Kirk here with a little response to William’s post about the brown-eared bulbul (hiyodori):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown-eared_bulbul
I’m a big fan of the white eyes (mejiro) and I’m glad to be seeing a lot of them recently. They love the tsubaki (Japanese camillia) blossoms this time of year and usually come in pairs (rather romantic little critters, actually).
As you can see from Wikipedia’s pages about the two birds, both are quite common and, here in Kumamoto, we are right in the heart of the preferred habitats of both. Personally, I pay a lot more attention to the white eyes though I’m not bothered at all by the bulbuls. Come to think of it, I like it when they come to bathe in the little tsukubai (a kind of Japanese washbasin) by my window. It’s nice to have visitors, even little brown-feathered ones. ;)
