A lot of you live in big cities so maybe this isn’t the best place to ask, but one thing I have noticed in my 14 years living out in the country is how FEW animals and birds there are. And what animals there are are always the same couple of species…
It’s the lack of birds that really kills me. I go hiking all the time and it’s rare that I see anything except sparrows, crows, and swallows. Song birds are almost non-existent. What’s the deal? I can’t speak for everywhere, but at least in my area, I’m pretty sure the local outdoor cat population has decimated every single bird smaller than a crow.
Has Japan always suffered from a relatively low biodiversity? Is it a recent thing? Does the government have any agencies that actively track this stuff?
As a nature lover, it kind of bums me out. Back home, we always attracted all sorts of birds with birdfeeders and birdhouses. Here, nothing but sparrows.
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It’s full of birds here where I live. Crows, swans, ducks, falcons, sparrows, pigeons, geese, quail, cuckoo, long tailed tit, cranes.. I mean I can go on and on.
are you sure you’re in the countryside? I’m actually curious to know which city. I live in a large city that isnt considered inaka and we got huge public parks and rivers with tons of different birds, frogs, insects, lizards, fish, ect.
Nikko is an hour and a half drive away, and we constantly see a monkey here and there on the trees and mountains. The park that I go to even has a huge billboard right at the entrance showing the different wildlife and birds that you can spot there and telling you what not to do when you encounter them.
Loads down in Kyushu. So much that it gets commented on during conference calls by people calling in from Tokyo.
The skies around here are filled with crows, falcons, pigeons, doves and other birds I can’t identify because I’m not a birdwatcher. The mountains and woods have wild boars, squirrels, possums, monkeys, and a few other small creatures. The industrial port I run through on my running course is overrun with feral cats and there are always flocks of crows and falcons overhead. There is no shortage of wildlife here in our rustic corner of Kyushu.
I was cycling to work the other day and passed a big brown mound at a bus stop. Thought id stop and have a gander at it and it was a dead tanuki, or maybe one having the sleep of its lifetime. Was gone by the time I cycled home the same route. First one I’ve ever seen.
Birds, they’re everywhere. I’m in Fukuoka. Can hear a few songbirds at it from my work desk at this very moment. They’re also constantly building nests in the eaves of the building. Makes it risky to sit there for lunch most days because they’ll shit on you.
Hey, it’s not a problem. Your perception of reality is just kind of screwed up. I would seek medical help.
Well, I can’t speak for Japan having not lived here long enough, but back home the amount of biodiversity has plunged like an insanely aerodynamic stone thrown straight at the ground since I was a kid.
You’d love NZ. Basically all birds, a few lizards you’ll never see, possums who exist only to kill birds and be killed because they kill birds, and apparently a moose somewhere in the far south.
Now I’m not saying go unleash the monkeys on tasman national park but my feeling is there’s a hell of a lot more variety here than there is there. Seeing mammals in the wild that aren’t on the most wanted list? Incredible.