相模原市南区下溝　3277番地　相模原公園内

Phone: 042-778-1653

FAX: 042-778-6314

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the boxes (one for the Park in general, another for living creatures) at

http://www.sagamihara.kanagawa-park.or.jp/contact.html

A Chainsaw Training Session

In Japan, forestry is still the deadliest where the population density of killed-workers is the highest in all the business in Japan. It has been so for centuries, and it includes the incidences involving chainsaws. After the World War II, the Americans who occupied Japan for a while introduced a massive usage of chainsaws to deal with the reconstruction activities. Forestry that had the highest death rate as an occupation added to its to-do list to tackle the hazard arising from chainsaws. Our grandpas thought there must have been something institutional to deal with it. It is one of such arrangement for us using chainsaws attending a training session governmentally recognized in order to obtain legally endorsed certificate as a proof of completing the training.

We are studying. 

Chainsaws are powerful machine. Ferrari F142VS has 9000rpm maximum engine speed. A small chainsaw operates with an engine of 12000rpm, and we have to hold it with our arms. Inevitably, it could cause health problems. The wave length of a vibration a motor of a chainsaw can destroy human blood vessel when we use the machine for a sustained length of time. Say, a busy forester operated his chainsaw 8 hours a day. He would surely (1) be exhausted, which could end up a fatal incident with a saw, and (2) have strangely white hands at the end of the day. It’s called a vibration syndrome, caused by the destruction of numerous blood vessels of hands. If a blood vessel was cut off in the middle, oxygen and nutrition cannot reach to the parts beyond the torn-down point. The cells are practically suffocated due to the damage in blood circulation, and stay with the trauma for the rest of one’s life. Japanese legal arrangement limits hours of operation with chainsaws mainly this hazard in mind. For a person to receive any governmental support due to injuries involving chainsaws, s/he must have the certificate to prove the attendance of the training course informing this vibration syndrome and the other aspects of activities with chainsaws. Well, this is a free country. No Big Brother watches us in remote and deep mountain forests. But at least if a person carries a document for operating a chainsaw, s/he must have received a sufficient training to know such dangers. A grown-up rational adult won’t do stupid things with a chainsaw, if the person knows the thing. That’s the thought.

Our lecture was done indoors,

under a spectacularly fine weather (Jeez …)

and the views of Mt. Fuji and Hakone … 

Hence, there is an officially endorsed training course for people who operate chainsaws and expect to receive medical cares with national health insurances and the other welfare benefits in case an accident happens. The curriculum of the course is also legally defined as 2 days’ session at minimum. Those lecturers are certified people who can inform the trainees medical pitfalls the machine can bring, the methodology of safe forestry with chainsaws, and the mechanics of the machine. Why mechanics? You may think. In order to operate 12000rpm engine by our hands, the tool must be treated in a proper way as its engineering design requires. To avoid incidences, we should hold the handles in an optimal way, and know when such-a-such button to be pushed. Moreover, mechanical knowledge of a machine can be used for appropriate maintenance. After one operation of cutting trees, the saw is covered by wood chips inside out. The teeth are also worn off. Without setting the order again, next time we start the engine, the saw can even catch fire. Faded teeth force the operator to handle the machine in a wrong way that can cause serious, or fatal, incident. Informing users the mechanics of chainsaws is very important.

Mechanisms explained 

How to sharpen the teeth 

2 day training session was consisted of lectures about the health issues in the usage of the machine, the safe procedures of cutting trees, like how to create sockets, back cuts, etc., the mechanics of chainsaws, AND detailed stories of serious incidences, normally death, involving chainsaws. “This veteran cut corners of safe operation. Then he lost the control of the chainsaw for just a second. The teeth cut the artery run through his left leg. He died before an ambulance arrived ...” A story among many horrors. We then had practice sessions of sharpening the teeth, cleaning a machine, and actual cutting of logs about 50cm of diameter. I’ve already did activities with chainsaws in Niiharu so that this part was OK for me. Though, the lecturer said, “Relax! You don’t have to strain your arms’ muscle that much. (Big grin)” … OK, I was nervous, I guess.

