More birds in the gloom

Some more birds from the forest pool near Tomakomai.............

North Hokkaido Summer 2017 #5

A male Reed Bunting from last week.....................

2017: not a vintage spring migration season

It's been rather a quiet spring migration in Hakodate this year...................

Long Toed Stint and other stuff..............

A Long Toed Stint at Yakumo this afternoon...............

The final cut

A female Black Faced Bunting this afternoon................

The Sound of Summer

The sound of a Hokkaido summer.

No it's not that Black Faced Bunting above. It's this, right outside my apartment for 10 hours a day.

I think I'd prefer to live next door to a vuvuzela testing facility, it'd be more peaceful.

Japanese construction workers head my list of least favourite people at the moment.

There's an election next month so that means morons will drive around the neighborhood blasting out propaganda soon too. Nice. Sometimes I question why I live here.

It was very warm today and I headed out to escape the racket. Not much around to be honest. the most noticeable species was Red Cheeked Starling. The young have left the nest and small family groups of them are everywhere..................

This male seemed to have found a cherry tree somewhere.......

So England made it to the 2nd Round, I had my doubts but thought they looked OK against the might of Slovenia. At least our potential route to the final (!) involves two 11pm kick offs....................

So think of me on Sunday, on the other side of the world. slightly drunk and screaming impotently at a TV. And say a prayer or two for England's wobbly progress to continue.

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Oriental Reed Warblers

An Oriental Reed Warbler singing next to the river near my apartment this afternoon. This is a common summer visitor, on the 2KM stretch of river (in the middle of town) there are usually about 10-12 singing males every summer.

They are normally pretty shy but today 2 males were squabbling over territory (ie fighting over who gets to sing from the top of the coolest tree) and didn't pay me much attention.

They have a very noisy song and it was one of the typical sounds of summer in Hakodate.

The vegetation is growing visibly by the day and soon they will be nesting.

I took a wobbly handheld video, the camera's internal mic picked up more wind than birdsong alas. If I was serious about video I would be using my tripod and would have invested in an external mic by now................

I got up early this morning after one of the people I teach told me she'd seen some odd looking birds flying over the sea near her apartment. About the size of sparrows, all flying in unison, sometimes landing on the water to feed. they could only have been Pharalopes. I went down to the bay area where she'd seem them yesterday but there was nothing doing...............

My wife also showed me a newspaper cutting of a Yellow Browed Bunting (a pretty rare visitor) in  a local park a couple of weeks ago.................

I can rely on the Red Cheeked Starlings any time though.

The cherry blossoms are starting to fall, soon the background will be green instead of pink or white.

And here's a wobbly handheld video I took of the Starlings. It is really hard to hold a heavy 400mm lens still whilst looking at the screen on the back of a camera............

A few days ago the last batch of migrants were passing through. This Asian Brown Flycatcher got me thinking of Sooty Flycatcher as it appeared a little darker and scruffier than most of the Asian Browns I see. But it when I got home and looked at the pics it wasn't a Sooty at all.

It was sharing a clump of trees/bushed with a female Blue and White Flycatcher, an Eastern Crowned Warbler, a Sakhalin Leaf Warbler, 2 pairs of Red Cheeked Starlings and a pair of Black Faced Buntings. the latter species seems commoner than ever this spring, there are 4 or 5 singing males on the river. They are real skulkers though, here's one from today.

It's going to rain tomorrow so on Friday I need to be pro-active and go out there and find me some Red Necked Pharalopes. Some springs they are abundant and tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of birds pass Hakodate. Usually they are well offshore (you can see them with the naked eye though). I'd love for some to come close enough inshore to photograph.........

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***Once again I'm having problems with publishing comments. On my dashboard it keeps telling me I have comments to publish but when I click the link it says there aren't any....................mysterious.

If you've left a comment and it hasn't appeared I apologise.

This blog is free so I can't really complain................but hey, someone,  sort it out!***

Early morning in Onuma

A male Narcissus Flycatcher at Onuma this morning, one of many in fact.

I got up at 4.45am (!) in order to catch the earliest local train to the east side of Onuma. The forest was once again full of birds but it was a little overcast and this together with the increasing leaf cover meant photography was a little tricky sometimes. May is definitely the best month for birding but not for bird photography.

This Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker was very photogenic though.

This was one of 4 Woodpecker species I saw today, the best was a briefly seen male Black Woodpecker. 

The Pygmy Woodpecker was very tame.

 

I took a couple of short videos of it. This one was with my compact camera.

And this was with the 7D and 100-400 lens, not ideal for a handheld video at all..........

