A rainy Sunday

It was raining all day today.................

Miiscellaneous

An Eastern Crowned Warbler at Onuma earlier in the week.

From April 29th to May 5th I had a lot of time off and it was all pretty hectic birdingwise and I updated my blog a lot, here's some of the other stuff I photographed in that time............

A waste of 8400 yen

Some pictures from the last couple of days. Stellers Sea Eagle, Gyrfalcon, Ural Owl and.................Dunlin.

Another day in the park

A Great Spotted Woodpecker looking out of its front door in Goryokaku Park. I saw them copulating several times (not as interesting as it sounds).................

Lots of migrants around but nothing especially interesting. Several Asian Brown Flycatcher (one of which may have been a female Narcissus but I was paying attention to the woodpeckers), 2 Red flanked Bluetail, 3 or 4 Eastern Crowned Warbler and 1 male Blue and White Flycatcher...................which would have been a nice shot but for the branch.

Lots of Red Cheeked Starling including some trying to take over the woodpecker hole.

The Black Winged Stilt was still there. I took lts and lots and lots of photos of it the last couple of days which I''ll sort through later and post in the upcoming fallow summer months. Here are some purely random ones of the hundreds and hundreds on my hard drive............

It let me approach it to within a couple of metres and I could lie down on the (dry) grass and get some low angle ones................

It was attracting some attention from the hordes of people in the park looking at the cherry blossoms. The weekend is coming and the park will be heaving.................I suspect this was the last time for me to see it.

Here is a short jerky video I made and uploaded to youtube with no editing.

Another spring day...............

It was a beautiful spring day, the first real warmish weather since the back end of October. I got up early and walked to Goryokaku park and there were Japanese White-eyes everywhere.

Today was a good day for migrants. In the park I saw Pale and Brown Thrush (and lots of Duskys), 4 Rustic Bunting with 2 males in summer plumage, Eastern Crowned Warbler, Red Flanked Bluetail, Asian Brown Flycatcher and this male Blue and White Flycatcher.

This is a Japanese Bush Warbler, a very common summer visitor but usually very skulking. This one wasn't............

There were lots of Red Cheeked Starling around.............

Some were even trying to muscle in on this Great Spotted Woodpecker's new spring/summer residence............

The Black Winged Stilt was still around in the morning..............

Why wasn't the weather like this on my 2 days off last week????

At least I had some free time today (and tomorrow). I was hoping for some Narcissus Flycatchers.................maybe I'll get lucky tomorrow................
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Long Tailed Ducks and other stuff

A drake Long Tailed Duck at Oshamanbe this afternoon.

The day didn't start too well. At Yakumo there were still a fair few eagles of both species left but it was too cold to stand on the bridge long (the river was frozen near its mouth) and inland there was a raging blizzard................so we went up to Oshamanbe. The harbour was full of birds: Scaup, Goldeneye, Black Scoter, Black Necked Grebe, Glaucous Winged Gull and a dozen or so Long Tailed Ducks.

They mostly stayed out in the middle but this one popped up in nice light fairly close by (though the photo is still cropped).

Usually the light was behind them..................

We finished the day off at Onuma. There were several Black Woodpecker around including a very vocal pair in the usual spot (making unusual calls, was it courtship?) but they were too far off for a decent photo.

The tame tits and nuthatches posed well just before sunset...................

Great Spotted Woodpeckers are the joint most common woodpecer species (with Japanese Pygmy) but I still don't have a decent photo of one................this was one from today: they just don't seem to like my camera.

So that is probably that for the eagles this winter. I probably won't make it up to Yakumo again for at least 2 weeks and most if not all of the remaining eagles will have gone by then. Not a vintage winter for eagle photos but it wasn't for lack of trying.......................

Blog update, bath, beer, football. My regular Sunday evening..........................

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Mugimaki

A female Mugimaki Fycatcher and another male Narcissus Flycatcher in Goryokaku Park yesterday morning.

I had got up at 5am and was in the park before 6am looking for yesterday's Narcissus Flycatcher, there were actually 2 or 3 of them around today and they were setting up temporary territories and singing.

The weather was grey and dull and with a slow lens it was hard to get any sharp shots of such an active little bird................

This female Mugimaki Flycatcher was a nice find and was probably the tamest least active bird on show...................

Shame it wasn't a male but the female is pretty cute too...........

There were lots of other small birds whizzing about the cherry blossoms too. Several Eastern Crowned Warbler, lots of other small brownish birds that were mostly Asian Brown Flycatcher. These were very active and difficult to get a shot of..............

There were also some female Narcissus Flycatcher but I couldn't find any Sootys. I also had a brief view of this male Blue and White Flycatcher.

I had an even briefer view of a Siberian Blue Robin which I could hear singing in the middle of the park. The Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker from the previous day was still present as was this Great Spotted Woodpecker.

This is one of 2 female Russet Sparrows, another passage visitor.........

And of course there were lots of Red Cheeked Starlings everywhere..........

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