50 almost up

Holy s**t: I turn 50 tomorrow.

On this day (August 21st)....................

August 21st 2013.

A Black-faced Spoonbill near Hakodate 4 years ago today. An east Asian specialty and pretty rare up in Hokkaido, this individual was only the second I'd ever seen (I've seen another one subsequently).

This young bird had been around for about 10 days or so before it headed south.

2 species of Spoonbill!

On Tuesday afternoon I was very surprised to find both east Asian Spoonbill species on a beach to the west of town.....................

On this day (August 11th)...........................

August 11th 2013.

A Black Faced Spoonbill at Kamiiso 2 years ago today.

This is a rare east Asian endemic with less than 3000 individuals in the wild. They can be seen in south Japan, Hong Kong and various other locales but are pretty rare this far north. I've also seen one at Yakumo.

This one was present  about a week and on one of the days it was feeding on the beach and i could get reasonably close to it.

A hard rain fell.

An Eastern Curlew at Yakumo this afternoon. It seems to have a rather short bill which got me thinking it might be one of the rarer types (Bristle Thighed) until I saw a flock of 6 of them in the same place later. And then I checked the fieldguide...............

It was a grey drizzly day. The weather has been just awful in the second half of August. Very heavy and frequent rain has filled the rivers and they have dumped all sorts onto the local beaches.............sediment and trees mainly.

The Curlew was a nice close one at least.........

Not so many waders around this year, so far at least. Today was the end of a 4 day break for me and theere have been almost no waders around at all near Hakodate. At Yakumo there were 2 Bar Tailed Godwit, 1 Terek Sandpiper and 2 Common Sandpiper. Last week saw another Curlew, some Grey Tailed Tattler, Red Necked Stint and this Black Tailed Godwit.

At Oshamanbe theer were more Red Necked Stint today and 1 Great Knot.

This was a grisly find on the beach at Oshamanbe.

Some kind of albatross I think. Laysan? Short Tailed? It was partially buried in the sand and I let it be (maybe I could have looked to see if it had been ringed or tagged).

This Kingfisher was at Yakumo.

So a pretty quiet last couple of weeks photo wise at least. There have been a few birds around. Returning Black Headed and Glaucous Winged Gulls from the north, Great Egret, lots of Japanese Green Pigeon at many locations on the coast, a Sand Martin colony at Oshamanbe (a bit late but I hope it is still there in 2014). various raptors including Peregrine, Goshawk, Eastern Marsh Harrier and the inevitable Ospreys. The Black Faced Spoonbill hung around for a week or so but I couldn't get close to it again.

So not a great end to my short holiday. To top it off I trod in some dogs**t and lost a lens cap.

After England retaining the Ashes and everything rosy in the world of cricket  let's hope my footy teams pull their fingers out. Let's start with Liverpool beating Man U today and England not f***ing it up against Ukraine next week.
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Black Faced Spoonbill

An immature Black Faced Spoonbill at Kamiiso this afternoon. A real surprise, I was just doing a very quick check to see if there were any shorebirds around and stumbled across this rare east asian specialty.

I saw one a couple of years in Yakumo so obviously a few occur in Hokkaido but this is primarily a bird of more southern locales. A very nice addition to my local list (which is running around 220ish now I think).

It's been very hot the last week or so, maybe the warm winds wafted over the spoonbill from mainland Asia.

So hot and humid that we have got an airconditioner!!!!! Actually a friend had an old one which he didn't need anymore so he kindly came round an attached to it to one of our window frames. Thank you Tomoo...........

The spoonbill probably enjoyed the hot weather..........

Hope England get a few early wickets today.................otherwise we'll be hoping for another rainy draw.

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A very hot day on a very long beach........and a rarity.

1 of a group of 3 Great Knot at Oshamabe yesterday, the wader season is well underway.

It was extremely hot and humid and the waders were on several long beaches. The Great Knot were fairly approachable at least.

Here's one with a couple of Red Necked Stint in the background.

There was a large(ish) flock of 50 or so Red Necked Stint on another long deserted stretch of beach, they kept flying ahead as I floundered in the sand in their wake. A hot sweaty business it was too I might add, it must have been in the low to mid 30's yesterday afternoon.

In amongst the flock were a couple of Terek Sandpiper and a Grey Tailed Tattler.

We headed back to Yakumo and I saw this bird, a 100% crop of a distant Black Faced Spoonbill.

This was reported 3 weeks ago, I'd been 2 weeks ago but couldn't find it and had assumed it had upped and left. But no, here it was. This is a rare bird, only about 2000 or so individuals in the world apparently. We waited for an hour or so to see if it would do anything (such as fly closer) but it just stood on a dead tree in the middle of the river watching the world go by.

There were some Stints near Yakumo too, here's one in the very late afternoon, I'm still looking for that perfect running wader shot.

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