Murin-an Wild Bird Mini-lecture

On the afternoon of February 5 (Wed.), we held a wild bird mini-lecture in Murin-an’s 8-tatami mat space. The theme of this lecture was the Goosander, a bird whose characteristic is its bill, which has serrated edges like that of a saw. We began by discussing how this bird’s Japanese name (kawa-aisa) is an allusion to the fact that it comes to the river just after the end of autumn, and then introduced poems written about the Goosander in the Manyoshu (an 8th century poetry anthology), its ecology, the difference between brood amalgamation and a crèche, and the reason that wild birds lost the serrated edges on their bills.