Seven

All the regular 7 winter gull species were at Kamiiso today.....................

A grey Friday in May

I couldn't do much birding this week................

The Replacements

No more eagles anymore but they have been replaced in my sights by other raptors...............

A windy Sunday

An Osprey at Yakumo this afternoon.................

A long day with almost no birds..............

The quietest

A Black Headed Gull, part of a flock at Kamiiso a couple of days ago. This is only a winter/passage visitor to Japan so we don't get to see them in their summer finery much...................

An extremely quiet spring migration season is drawing to an end. I wish I had something more interesting to post than a Black Headed Gull.

Still, their harsh calls take me back to the Ribble Marshes and Leighton Moss in summer. Sadly I haven't been to the UK in late spring/early summer this century.

Channel Hopping

A Black Winged Stilt at Kamiiso this morning. This had arrived yesterday with a Common Redshank (a scarce bird in Japan and missing from my Hakodate list). The Redshank wasn't around but the stilt was...............and very shy it was too.

Summer plumage Great Crested Grebes were on the sea as well as various ducks including my first Gadwall of the year.

We then hopped over the Tsugaru Straits on a ferry................a poor man's pelagic.

The main bird to see at this time of the year is Short tailed Shearwater. There were quite a lot of them around (and they've come all the way from the South Pacific) but not as many as I'd been expecting. It was futile trying to get good shots of them. They never came close to the boat and the sea was so choppy 90% of my photos focused on the waves not the birds.

Here are a couple of shots to give you a flavour of the Tsugaru Straits anyway.

There were also a few small flocks of Red Pharalope.................these were also impossible to get a decent shot of.

I saw a couple of lone Red Necked Pharalope but the birding was pretty quiet.

Not as quiet as Oma (the town on the other side of the straits). This is a small economically depressed town on the northern tip of the main island Honshu. It is (was) famous for its tuna fishing fleet but it has to be the dullest most depressing place I've ever been in Japan. Horror of horrors it doesn't even have a convenience store. I had to kill 3 and half hours there and that is 3 and a half hours too long.

There were a few birds about. 3 Whimbrel, a Little Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper, Grey Tailed Tattler, some Red breasted Merganser, a small flock of Scaup and 3 Brent Goose.

Oma is in the news now because a new nuclear power plant is being built there and it is uncomfortably close to Hakodate. After what happened 2 years ago nobody in Hakodate is happy about that but Oma is so poor the money from the nuclear plant may well keep the town alive. It looks like the cash has already started rolling in. The ferry terminal is shiny and modern (it used to be tin shack) and the port had possibly the nicest public toilet I've used in a long long time. No squatter in sight, heated toilet seat and an ample supply of soft toilet paper.

Let's hope the power plant doesn't get hit by a tsunami then.

The way back was darker and windier but there were more shearwaters................

The Black Winged Stilt was still around when we returned................

And there were lots of Black Headed Gulls. They don't breed in Japan so we usually don't see much of them in summer plumage, so here they are looking strangely exotic............

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Golden Week 2012 #1

Asian House Martins at Kikonai yesterday.

A cluster of national holidays known as Golden Week kicked off yesterday and spring well and truly arrived, it has been warm and sunny, indeed I got sunburned today and consumed not 1 but 2 ice creams...............

Yesterday morning started at Akagawa, lots of activity in the forest before the dirt bikers showed up to scare everything off. Lots of Narcissus Flycatcher and Eastern Crowned Warbler were singing, other stuff included Japanese Thrush, Whites Thrush and Long Tailed Rosefinch. In Kikonai and Shireuchi there wasn't so much around.............a lone Bewicks Swan, a couple of Great Egret, a Greenshank, several Little Ringed Plover, Lathams Snipe, Osprey and a few Brent Geese, Wigeon and Red Breasted Merganser offshore.

Lots of Asian House Martin everywhere now...........

At Kamiiso yesterday there were no waders but lots of summer plumage Black Headed Gulls...........these look very exotic here (we usually only see them in winter plumage and there are no other common hooded gulls in Japan). Shame I grew up in England where they are so common birders probably don't even look at them..............

