As many professional photographers will tell you, it’s the small details that sometimes have the largest impact, and one of those small, adorable details on my annual Hokkaido birding photo tour is the Shima Enaga (Parus caudatus). The Shima Enaga is the second smallest bird in Japan, only slightly larger than the Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes), which averages 10 cm (about 4 inches) in length. Several birding enthusiasts join my Hokkaido Photography workshop to spot and photograph the likes of Steller’s Sea Eagles, White-tailed Eagles, Glaucous Gulls, Blakiston’s Fish Owls, Whooper Swans, or Hokkaido’s snow ballerinas, Red-crowned cranes. However, when I have birders that don’t mind waiting quietly for bird photo ops in my group, we wait and seek out the Shima Enaga.
The long-tailed tit is sometimes referred to as the silver-throated tit or silver-throated dasher. The long-tailed tit was first classified as a tit of the Parus group. The Parus has been split from the Aegithalidae and becoming a distinct family containing three sub-group families: Aegithalos (long-tailed tits) are five species of birds with a tail; Psaltriparus (North America Bushtit), monotypic; Psaltriparus (pygmy bushtit), monotypic. The entire family has been described as a small bird, bordering on tiny at 12 - 16 cm (4.7 - 6.3 inches) in length, including their tail at 7 - 9 cm (2.8 - 3.5 inches). Males and females have an identical appearance. The Long-tailed Tit can be found in the entire Palearctic realm, throughout Europe, even in Great Britain except for the northernmost areas. Across Europe, the tit has two other common names, the European tit or Alpine tit. Many people mistakenly believe that all birds migrate, but I can assure you this is false, and the adorable Shima Enaga is a year-round Hokkaido resident. Outside of the breeding season, they live in flocks of 10 - 20 birds, mainly parents and offspring make up the flock, together with any adult birds that help raise the brood. These flocks are highly territorial and will protect their territory against neighboring flocks.
Shima Enaga are mostly found in Hokkaido, but they are rarely spotted in the rest of the Palearctic realm. The species outside of Hokkaido have what is commonly referred to as ‘eyebrows,’ little dark brown or black stripes on their stark white faces. The Hokkaido Shima Enaga also has these eyebrows as juvenile birds, but as they reach adulthood, the eyebrows give way to an entirely white, graceful visage. The common tit found in Hokkaido and the rest of Japan retains the black eyebrows even in adulthood. Recently, the Shima Enaga has caught the fancy of Japanese people so much that they are being recreated in human-sized stuffed dolls, comic books, characters, rice cakes, and other edibles. Mochi, or traditional Japanese rice cakes, are the perfect foundation for creating charming edible copies of Shima Enaga. Japanese people are also making a traditional staple food, rice balls, with an all-white base to reflect the enchanting visage of a Long-tailed bushtit. I only photograph the real things in the winter wonderlands of Hokkaido, but I appreciate artist expression in any form. During my annual Hokkaido birding photography tour, when first-time clients join my Hokkaido winter Japan nature tour expedition workshop, I like to take a moment to discuss photographing Hokkaido wildlife in the snow. When I have a friend or client often checking the back of their camera in the field, I know they are having difficulties photographing in the snow, so this is my cue to shoot together, giving them my settings under my breath. If time permits, I prefer to retake ten minutes and explain how to properly set the exposure for white on white so my friends and clients will never run into the problem again. My camera settings for small, alert birds are 1/2500s to 1/5000s, f8 - f7.1, and if the lighting is low, I have been known to stop up to f4, but this is rare for me. For big birds, I choose f11, so the entire bird will be in focus, such as the Red-Crowned Crane, Tancho, which stands at 150 - 158 cm (4 ft - 5 ft) tall, weighing 8 - 11 kg (17 - 25 pounds) with a huge wingspan measuring 200 to 260 cm (6.5 ft to 8.5 ft). ISO I adjust manually according to my shutter and f-stop preferences for the shoot.