2020 Volume 32 Issue 1_2 Pages 42-52
The wintering areas of the Siberian Rubythroat, Luscinia calliope, are the Amami Islands and the Ryukyu Islands according to the Seventh Revised Edition of the Check-list of Japanese Birds, but we captured three Siberian Rubythroats in winter on the riverbeds of the Sagami and Nakatsu rivers in Kanagawa Prefecture. We obtained their capture records from the autumn migration (including winter) to the spring migration in Japan from 1973 to 2015 with the permission of the Bird Migration Research Center of the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology and examined their migration and wintering situations in Kanagawa Prefecture and Japan. These records indicate that the presumed regular wintering areas of the Siberian Rubythroat are not only the previously identified Ryukyu Islands and Amami Islands but also the Tokara Islands and the mainland of Kagoshima Prefecture, which are located north of the Amami Islands. In Kanagawa Prefecture, the number of birds captured was small and included migratory birds. The proportion of overwintering birds was high. These results suggest that a small number of birds may be overwintering or rarely overwinter. In addition, there were few records in Shizuoka, Nagano, and Hyogo prefectures during the presumed wintering season. More banding surveys during the wintering period will provide more wintering records in relatively warm areas with little snow cover.
