Sweet Adorable Little Puffballs - Photograph Shima Enaga Hokkaido Photo Tour

BLOG » Sweet Adorable Little Puffballs - Photograph Shima Enaga Hokkaido Photo Tour

Saturday, October 09, 2021

By Japan Dreamscapes Photography Tours

My annual Hokkaido Photo Tour Birding Adventure Workshop features many of Hokkaido’s breathtaking airborne wildlife such as Steller’s Sea Eagles, White-tailed Eagles, Red-crowned Cranes, Blakiston’s Fish Owls, Whooper Swans, and, of course, the little fluff balls the Shima Enaga or Long-tailed Bushtit.

The Shima Enaga has a uniquely all-white face and is a sub-species of the Long-tailed bushtit. The Shima Enaga inhabit the entire Paleatrictic realm, with a large number of them in Hokkaido. 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 has become a distinct family containing three sub-group families. Aegithalos (long-tailed tits) are five species of birds with a tail: Psaltriparus (North America Buishtit), monotypic and Psaltriparus (pygmy bushtit), monotypic.

However, recently conducted research outlined differences between Hokkaido’s Shima Enaga and their mainland counterparts. Of all the Aegithalos caudatus sub-species, the Shima Enaga (Aegithalos caudatus japonicus) are sub-regionally endemic to Hokkaido, but, due to their limited isolation from their mainland cousins, they have developed certain distinguishing features that are pronounced enough to call them a completely different subspecies of the Shima Enaga. But what sets them apart? The first thing is the length of their tail fork; it's overall longer than the other subspecies. The second is a marginally shorted tail overall when compared to the mainland counterparts of the Shima Enaga. The third is a more rounded wing, and the final feature is darker tertiary flight feathers which are difficult to see when the bird is not in flight. Even Shima Enaga of the Sakhalin Islands off the coast of Russia are more similar to their mainland and continental counterparts. The Shima Enaga I have the pleasure of photographing during my annual Hokkaido Birding Exploration Workshop Japan photo tour are absolutely a subspecies all their own.

It takes a trained eye to find these tiny snowballs in the minimalist Hokkaido landscapes on my Hokkaido Birding Photography Expeditions, and, as a Hokkaido resident with over two decades of photography experience in Japan, I am happy to help visiting birding photographers find these bonny birds in the field.

Join JDS in 2022 or 2023 to Photograph Hokkaido’s Shima Enaga

Tags: #shimaenaga, #bushtit, #hokkaido, #birding, #birdingphotography