By using documents handed in by local peasants for permission to use guns to counter agricultural damage by wildlife and records of deer hunting, the distribution of sika deer (Cervus nippon) around the Kanto plain during Edo era was demonstrated. As a result of the analysis of 540 historical documents, (1) agricultural damage was shown to have been caused by sika deer and boar, which were driven from fields all the time, (2) agricultural damage existed in lowlands, tablelands and hills, and happened only at fields, not in forestry regions, (3) complaints to agricultural damage was concentrated especially in the "takaba" regions, (4) agricultural damage occurred continuously through out the Edo era at each place. The similarity between land-use of the area where the documents continuously existed and that of the outskirts on the area suggests that sika lived everywhere at that time.

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Large amount of timber was harvested from a forest area in central Japan for about 150 years starting from the 1600s. The area was under the direct control of the Tokugawa Shogunate throughout the Edo period (1600-1868). The Shogunate sometimes requested from a village to capture young goshawks and/or sparrow hawks to be used for hawking. People in the village could sometimes offer young birds, but other times not. The description about them in the old documents shows the degree of distribution of hawks in those days. This paper deals with the information about hawks between the 17th and 19th Century in a mountain site of central Japan, and also looks at the behavior of people toward request of hawks. This research is based on old documents that were written by the successive village officials during this period.

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To evaluate the utility of an index of body condition of live Rhinoceros Auklets (Cerorhinca monocerata), an index obtained from body mass and external measurements was compared to reserved lipid mass measured. Reserved lipid content was extracted using ethyl-ether after the birds had been killed under total anesthesia. The index of body condition was calculated as the residual from the regression of the cubed root of body mass against the first principal component score. This index was called the residual body condition index. The residual body condition index significantly explained 22% and 56% of the variation of the cubed root of reserved lipid mass for males and females, respectively. We could thus reasonably estimate reserved lipid mass of the parents breeding under natural conditions by measuring body mass and external measurements.

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Feeding behaviour of wild Japanese serows was investigated by means of video tape recordings and food traces-eaten at 3 cultivated fields in Yamagata and at 1 in Akita prefecture from July to November. Serows frequently entered and left fields and using the regular routes. Two serows invaded the fields and fed on crops every 3 to 6 days in each of the 3 Yamagata fields. In the Akita field, 4 serows invaded the field and fed on crops every 0.4 days. Serows used crop fields not only for eating crops but also for eating weeds and for resting. The serows were found in fields not only during the night from 18:00 to 6:00 but also during the day from 6:00 to 18:00. Feeding time (min/visit) was 6.3 ± 6.0 in Yamagata and 13.8 ± 11.2 in Akita through the investigation period. Intakes (gDW/visit) of soybean and adzuki bean leaves, beans, carrot leaves and broccoli leaves were estimated as 13.5 (1.6% of the daily feeding requirement), 81.1 (9.8%), 45.8 (5.6%) and 86.4 (10.5%) respectively in the 3 Yamagata fields. In the Akita field, intake of adzuki bean leaves was estimated at 208.4 (25.3%). In conclusion, cultivated fields might not be a special feeding place but some part of the habitat as the forest for serows. Invasions of serows to cultivated fields might be accelerated as a result of a lack of shyness to human beings in cultivated fields.

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