2000 Frames for One Shot: How COVID Changed My Life in Japan. By Joachim Theis

How COVID Turned Me into a Wildlife Photographer

What began as a way to get out of the house during COVID turned into a new life in Japan.

Grey heron in Sumida park, Tokyo

A pandemic as a catalyst for change

When the COVID pandemic struck in early 2020, all my travel plans were cancelled. While my son was perfectly content to spend the next six months at home and gaming with his friends, I felt restless. I suddenly had time on my hands and needed something new to do. So, I picked up my camera and went looking for subjects in the overgrown cemetery near my house. There I found no shortage of bugs, spiders, and flowers to practice macro photography on. Within a few weeks, I had moved on to larger wildlife in Tokyo’s parks and ponds, where I discovered plenty of water birds that were easy to photograph. What began as a way to fill unexpected free time quietly turned into something much bigger.

Agapetes serpens

Stiletto fly

Building my bird photography skills

Over the following weeks and months, I honed my photography skills and upgraded my gear until I could photograph more challenging subjects, such as birds in flight and birds catching fish or bugs. My lenses got longer and my camera’s autofocus faster. I watched videos, practiced shooting birds in flight, made plenty of mistakes, adjusted my camera settings, and tried again. This was my personal bird photography boot camp.

White wagtail about to catch a bug, Tama river

My mirrorless camera could capture details that my worsening eyesight could no longer see. For the photo of a wagtail about to eat a bug, I spent hours along the Tama River firing off roughly 2,000 frames in quick succession. It was only later, scrolling through the images on my large computer screen at home, that I saw what the camera had caught. To capture a kingfisher in flight with a fish in its beak took four years of practice—and one lucky moment.

Common kingfisher with catch

Watching and photographing birds in the city

I gravitated to ponds, rivers, and shorelines because birds are easier to spot and photograph there than in forests or in dense shrubbery. At these birding hotspots, I met fellow retirees—mostly Japanese men—who would spend entire days behind long lenses and tripods, waiting for a promising photo opportunity and chatting with other bird photographers. They came prepared with a lunch box and a thermos to keep warm in winter. Perhaps it also kept them out of the way of their significant other at home. Standing next to them, I realized I was not just learning photography, I was joining a quiet urban community anchored around small ponds, rivers, and temple grounds. Bird watching and photography turned an ordinary retirement into a new routine of early mornings, heavy lenses, and shared sightings.

Word of mouth information network

One morning a friend tipped me off that a Ural owlet had been sighted as a temple in Chofu. I grabbed my camera and after two hours on local trains I reached Jundaiji temple where fellow photographers were already busy snapping photos of this adorable fluffball - that was just days away from flying the nest and turning into a silent killer (look at those talons). 

Ural owlet at Jindaiji temple, Chofu

Photographers at Jindaiji temple, Chofu

From local ponds to global migrations

As I spent more time along Tokyo’s rivers, shores, and ponds, I realized that many of the birds I was photographing were just passing through. Millions of shorebirds and seabirds breed on the Siberian tundra during the northern summer and travel along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway from Siberia to Australia. They use Japan as a stopover to rest and refuel before crossing the equator to spend the summer in the southern hemisphere. Some, however, spend the winter in Japan.

Migratory birds in Tokyo Bay

The more I watched and photographed birds, the better I came to understand the seasonal cycles of migration, mating, and breeding. At times I had to plan my outings carefully to improve my chances of finding them. For shorebirds, that meant arriving a few hours before high tide, while they were still feeding close to the waterline before retreating to islands or wooded areas.

Oyster catcher in Tokyo Bay

Dunlin in Tokyo Bay

Surviving in a megacity

Tokyo is one of the largest cities on earth and is associated more with skyscrapers, bullet trains, and the Shibuya Scramble crossing than with wildlife. Almost the entire shoreline of Tokyo Bay is heavily built up and industrialized. Yet migratory birds have found ways to coexist in this environment and to make best use of the few bird‑friendly spots that remain.

Great egret, Tama city

Japan has experienced the same declines in bird and insect species as other highly industrialized countries, driven by habitat destruction, draining of wetlands, damming of rivers, widespread use of pesticides, and reforestation with only cedar and cypress trees—now widely regarded as an ecological disaster. Watching birds cling to small pockets of habitat in and around Tokyo made me curious about what was happening in Japan’s wilder places, far from the capital.

Osprey eating fish, Tokyo Bay

Looking beyond Tokyo

What began as technical practice with a camera gradually became an education in ecology and Japan’s environmental challenges. Trying to get better shots of birds in flight led me to a deeper understanding of migration routes, habitat loss, and conservation efforts, even in a city as large as Tokyo.

As my confidence grew, so did my curiosity. I wanted to see what lay beyond the city’s rivers and ponds: Japan’s remaining wild peninsulas, remote islands, and the great winter gatherings of cranes and eagles I had only seen in other people’s photographs. In the next post, I head north and out to sea to explore some of these wild edges.

This is part 1 of a 4-part blog series about my experiences as a wildlife photographer in Japan.

Joachim Theis joachimtheis@gmail.com