Four shima-fukuro in one morning—3 percent of Japan's population. I am moved, and Yulia is too. For all her wanderings in the woods and marshes of Hokkaido, she has never seen a family of fish-owls in the wild. This, too, is a spectacle of its own kind, less like the raucous, ebullient epic of the flocking cranes and more like haiku.

That afternoon we travel north in the snow to see Shiretoko, one of Japan's last real wilderness areas, and witness some of the mixed effects of wildlife protection efforts. Shiretoko is an Ainu word meaning "the end of the Earth," and the area is well named, with high mountains blanketed by oldgrowth forest, clear rivers and lakes, and a sheer, dramatic coastline of black volcanic rock and steep waterfalls, carved away by the grinding action of the ice floes that drift down from the north in winter. The northern part of the peninsula is designated as national park and serves as a refuge for some of the country's rarest creatures—fish-owls, Steller's sea-eagles, brown bears, Steller sea lions—and also, for some of its most abundant animals, including the sika deer.

Along the steep slopes at the base of the peninsula, herds of the deer are grazing on the sparse vegetation emerging from the snow. The sika is a forest deer with large moist eyes and a strange, haunting whistle. In the past 20 years the population has exploded. Great herds graze and forage nearly everywhere in eastern Hokkaido, defoliating trees and damaging crops. After 1888 hunting of the sika was banned. With no natural predators to keep it in check, the population surged so dramatically—numbering more than a hundred thousand in eastern Hokkaido alone—that it came to be viewed as a pest, and hunting was again permitted to cull the population. Similar protective measures have also backfired with natural treasures such as the Japanese macaque and the serow.

Japan is not alone in its paradoxical dilemma with deer and other wildlife. I think of Australia and its kangaroos and rabbits, the United States and its white-tailed deer. We want to turn our wild animal populations on and off like a faucet, to control the numbers so that a given species will maintain a population sizable enough to sustain itself, but small enough so as not to become a nuisance in our backyards and orchards. But nature is never so cooperative, and our efforts to boost or reduce numbers often produce undesired results. So too our stumbling efforts at compromise, at balancing our needs with those of an animal. How does a crane's need for open wetland and solitude figure against the human desire for rice field or pasture? In nurturing or cherishing wild animals, how close can we come and still call them wild? And if an animal requires solitude and pristine habitat, can we deny ourselves the pleasure of seeing it?

From Shiretoko, our plan is to circle back to the heart of winter crane country. But first we travel through the subarctic landscape of Akan National Park in search of another big spectacle of a bird. On a cold morning before sunrise we arrive at the shore of Kussharo Lake. Before us is a dark lake of sleeping whooper swans. Kussharo is the largest calderic lake in Japan, ringed with blue volcanic hills and filled with clear water like a lake of melted snow. Because it is fed by hot springs, some parts remain unfrozen all winter so there is open water where the swans can roost at night. We have missed the great flocks of thousands of whoopers that gather in eastern Hokkaido in November and December on their way from Siberia to warmer regions on Honshu. But there are hundreds still here overwintering on the island.

In the rising light the pale forms take shape, heads tucked beneath wings, in perfect stillness. Across the water dawn breaks in the throat of a single swan, and the necks of the birds before us unfurl and pop free of their wings. One by one, they warm their bodies from sleep, swim a little, then rise into clamorous flight. They leave for their feeding grounds at nearby Sunayu; we do too—and arrive just in time. A tourist bus has pulled in, along with hundreds of swans, who are squawking and scrabbling for the food flung down by the crowds of tourists, bits of bread and chips, "things not part of their natural diet," Yulia comments, "and not healthy."

"Are these birds wild?" she asks, then answers herself: "I don't think so." Indeed, so popular are these swan-feeding sites, and so heavily used by whoopers and tourists alike, that the swans have grown tame, accepting food from the palm of a hand, and the whooper that feeds itself in winter in Hokkaido has become a rare bird indeed. "This is good for tourism," observes Yulia. "It is not good for the swans."