Model demonstrations for holding a chainsaw 

This is an advanced technique!

Could you see the lecturer does this

without a kickback of the saw?

Don’t try unless you are a seasoned pro. 

New things for me were about the laws and institutional background for chainsaw usage, and health issues, horror stories included. My take is, (1) after the 2nd operation that created 8 holes in my wrist bone, I must have a mini-break with the chainsaw. I have to wait my bone grows to fill the cavity and can sustain itself with the vibration of the machine. Patient! And (2) Be careful regardless in a forest. Yeah. By the training, I now have a governmentally endorsed official certificate to operate a chainsaw. BUT, it’s far better not to meet the opportunity for the documentation to be useful. Breaking a tiny bone alone is such a fuss. Receiving injury with chainsaw? That’s the world of “Friday the 13th.” I think I could regard now the activities in a forest from another angle, with a concrete image of danger. Come to think of it, that is the point why there are laws and training sessions for chainsaw operators in Japan. Naomi is a good citizen. 😇 

Please be careful in a forest with a chainsaw that can cut off your leg and bring death to you. Safe forest life, yeah.

I’ve learned

when we hold the machine at the right point of a handle,

creating a socket is far easier.

Hmmmmmmmmm. 

If you find an environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121 〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657
Phone: 046-248-0323

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/

Winter Thinning

Winter is the time to thin forests especially for the Pacific Ocean side of Japan. During winter, trees minimize their intake of fluid in order to avoid freezing of their arterial: for trees, frozen arterial = bursting of the trunk = death. Consequently, they are literally dried, but alive. Less moisture in their cells means to cut less heavier and comparatively smoother trees. “Smoother?” Yeah. For example, cutting cedars is definitely easier all year round than cypresses whose texture is, I would say, more persistent for saws to eat into. For a same species, dryer a tree is, easier for saw tooth to furrow the trunk. Winter in Kanagawa Prefecture is cold and dry. So we thin the cold forest now as it’s easier, you see?

You may think cutting dead and desiccated trees during much warmer time should be easier. Er, no. It’s tricky to cut down dead trees which are completely dried. When we cut tree, we first create a socket facing to the exact direction for the felling. I’ve heard the Western style for a socket is in this way:

In contrast, Japanese way is this:

Actually created socket.
 This tree would fall into the direction of the handle of a fan.

After creating the socket, we make a backcut that should never reach to the socket. Roughly 1/10 of a diameter of a trunk is intentionally left intact that could keep the tree standing somehow. This part is called “Hinge” that is VERY important. After completing a backcut, we either hammer wedges in the backcut, or pull a rope prepared before creating a socket, in this way:

Using a sling, a rope, carabiners, and pulleys,
 which are all strong enough for the tree to be supported,
 we create a network of drawing in a forest this way.
 (Hey, we are operating in a steeply-sloped Japanese mountain,
 not in a flat terrain of your continent.)
 Oh, the area right behind the socket is also keep-off zone,
 as the felling tree might snap in the middle
 and the broken part could shoot out
 to the opposite direction of its down. 

Actual setting of the rope work

After finishing the backcut, wedges erode the power of hinge, or we pull the cable for the tree, and the tree would fell to the direction its socket faces. During the operation, desiccated and dead trees could act unexpectedly more than dry but living trees. They may snap in the middle through cutting the socket and backcut. It is extremely difficult to predict which part of a trunk, bough, and/or root would collapse. If the broken part fell over our head, we are killed. Even if a dead and dried tree does not break in the middle, it’s difficult to control the direction of the felling. We don’t know if the hinge works while cutting. Such maneuver is better to be left to pros with heavy machinery. So, we volunteers in Japan thin the forest of living but dry trees when the tree can maintain its clinging power of the hinge to some extent, while a saw can eat into the trunk relatively easily.

And we are pulling …

After a tree fell, if the hinge worked,
 the cut should be looked like this.
 The hinge was torn off.
 It means there was a resistance to fell down;
 i.e. we had time to escape.

