Footprints in the snow........

A Red Fox at Onuma, this morning, as you can see we had our first real snow of the winter.

The weather improved and we headed up to Yakumo. There were more eagles around than our last visit and there were some in the river eating salmon, in exactly the same place as 2 years ago today.

It was impossible to get a clear shot, the best I could manage were some not so great BIFs.

I got my first Stellers Sea Eagle shots of the winter.......

Here's a typical view of one high up in the trees next to the icy road......

Whilst I was waiting in vain for some more eagles to fly over my wife gave me a shout, she'd found some tracks in the field next to the road......these are 2 of her photos.

It was from a Brown Bear and the tracks looked pretty fresh too, it must have walked across the field ealier in the morning. I noticed lots of crows quarreling over various blood stains on the snow next to the river, could a bear have caught and skinned some salmon? The eagles tend to scavenge mangy old rotten salmon carcasses, not living ones..........

Also around upstream were Japanese Wagtail, Pochard, Goosander, Goldeneye, Brown Dipper, Varied Tit, White Backed and Grey Headed Woodpecker, Common Buzzard and lots of Jay.

At the river mouth were the usual common gulls and wildfowl, Dunlin, Whooper Swan etc. There were several Black Legged Kittiwake in amongst the commoner Gull species.....

We got back to Hakodate just as it was getting dark, there was a big flock of Rooks (with a few Daurian Jackdaw) in the snowy ricefields in Ono.......

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