DAY TWENTY-NINE: Atsuigi Kodomo- no mori Park

Hello everybody,

I went to another nature park recently and it was extraordinary! They had a lot of amazing boardwalks that went all over the park, some of which even went up to the canopy of the forest. This first picture has a warning regarding monkeys. It says that if you see a monkey to not look at it directly and walk away slowly. We did not see any monkeys. 🙁

They even had some fast wooden slides that brought you back to the forest floor!

*if you have trouble viewing the above TWO videos, try this link https://teamhadjes.smugmug.com/Japan-2017-Blog/n-c8Sfvn?mobile=true

They had places where you could climb to where the slide was.

I saw three new species of birds while I was there, the Varied Tit, Japanese Grosbeak, and Ashy Minivet. It was really fun, but in the park there were big wasps that sometimes flew nearby, making me move to some other spot.

There was also a really cool caterpillar by the nature center.

At one point while I was birding, Bayus, Hannah, Yoshio, and my parents, went to a place with picnic tables and gave me a map so I could join them when I was ready.

It took me a while to find where they were. I ended up passing right by them and then going on a trail that looped around the park, and then circled around to the picnic area. It was a good learning experience. The upside is that if I hadn’t gotten a little lost I probably wouldn’t have seen the Japanese Grosbeak. I saw it on the longer route to the picnic area and I would have taken a quicker route and missed the bird entirely. It was a really great trip and I can’t wait for my next adventure!