Niigata tours and photo workshops allow me to showcase the natural abundance of Niigata, an abundance that extends to wildlife. On my annual Hokkaido Winter Wildlife Tour Expedition, my clients and I have access to hundreds of Whooper swans among the other avian wildlife such as Steller’s Sea Eagles, White-tailed eagles, Red-crowned cranes, Glaucous gulls, and the Shima Enaga, and that is only the tip of the wildlife iceberg when leading that Japan Hokkaido Tour.
Niigata, however, has well over 20,000 Whooper swans visiting annually to destinations prefecture-wide in Niigata, and just 10 minutes from my satellite office’s backyard, there are over 5,000 Whooper swans in our lake. If you would like to visit from Tokyo, it’s only a couple hour Shinkansen or bullet train ride, so you could take a late train the night before, stay at a traditional Japanese inn in Niigata, enjoy the best foods Japan has to offer, and sample some of the fantastic rice wine for which the prefecture is famous worldwide and enjoy an entire day of capturing Whooper swan photo ops before returning on a late bullet train to Tokyo and your next destination.
Lake Hyoko's origins come from Japan's Edo period, first created as an agricultural reservoir in 1639. The prefectural government officially recognized its importance as a refuge for visiting Whooper swans and other airborne wildlife in 1954, declaring Lake Hyoko a national monument specifically devoted to the preservation of avian wildlife. The esteem given to Lake Hyoko was further elevated in 2008 when it was recognized by the Ramsar Convention and registered as an official Ramsar site for sustainable wetland use and protection of wildlife, making the area a protected birding photography paradise for any Japan Photo tour participants that are lucky enough to visit it.
Starting in October and continuing to late March, thousands of Whooper swans come to visit, taking their long migration down from Siberia. In years before, the peak season was in November, but due to climate change, the peak season may be shifting. Still, as a local, I am aware of my surroundings, so before I begin any Niigata photo workshop, I dutifully check weather charts for the best locations on where the birds will be that day. Also, I seldom trust weather news or apps, as they have a high percentage of error. Japan is 3,000 km long and is over 70% mountainous wilderness, and with so many mountain ranges and the ocean surrounding Japan, weather can be tricky to get right. Plus, I do not like to waste precious time driving around with clients trying to spot birds, and this is why I always recommend when you travel to go with a local pro-photographer who knows the best locations and times of day and knows how to read the weather and weather charts and does not rely on apps on a smartphone or other digital device that can break or even worse lose power while in the field.
Each season presents a different viewing opportunity for Whooper swans. I prefer beginning a day or punctuating a day by photographing Whooper swans. In the winter, my clients and I enjoy spotting Whooper swans taking flight from the snowy white winter wonderland that is Yuki Guni, Japan. Niigata is on the busiest birding route in all of Japan and possibly Asia; over 600 bird species have been recorded to date. And there are two distinct ecological lines dividing Japan's natural indigenous plant and animal life, “The Blakiston’s Line” and the “Watase’s Line.” Due to this uniquely rare ecological condition, Japan is abundantly avifauna rich, making it the perfect location for wildlife and wildlife photographers. During the spring, we are swamped with birders flying into Niigata from across the globe. While birding, if the conditions are just right, birding clients can enjoy the pink-tinged white Somei Yoshino cherry blossoms surrounding the lake while the Japanese White-Eye or warbling white eye, known in Japan as the Meijiro, go mad slurping and devouring the sweet nectar of the sweet cherry blossom flowers; the Brown-eared bulbul is also a bird who love the sweet nectar of the cherry blossom flower. The Whooper swans are long gone to their summer arctic home, but the cornucopia duck and the common Northern Pintail, Eurasian Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Common Pochard are always around. Still, even more, exciting are the hundreds of species of birds arriving from all over Asia in the tens of thousands for the spring and breeding season. With all these photographic subjects and the frame of the majestic Niigata countryside, it’s easy to spend an entire week during winter only photographing Whooper swans and all their avian friends at Lake Hyoko, and let's not forget the spring and autumn birding migrations to and from Japan.