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Hyoko

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

調査・執筆 Hinato

swansHyokoRamsar sitebird watchingAgano

新潟県 · Agano

37.8365°N, 139.2367°E

Hyoko is a small irrigation pond dug in the Edo period that became, almost by accident, the place where wild swans in Japan learned to accept people. In 1950 a local man named Yoshikawa Shigeo began putting out feed and, after four years of the birds ignoring him, got them to come. It was the first successful wild swan feeding in Japan. The pond is now a Ramsar site and a national natural monument, and at the November peak roughly 5,000 swans cover the water.

The swans arrive in early October and stay until late March. Through the day most of them fly out to feed in the surrounding rice fields, so the pond fills at dawn and again at dusk. Feeding by hand happens three times a day in season and is done by a keeper the town still calls the swan uncle.

基本情報

営業時間

Open at all hours | Feeding at 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM during the wintering season

定休日: Open year-round

料金

Free | Waterfowl feed ¥100 a bag

ベストシーズン

Early October–late March for wintering swans; late November for the peak count of about 5,000

滞在目安

1–1.5 hours

アクセス

アクセス情報

Suibara, Agano City. By car from Niigata City; about a short walk from Suibara Station on the JR Uetsu Line. Free to enter, open at all hours. Feeding at 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM during the wintering season. Waterfowl feed ¥100 a bag. Four car parks with roughly 350 spaces, all free.

インサイダーガイド

**Dawn and dusk, not the middle of the day.** The birds leave for the rice fields after the morning feed and return in the late afternoon. Arriving at 1:00 PM shows you an ordinary pond. **Late November is the peak count.** Around 5,000 swans. October and March have fewer birds but far fewer people. **The rice fields around the pond are the other half of it.** Flooded winter paddies within a couple of kilometres hold feeding flocks in daylight, and the birds are much less habituated out there — bring binoculars rather than expecting to walk up to them. **Cold, flat and exposed.** There is no shelter at the water's edge and the wind off the Echigo Plain in January is the reason most visits are short. Dress for standing still.

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