On this day (August 25th)...................

August 25th 2015.

A Great Knot at Oshamanbe 3 years ago today. This is a regular passage visitor in late summer/early autumn and is often very tame.............

A night away

We went camping a few days ago.................

Waders arrive at last

Some waders on the local beaches................

Waderless

Typhoons, workload and various minor health ailments have kept me off the beaches this August more than I would have liked.................

2104 Best of #5

 

Some of my fave shots from autumn until the end of 2014.................

Wader season at last #4

On the way back from Tomakomai we stopped at Oshamanbe again. The 2 Great Knot were still there...................

Wader season at last #1

The waders have finally started showing in front of my camera....................

Phoned in Great Knot

Great Knot at Oshamanbe this morning.  Edited in camera and on phone......

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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On this day (August 19th)................

August 19th 2011.

A Long Billed Dowitcher at Kamiiso 2 years ago today. It was in pretty much full summer plumage and was a lifer to boot. A couple of individuals have appeared on other local blogs since then (but they were immatures or winter plumaged adults) so they are probably a scarce but regular visitor.

It shared the beach with a Great Knot and Ruff..............an interesting trio of shorebirds.



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Meet the locals #6

Great Knot (Calidris tenuirostris)

A bit of an east Asian specialty, this is one of the more interesting local birds here in south Hokkaido. It is a fairly common late summer/early autumn visitor to the local beaches and can be seen from mid August to mid September. They are often solitary or in pairs and are surprisingly tame, many of these pics are only slightly cropped or not at all.





They breed in Siberia and winter south to Australia.

I'm not so hot on identifying the ages of waders especially in autumn but it seems to me that all these are all  juveniles (please feel free to correct me). According to the books juveniles have brown fringed coverts and yellowish legs and all thse pics seem to share those characteristics. Some adults must pass through however, maybe my hunch these are all juveniles is incorrect.

I have never seen them in spring, why I that is don't know................






Here are 2 Great Knots together with a Red Knot to show the structural differences...........

Red Knot is scarce around here, I've only seen 2 individuals in fact compared to the fairly common annual Great Knot.............



They are quite comical in manner, jogging along the beach completely ignoring any people about..............









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A different pair

We took a quick look on the beach ar Nanaehama yesterday morning. It was overcast and a little breezy: the tail end of a typhoon and the whole day was a lot more more bearable than the last few weeks.

There were 2 Great Knot on the same part of the beach as 10 or so days ago, a different pair I think, one of them had a slightly deformed bill.

They were extremely tame and just jogged down the beach feeding in the surf.

These photos are not cropped (or only very slightly).

As you can see it was a little dark.........

Not much else around except lots of Red Necked Stints here and at Kamiiso. A Spoon Billed Sandpiper was near Sapporo yesterday, I'll head over to Kamiiso this afternoon..........it's about 1 day south as the small wader flies, you never know eh?

Liverpool looked utterly toothless last night............and Gerard looks just about ready to call it a day I think. Sad but maybe true.
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