Today I walked the long walk down the beach in Kamiiso to look for waders: all I could find was 1 very flighty Whimbrel. We headed over to Asabu, there were some good birds here but nothing posing for the camera. Pacific Swift, Wryneck, more Osprey and lots of Siberian Stonechat and Chestnut Eared Bunting were singing...........here's one of the latter, a shy bird that flies off as soon as eye contact is established even through a car window.

Back at Kamiiso I waited in vain for the Ospreys to come close and eventually gave up and concentrated on the local Black Tailed Gulls which were courting. Like the Black Headed Gull this is a beautiful bird I maybe take for granted.............the second one here is a Slaty Backed Gull, the common resident large gull.

I don't know if I'm being paranoid but I'm sure I used to take better quality photos of more interesting species than I have been doing lately.

Roy Hodgson? I'm underwhelmed to say the least but he's done well using scant playing resources with mid ranking teams..........maybe he won't be a total disaster with England then.

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A morning in Onuma

We spent the morning in Onuma today and as you can see we finally got some nice light for taking pictures. It was rather cold and there was snow in the air at first but the sun relented and came out for the first time in what feels like ages...........

There wasn't much around bird-wise so we hung out with the tame Nuthatches and Tits.

This group has been around for several years now, we think 1 Nuthatch and 1 Varied Tit of the original group remain (the tamest 2 individuals who readily come to the hand) with several of their relatives/youngsters tagging along and slowly becoming bolder.

Forgive my indulgence of posting so many photos of these birds but I do enjoy feeding them in the winter.........

The Varied Tit is my personal fave. There used to be 2 tame individuals but one of them today was very shy, presumably he/she is a new face in town..........

The dominant species is the Nuthatch, it chases all the others away. There are 2 tame ones of this species and 1 or 2 who hang around the edges........

Believe it or not I took these 3 pictures with my wife's 100mm macro lens..........and they are all only very slightly cropped.

The Marsh/Willow Tits come close but not to the hand. This is a Marsh Tit. I think.

The Great Tits are very shy and the Coal Tits live in a different part of the forest entirely.........

Only common winter stuff around today. Jay, Whooper Swan, Rook, Smew, Goldeneye, Coot, Buzzard, Sparrowhawk. White Tailed Eagle, Grey Heron and lots of Great Egret.........

Back in Kamiiso there were 15 or so Black Necked Grebes in the harbour........

Also in the harbour were 2 Great Crested Grebe, 2 Harlequin Duck, several Scaup and a Red Breasted Merganser. On one of the nearby rivers the salmon are still spawning and the Black Headed Gulls are enjoying a feeding frenzy, here's one I took last weekend with a salmon egg in its bill......

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As you were

A pretty quiet week, with pretty much the same birds around as last time I posted........

The Taiga Flycatcher was around until Wednesday, not a great picture but you can see its' diagnostic tail pattern very clearly. It was very very active and always seemed to stay in the shady areas.

Not much else passing through, a few Rustic and Black Faced Buntings, several Daurian Redstarts too. The vegetation is thinning meaning all the garbage people dump next to the river is visible again.........

There were 7 species of duck in town, 3 Pochard had joined the Scaup in Goryokaku Park (7 of them now) and there was a female Pintail on the river today as well.

The egrets were still around. 2 Great and 1 Little Egret, the latter is a bird I don't often photograph so I tried to get a good shot of it today. It was very jumpy and all I could manage were BIF shots.

Last Sunday we went to Yakumo. On the way I saw the season's first eagles, 2 young White Tailed I think but we couldn't stop. At Yakumo there were Great Crested Grebe, large numbers of Scaup and Wigeon and 7 species of Gull including the first Glaucous and Glaucous Winged of the winter, here's a shot a of the latter.

In previous Octobers I'd seen lots of Kittiwakes and Terns fishing at the river mouth, this day there were only Black Headed Gulls.......

I enjoyed the Liverpool/Man U game last week. Liverpool should have won, why was Henderson on as a sub up front trying to knock in headers at the end when Carroll was still on the bench?

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