North Hokkaido 2018 #12

Some birds from the way and way back.....................

Ospreys on a grey Sunday

Sunday was a grim day..........................

Another snowbound Sunday...........

Another week of snow.................

Another grey Sunday

Awful weather this morning....................

Common birds of March

Yesterday I quickly checked Kamiiso to see if the Black Necked Grebes had come into summer plumage.....................

Peregrine #1

A Peregrine at Sawara today.................

More 7D2 shots

A Black Kite at Yakumo and Nuthatch at Onuma today.................

Kites

Summer in the grasslands

An Eastern Marsh Harrier near Oshamanbe on Sunday.

After Yakumo we were on the grasslands near Oshamanbe. All the common species were singing and there were also flocks of Sand Martin above.

Black Browed Reed Warblers are absolutely abundant in this place.................

I took a short video on a rickety old tripod..............



This was another individual which seems to have lost most of  its tail

Back at Yakumo I tried again for the Ospreys. One of them was sitting on some driftwood on the opposite bank..................too far away for a pic though.

Wish it had been as close as this Black Kite..............

On the way home we stopped at Onuma where I got my first mosquito bite of 2013.

There was a lone Whooper Swan sitting in the shade next to the lake. I guess this is an old or injured bird that couldn't make the spring trip back up north.

Or maybe it was just lazy.................

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Linked to Wild Bird Wednesday.

A quiet Sunday in May

A Blue and White Flycatcher in Kamiiso this morning. There were about 5 of them in a small copse along with lots of other migrants; Eastern Crowned and Sakhalin Leaf Warblers, Rustic Bunting, Japanese White-eye and Olive Backed Pipit. My first Lathams Snipe of the year was overhead but there were no waders in the padis (or none that I could see).

On the coast there were a few Gray Tailed Tattler, a few ducks including Black Scoter and Harlequin Duck as well as a flock of Crossbill in the pine trees next to the river.

There wasn't much at Onuma.........my first Narcissus Flycatcher and Oriental Cuckoo of the year but no photos worth posting. Yakumo was quiet too.............another Black Winged Stilt, 4 Wood Sandpiper, Little Ringed Plover, Wryneck, Great Egret, Gadwall and a few other ducks. Other stuff today on the way to Yakumo included Glaucous Winged Gull, more Blue and White Flycatchers,  Brown Dipper and Grey Wagtail.

Here's a Black Kite on the beach at Yakumo.

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Splattered

We spent most of the day at Onuma. The lake is still 99%  frozen and there was the usual flock of Whooper Swans and Mallards on the one tiny ice free patch. The lone drake Pintail was still there...............it must have stayed the whole winter.

I tried taking some swan pics but they were all crap. There were also a few Smew well out of camera range and a White Tailed Eagle flew over in the afternoon.......

The Nuthatches were as photogenic as ever.

In case you stumbled across this blog and are thinking wow how did he get so close here's your answer.

A couple of Varied Tits put in an appearance but they were not so tame.

Also around were Great, Coal, Long Tailed and Marsh Tits plus Great Spotted and Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers.

I took a side trip to Sawara. The port had Black Scoter, Goldeneye, Scaup, Harlequin Duck and Black Necked Grebe but nothing was tame and everything stayed out in the middle.

White Tailed Eagle and Peregrine were around but no chances of a photo so we went to a huge seafood processing factory to photograph the gulls and kites.

We only lasted a couple of minutes. What a f**king dump. Hordes of kites, crows and gulls knee deep in rotting fishy offal.

They all took off as I approached and I got covered in birds**t. They totally splattered my down jacket, camera and even my face.

The Nuthatches and Tits are much more civilized.

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Still f*****g freezing

Still really cold here, minus 14 when we headed out this morning. The kearashi (mist rising from the sea on the coldest winter days) was visible near Hakodate at sunrise.

I headed up to Yakumo with a friend to have another go at the eagles but it was a disappointing day. Some hunters were upstream and although they weren't shooting the eagles the noise of the gunshots scared all the eagles away. There weren't many at the rivermouth either, here the river was frozen solid. Here is the only eagle that came close...........and it wasn't so close either.

I was reduced to looking for Black Kites, oh the shame.

We headed down to Sawara. My friend wanted some new birds to photograph (he is new to the hobby) so I found him some Gulls, he'd never seen Glaucous or Glaucous Winged.

This was in a nasty stinky seafood processing plant. The staff throw out fish heads and fish tails to the masses of gulls, crows and kites.

It was difficult pointing out the different guls in the chaos of birds, fish heads and bird shit.
"Look, at the back, the grey one with its mouth open......that's a washikamome (Glaucous Winged Gull)!!!!"

Here's one among the fish heads. Nice.

This young Glaucous Gull looked small and dainty, maybe from one of the smaller subspecies?

We then went on to a nearby harbour. This place is also covered with bird shit but has some nicer birds...........like these Black Scoter. The top one dived and caught some kind of shellfish.

Also around here were White Tailed Eagle, Scaup, Goldeneye, Harlequin Duck and Black Necked Grebe.

We then went to Onuma and got luckier with the Smew. The afternoon seems to be the best time to photograph them, no mist on the pond and better light.

I tried to get the pair of them in the same shot........

The young Night Heron was here too........

The day finished with the tame Nuthatches...........

Not much in town last week. White Tailed Eagle, Whooper Swan and Great Egret at Kamiiso 2 days ago but no photos. The weather was so nasty that the train was delayed about 15 minutes. That is major news in Japan let me tell you. In Hakodate last week there were 3 species of Heron and 6 species of duck on the river but no Waxwings yet............at least the Dusky Thrush numbers are increasing.

I watched in horror as England collapsed against Pakistan yesterday, guess we're only #1 if you don't count any games played in Asia then. I popped out to the shop when we were 12 without loss and when I came back 4 wickets were down! Embarrassing.

At least Liverpool beat Man Utd.

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