Volunteers are supposed to operate with handsaws. But forests in Japan these days have often been neglected for a long time. They missed the ideal timing of thinning, and we face a mess in a forest with many many malnourished trees to be thinned. Limiting handsaws for ourselves is impractical. Chainsaws are often used to tackle the issue. Lovers Organization of Niiharu Citizen Forest 新治市民の森愛護会 has several chainsaws that are heavily used. A couple of them have reached its replacement time. Recently, the Lovers bought shining new chainsaws, the latest STIHL-made. At the moment, the Chairman and the Vice-Chairman of the Organization do not allow us to use them yet in the fields. (Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh) But we had a sort of workshop how to handle them.

Niiharu Lovers’ old gadgets.
 We have several more larger ones + new machines as well.

A guy from the agent for STIHL told us, “So, this latest model you purchased has a computer tip in their body. It can learn how you guys use them, and adjust accordingly the usage of gas and chain oil at optimum. It makes the problem of smog emitted from the chainsaw reduced. This is a novel approach for forestry in Japan!” Oh, is that so, I thought. No wonder Japan received F-grade for COP25 last month. The guy from STIHL continued, “I warn you. Please do not rev up the machine more than once. It regards such move as a sign something wrong, and would automatically stop operating. Re-ignite the engine might need re-programming in our factory that is surely inconvenient for all of us, you know.” Wow. So, the saw will start quite easily and stably, without much need for rev-ups. Good. “It also operates in lower noise.” Hmmmm, this is a very German machine …. Now we Lovers are looking forward the day when the OK sign comes for our new toy … Heck, in any case I think I’m standing at the end of the line for the new machine. I have to wait while my seniors have completed their turn to put their hands on the new troop of the chainsaw … patient ... Having said that, the Organization let me attend a training session to obtain legally endorsed certificate to operate chainsaws. I report you my experience during the session next week!

Our lecturer explains
 the design of saw tooth for chainsaws.

If you find an environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121 〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657

Phone: 046-248-0323

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/

Intermission: New Year’s photo practice

This New Year’s Day, I did a small photo-shooting walk with my smart phone. I’m sure I have to train myself to take photos in focus. The tool is difficult to stabilize for a sharp picture … Is there any good way to stabilize the machine without compromising sufficient mobility? Anyway, here are products of my New Year’s Day practice, with my bandaged right wrist.

I think it is a winter bud for wild mulberry (Morus australis). The tree has (1) no prick, (2) alternate winter buds, (3) a tip of a twig has solo winter bud that is the same size of the other buds in the middle of a twig, (4) a bud covered by at least 3 scales, (5) non-hairy twig, (6) a bud in a shape of a water drop, or an oblong egg, and (7) a pale brown bud with a half-moon-shaped leaf-scar at corners of zig-zagging twigs. This is one of the easy ways to identify winter buds in Yokohama, suggested by Dr. Kitagawa of Tokyo Univ. I summarized her flow chart to classify species of winter buds in Kanagawa Prefecture in my post on 17 February 2017. Actually, I’m using her system a lot in winter forests of Yokohama.

Winter buds for Japanese walnuts (Junglans ailantifolia). These buds are always very talkative, don’t you think? This year, after super-typhoon Trami passed, their still green leaves turned brown overnight due to sea salts, and the trees shed their leaves in no time. Then, under still relatively warm weather during the middle of October they sprouted fresh green leaves. I wondered what they would do during dead winter. Sure enough, now the walnuts trees do not have leaves, but only buds. Is there any effect on the health of these trees by sprouting green-leaves just before winter? At least their winter buds look fine. Let us see how their fruits go coming September.

Sun bathing of Indian spot-billed ducks (Anas zonorhyncha). They are always in somewhere along Tsurumi River 鶴見川 of Yokohama, all year long. But during winter we can enjoy bird-watching of them more easily … why?

Tokai Univ. Junior, Ryoji Tatezawa for one of the Japanese New Year’s features: the 95^th Tokyo-Hakone Collegiate “Ekiden” Road Relay 第95回箱根駅伝. Congratulations, the athletes of Tokai University of Kanagawa Prefecture, for the Championship this year!

If you find an environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121 〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657

Phone: 046-248-0323

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/