Lots of summer visitors in the forest. Narcissus, Blue & White and Asian Brown Flycatchers, Japanese and Brown Thrushes, Short Tailed Bush, Japanese Bush, Eastern Crowned and Sakhalin Leaf Warblers,  Japanese Grosbeak, Russet Sparrow, Japanese White-eye, Oriental Cuckoo, Common Kingfisher, Grey Heron, Bullheaded Shrike, Oriental Turtle Dove, lots of Swallows and House Martins, Hawfinch, the usual resident Treecreepers, Tits, Nuthatches and Woodpeckers, Little Grebe, Coot, Red Cheeked Starling, Black Faced and Rustic Buntings.........

Here are some shots of male Russet Sparrows, not a bird I often get to photograph......

There were a lot of Marsh Tits too.

Treecreepers are a bird I struggle with, so fast and difficult to focus on.......

And here are a couple of record shots.

Blue and White Flycatchers are beautiful but I have yet to get a decent shot, only heavily cropped ones like this.

A male Rustic Bunting in summer plumage (not something we often get to see in south Hokkaido), shame it didn't come any close, this is another biggish crop.

Black Faced Buntings must be the commonest small bird in Onuma in the summer, here's a female.

The only waterbirds were Little Grebes and Coots...........

And here's a view of Mt Komagadake to finish with.........

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Guess I can start thinking about the World Cup now, only 4 weeks off. I'm old enough and wise enough not to expect much from England but that wisdom is always put to the test during the heat of a game and after a few beers....................

I may watch the FA Cup final this weekend and the 20-20 too (if it's on at a reasonable time). England might win a World Cup this summer after all................

*EDITED TO ADD*

I just approved some comments and they seem to have disappeared, apologies if you left a comment. They have gone somewhere in internetland, perhaps never to return..................

Golden Week 2010 #2

An Asiatic Chipmunk and Siberian Stonechat.

We got up very early this morning and drove to the top of Mt Hakodate. It was windy but clear and not too cold. It wasn't a vintage day for migrants but it wasn't so bad; Blue and White Flycatcher, Asian Brown Flycatcher, Siskin, Rustic, Siberian Meadow and Black Faced Buntings, Nuthatch, several species of Tit, Great Spotted and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, Japanese and Dusky Thrush (and other unidentified thrush species), Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, lots and lots of Japanese White-eye, Siberian Stonechat, Japanese Robin (heard only), Red Flanked Bluetail, Eastern Crowned Warbler, Asian Stubtail and Japanese Bush Warbler.

Lots of Bluetails, I'm still searching for the elusive good shot of one.

Black Faced Bunting were everywhere. Another common bird that I find hard to get a good shot of.

There are lots of Chipmunks in the forest that always pose nicely.

Yesterday we went to Asabu, Shiriuchi and Kikonai. I was hoping for some interesting waders. Common Sandpiper, Grey Tailed Tattler, Little Ringed Plover and this Whimbrel were the only shorebirds on show however.

At Asabu there were lots of Skylark, Chestnut Eared Bunting, Reed Bunting and Stonechat. At Shiriuchi I managed to see this species: Whiskered Tern. A new species for my Japan list (I've seen them in Australia and India before).

An awful photo. I only saw it for a few seconds before it flew off. My settings were all wrong so it was horribly underexposed, I didn't even have time to notice the zoom was only at 220mm so it's a 100% crop too.........still, a pretty nice find and the 3rd rare Tern I've found in the last 5 springs (Caspian in 2006 and Gull Billed Tern last year were the other 2).

It was a pretty dark day yesterday, here are a couple more poor underexposed shots. A Little Egret (a species which isn't so regular up here in Hokkaido) and an Osprey.

Other stuff from yesterday included Red Breasted Merganser, Goosander, Harlequin Duck, Red Necked Grebe and Great Egret.

We went back to Kikonai this lunchtime (the Tern and most of yesterday's stuff had gone) and added Pale Thrush to the list of new migrants for the year. This Whooper Swan will probably stay the summer. Is it old? Is it injured? Is it just plain lazy?

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I watched the footy last night. Liverpool were pretty embarrassing, I don't think Gerard's backpass was deliberate but I can understand why some people might think it might have been. Looks like we'll finish 7th, a disaster of a season...............the worst one since the days of Souness. I don't think Benitez will stay but who would want a job at a debt-ridden club with a pretty poor squad and impossibly high expectations?

At least I can start looking forward to the World Cup....................until England start playing that is. More emotional torture in the middle of the night, can my nerves stand it?