Blackouts, quakes, typhoons and thunderstorms.

A Crested Kingfisher near Hakodate earlier in the week.

There was a crazy 24 hour period midweek, First a typhoon passed over Hakodate (it woke me up at 2am). The next day saw the mother of all thunderstorms in the afternoon and at 3am the next night I was woken again by a rather large scary earthquake that knocked out electricity over the whole of Hokkaido.

We were pretty lucky. No damage or danger near Hakodate and our apartment strangely got its power back a long time before most of the rest of town (we were only without electricity for about 16 hours). The fatal landslides were actually in the same town that I took all those wader shots last week..............

No car this weekend and more rain forecast. Hope there are no more disasters at least.

Still on the river

I haven't done much birding at all in the last 2 weeks. I had a bad back, it was pretty hot and my main lens is in a Canon Service Center somewhere in south Japan.

It wasn't so hot today. The Crested Kingfisher family were on the same stretch of river as 2 weeks ago. A shame I only had the 100-400 as they were reasonably close.

Other stuff around included lots of Ospreys on the coast as well as some Japanese Green Pigeon. Yesterday there were Great Egret and Wood Sandpiper in the ricefields. I hope my big lens comes back before the waders season gets going.

A mild Monday

Monday saw record breaking temperatures further south in Japan (the hottest day ever in Japan, the hottest day ever in Tokyo) but  surprisingly it wasn't so hot near Hakodate...............

Another mild Sunday in Yakumo..................

The mild winter continues, I didn't even need a jacket in Yakumo as the temperature hovered around 12..........................

More signs of winter..............

A Black Legged Kittiwake shaking itself dry at Yakumo this afternoon. There were 8 species of gull at the mouth of the river and they included 50 or so Kittiwake...........................and unfortunately they all appeared to have black legs.

We were in Yakumo to check if any eagles had arrived. There were small numbers of salmon spawning and the Yurappu Valley was aflame with autumn colors (what a cliche that is but I don't know how else to describe it) and we found the grand total of ONE adult White Tailed Eagle (and that was too far away for a photo). The only raptor apart from the abundant Black Kite was this Common Buzzard.

We did see a Crested Kingfisher, I managed to get this record shot as it flew at great speed over my head...........................

This is one bird I hope to finally get a decent photograph of this winter.

There were some interesting birds at the mouth of the river too. Goshawk, the first Goldeneye of the winter and another species I hope to get a good photo of this winter. This was the best I could manage today. 2 Snow Bunting. It looked like they had literally just arrived (they came in off the sea). They flew over my head and landed on the beach, stayed 10 seconds and then disappeared to the opposite side of the river.

When I walked back to the car I disturbed another 2 buntings....................I snapped a record shot and when I reviewed the image back in the car I was surprised to find it was a male and female Pine Bunting.

Back at Onuma there weren't many birds in the forest but the lake was looking very autumnal..............

I watched The Hunger Games a couple of days ago. Very silly.
Thanks for clicking this link.......
人気ブログランキングへ

A brief interlude of nice weather

Another trip up to Yakumo today, lots of eagles and OMG some sunshine at last. Well, sometimes it stopped snowing.

The snow was pretty deep, twice I floundered in snow drifts and my wife had to rescue the camera (I needed 2 hands to pull myself out).

Lots of eagles feeding on salmon but very hard to get a good shot, they just fly away as soon as they catch your eye. Some were in the trees but were obscured by branches.

There were lots of birds like this.........

But they see me and do this...............

So lots of BIFs again, and some even in a blue sky.

This one is uncropped, the immature White tailed Eagles always seem to be the least shy......

This immature Stellers flew right over my head.........

I really wanted some close up shots of birds in the river, I guess for this you need a lot of time and patience and unfortunately we had not enough of the former today. There were some in the trees at least...........

The weather close in again later and some of the BIF shots suffered........

Whilst waiting in vain for some eagles to come back to the salmon carcass I got a crappy record shot of this bird.

A Crested Kingfisher, a bit of a Yakumo specialty and one I often see but this is the first photo i've ever posted of one..........

Other stuff around at Yakumo included Peregrine, Goshawk, Brown Dipper, Japanese Wagtail, Whooper Swan and various common ducks.

At Onuma in the morning not much around bird-wise, here's  Red Fox on the frozen lake.

On the way back we got stuck in a traffic jam caused by an accident, I saw three smashed up cars today in various places. The last one didn't look good, a head on collision with a truck, I hope the driver(s) survived. I didn't see the impact but it was only 100 or so metres ahead of us. The roads were pretty nasty today.

Hope North Korea doesn't let off the nukes, that would be a bad end to the year.

Kim Jong-il, Bin Laden and Gadaffi dead. 2011-the year of the dead power crazed dictator. Oh I forgot to add Steve Jobs to that list.

Thanks for clicking this link....