July begins............

July is generally the quietest month for birds in south Hokkaido.............

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

June 11th 2011.

3 Cattle Egrets in the padis outside of town 6 years ago today. This is a scarce overshoot visitor to south Hokkaido in late spring/early summer, it was nice to see 3 together and all in summer plumage too.

Cattle Egret

A Cattle Egret on the outskirts of Hakodate yesterday..................

Golden Week 2012 #3

A Marsh Sandpiper and 2 Grey Tailed Tattler at Kamiiso this afternoon.

I had 4 out of the last 5 days off and early May is one of the best (if not the best) times of the year for local birding. Unfortunately the weather for the whole 5 days was absolutely f*****g terrible. Very heavy rain led to landslides and floods..........the amount of debris washed down the rivers and out into the sea was unbelievable. The local river (usually so small I'm embarrassed to call it a river) turned from its usual trickle to a brown swirling deluge..........

And when it wasn't raining it was too dark for any photos. Yesterday at Ono there were 10 or so Pacific Golden Plover in the gloom and this Cattle Egret, at least you can just about see a white bird in such poor light.........

I had given up on any birding on my days off until the rain stopped this morning and we headed out to a park in the east of town. It was full of birds, thank god. Too dark for any decent shots but I had a very pleasant couple of hours chasing the birds around the bushes.

There were lots of migrants including 3 Eye Browed Thrush.

And a pair of Blue and White Flycatcher too.

Also around were Asian Brown and Narcissus Flycatcher,  Japanese Grosbeak, Japanese White-eye, Varied and Coal Tit. Goldcrest, Grey Headed and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker and this drake Mandarin Duck.

Not tame at all but at least it didn't fly off like the ones in Onuma always do.

We then headed east to Menagawa in sunshine and blue skies but there were no interesting birds at all except my first Grey Wagtail of the year and a Peregrine high in the sky.

We ended up at Kamiiso in the late afternoon and in the fading light on the beach was a Marsh Sandpiper.

A local tick (#216 I think): I've seen them in various nearby locales but never locally..............

As it was getting really dark I noticed a half dozen or so Grey Tailed Tattler, the commonest spring wader. It's pretty common in autumn too but it looks much nicer at this time of year even in the twilight.

So the end of the footy season is going to be pretty exciting: interesting games everywhere. The local Sky channels can only show 3 games at once. Shame Liverpool stopped trying 2 or 3 months ago, whatever game they have (I haven't even bothered checking who they're playing) is utterly meaningless.................

So let's hope the rain stops, as (bad) luck would have it I now have 3 busy days...........so let's say let's hope for sunshine from Friday then.

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A summer evening in the ricefields

I finished work early so I had time to check out the local ricefields. Always good at this time of year, today produced a surprise with these 3 Cattle Egret.

This is a scarce overshoot migrant to south Hokkaido, these 3 must have been wafted in with the warm winds from the last few days.

They are building a new highway in this corner of the ricefields, sadly next year I'm sure this habitat may well have disappeared. There is a a reedbed here, Siberian Stonechats breed here.

Also in the reedbed were Oriental Reed Warbler, Black Browed Reed Warbler, Reed Bunting and Chestnut Eared Bunting. I hope the reedbed is still around next summer. I got some nice shots from her last year. Also around were Common Cuckoo and Lathams Snipe. And lots of big trucks.

We then went to another location in the ricefields to check for Night Herons, all I could get was with this BIF shot.

More of the same here including the inevitable Stonechats.

Just before sunset we went to the rivermouth at Kamiiso to check for Ospreys. Nothing doing there but there were 2 Goosander and somewhat surprisingly 4 Harlequin Duck.

I've never seen these in this location and never in June in Hokkaido either. I tried to get close to them but they just swam away, they must be moulting.

No sport on TV tonight, thank god for beer.

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Some spring waders

Whimbrel, Marsh Sandpiper and Wood Sandpiper, 3 waders from a long long spring day............

We started off very early and drove up Hakodateyama to check for migrants. There were quite a few birds around including lots of Red Flanked Bluetails, a bird I can never get a decent photo of. It was too dark and gloomy this morning for photos anyway. Other birds in the forest included Dusky, Brown and Japanese Thrush, Siberian Blue and Japanese Robin, Black Faced and Siberian Meadow Butnings, Japanese Bush Warbler, Japanese White-eye and Long Tailed Rosefinch. We didn't stay too long here, it looked sunnier to the east so we headed over that way.

