Places and times seen in Munakata city

In Munakata it is an abandoned bird and can be seen throughout the year from the flatlands throughout the city to the mountain forests and its surroundings.

Characteristic

Total length 14 cm. It is the same color in both sexes.
The head is black and yellow-brown two-tone color, the chest is black from the head. The shoulder feathers and wings are white whiter, the upper back and the lower side of the body are brown. The beak is black and the foot is dark brown.

Habit

It lives in the mountainous forests and surrounding areas from flat grounds. Living in a small group other than breeding season, jumping branches from branches of trees, piercing dead branches etc to catch insects, eat wood seeds etc. From autumn to winter, there is a habit of storing tree nuts in the soil and bark gaps.
Normally it sings "Toutou", "Ninae", etc., and slowly strikes as "Tsupuputsupi".

distribution

It is distributed only in the Japanese archipelago, the Korean Peninsula, the Nansei Islands, Taiwan.
There are eight species. Especially, Ostone Yama mall which inhabits Miyakejima, Mikurajima, Hachijojima, the light color part of the head and the lower part of the body from the chest become dark brown, making it easy to distinguish.

Other

Yamagara has a history of breeding beyond millennia, once used as a representative of "bird making tricks", and on the roof of a department store, etc., I could see Yamagara that draws omikukuji. In the Edo period it is reported that there was an art called "raising a bottle" in addition to that.