5/365 黄鶯睍睆 Bush Warblers Start Singing in the Mountains

黄鶯睍睆
“kōō kenkan su”
Bush warblers start singing in the mountains

This microseason typically lasts 9~13 February and is part 2 of 3 in:

立春
(りっしゅん)
“risshun”
the beginning of spring

I think 黄鶯睍睆 is one of the more difficult kanji combinations to break down in these microseasons. As I mentioned in the previous microseason entry, I’m drawing the information from the list here and they seem to have often been interpreted from older Japanese/Chinese, so it’s sometimes not a great idea to try to take it as a Japanese “sentence”. In fact, the latter two characters 睍 and 睆 didn’t turn up anything on the WWWJDIC! However, we can at least do something with the first two:

黄
コウ/オウ, き/(こ)
“kou”/”ou”, “ki”/”ko”
yellow

鶯
うぐいす
“uguisu”
Japanese bush warbler (Horornis diphone), Japanese nightingale

Interestingly, when you put them together some sources give this:

黄鶯
“kōō”
black-naped oriole

Here is a black-naped oriole:

Whoa, it’s very yellow.

Alright then, let’s do some more words with 黄:

黄色い花
きいろいはな
“kiiroihana”
a yellow flower

黄金
おうごん
“ougon”
gold; money

卵黄
らんおう
“ranou”
the yolk / the yellow of an egg

Caw caw!

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Image credit: I made these bird pictures in GNU Image Manipulation Program (with a lot of help from reference photos and a graphics tablet that my parents gave me last year ❤️).