Lots of stuff on the sea: Scaup, Red Breasted Merganser, Goosander, Harlequin Duck, Brent Goose, Pintail, Wigeon etc............our first stop was at Kikonai.

There were 7 species of wader here. Grey Tailed Tattler were the commonest, here's one with a Marsh Sandpiper. Like most of today's photos, some heavy cropping going on here.

And a lone Wood Sandpiper............

The other species were Common Sandpiper, Little Ringed Plover, Whimbrel and Kentish Plover. There were 3 heron species. Grey Heron, Great Egret and Little Egret, just one of each plus a lone Whooper Swan that is always here. Did it just get bored of migrating north every summer? It looks fighting fit, is there such a thing as a lazy Swan?

Ducks here included a male Falcated Teal, a female Gadwall, Tufted Duck and Pochard. There were also a pair of Osprey but they were flying too high for any photos. Chestnut Eared Buting, Siberian Stonechat and Blue Rock Thrush were all singing, it was very springlike and even slightly warm.......

We then headed out to Matsumae, on the way I noticed 3 egrets in a field, 2 Cattle Egret and 1 Intermediate Egret. One of the Cattle Egrets was in full sumer plumage........

I think that's the first time I've seen all 4 egret species in one day in Hokkaido before. The 3 smaller ones are all fairly regular spring overshoots but Cattle and Intermediate are a little scarce.

This Rustic Bunting was in the same field..........

In Matsumae I had a couple of hours to kill whilst my wife looked around the cherry blossom park. There were a few Harlequins and Brent Geese on the sea, more Grey Tailed Tattlers and Common Sandpiper and a pair of Whimbrel........

Plus the inevitable Ospreys...........

We headed back to Hakodate and the rivermouth in Kamiiso. There were 4 Great Egret and 10 or so Night Heron which brought today's heron list to 6 species. Just before it got too dark a Black Tailed Godwit flew over, a local tick no less (#203).

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I'm exhausted.

So the Premier League season isn't over yet after all. God I hope Chelsea win on Sunday with a really controversial refereeing decision, just to see SAF's red spluttering rage.

On this day (July 5th)....................

July 5th 2009.


Cattle Egret in summer plumage just outside Kamiso. 


Not a great photo but a nice find, this one (like most egrets) is fairly scarce in Hokkaido. I've seen many of these around the world but this was only my second in Hokkaido..........although I saw my third yesterday near Onuma. This has been the only one in summer colours. I've seen this species in great numbers all over the world but it seems kind of exotic here in Hokkaido.


I use these 'on this day' posts to pad out my blog a bit, to recycle older photos and also steer a few people to my 2 photo sites. I thought I'd do a few posts in advance for July and publish them later so I looked through old photos etc and there basically is nothing else of much interest from the last 4 Julys.................just goes to show what a quiet month it is in this part of the world


I'm looking forward to autumn already.

Japanese Green Pigeon

We returned to the beach where we'd seen the Japanese Green Pigeon last week and I fired off lots and lots of shots.

The weather was lousy with mist and drizzle but in the late afternoon the sun came out for a brief time and that was when I could take some OK shots.

I find BIF shots of fast flying birds against a white sky very tricky, most of the earlier shots were underexposed and full of noise. Like this one...............

The beach was full of loose rocks and proved tricky to walk on, it also stank of rotting something or other and was full of horribly creepy looking bugs running around.

The Pigeons breed in the forested uplands but come to the shore to drink seawater, apparently to aid digestion..............

I didn't get many shots on the ground............

As you can see they are a quite stunning bird. Shame they are so jumpy.................

They'll be around for another couple of months, time to brush up on my BIF techniques.

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Not much else around, the usual birds in the ricefields and Onuma but nothing posing for the camera. Well that's not strictly true. My wife asked me to take a snap of a cow and on looking at the image on my computer I was somewhat surprised to see a Cattle Egret standing under the udder.......................

I watched 'Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll' last week, the movie based on the life of Ian Dury. Not bad actually, I'm now awaiting '4 Lions' with some anticipation....................