Almost over............

The year is almost over.............

Spring migration moving slowly still..........

We headed north yesterday.............

A bit of spring in the air..........

A hint of spring at last...............

A quiet Monday in mid March

Monday was a bit quiet...............

The interim

It's the interim period, not winter anymore but not really spring yet either...................

It hadn't left............

We spent the day in Onuma...............

Another grey Sunday

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

Frogzilla

A wet day to end October................

Grey birds on a grey day

A very dark grey day on Monday...........with a grey goose and a Grey Heron...............

Some more common waders..........

Sunday and Monday were dark overcast days, not good for photography but there were quite a few waders around...........

Late winter continues........

Some Smew at Onuma this afternoon..................

First signs of spring

2 Glaucous Winged Gulls near Oshamanbe yesterday. In summer plumage too................

Return of winter

A male Bullfinch in Kamiiso this afternoon...................

Some common winter stuff...........

A short visit to Onuma on Tuesday morning saw the usual common tits and nuthatches, a bit of a comedown after the eagles, owls and flacons of the previous week.

Quiet week in December

A Nuthatch at Onuma earlier in the week. It is one of the tame ones.

If I'm posting Nuthatch pics then you know it's been a slow week.

Here's a Grey Heron taking a dump over Hakodate.

At Onuma there were White Tailed Eagle,Smew, Whooper Swan, Hawfinch, Grey Headed Woodpecker and a lone Pintail among the Mallards. It was very dark as you can see.

Ar Sawara there were lots of birds in the harbours including a large group of Black Scoter. The light was terrible though.

There were also more eagles here was well as Harlequin Duck, Black Necked Grebe and a lone female White Winged Scoter...................too far away for anything but a crappy heavily cropped record shot (and my first photo of one on this blog).

The usual Gull species were sheltering in the ports from the nasty weather. Here is a miserable looking Glaucous Winged Gull.

In Hakodate in the last week I've seen the usual common winter stuff including Common Buzzard, Great Egret and Brown Dipper.

I seem to have been getting loads of spam comments recently so I'm sorry to say I switched word verification back on........................it's a real pain in the a** I know but I was getting a little tired of deleting comments from people with names like Faizal Mahmood telling me how to earn money online.

Very cold now and a big big dump of snow in Hakodate the last couple of days, I'm hoping to get up to Yakumo over the weekend as the eagle activity starts to enter its 4 or 5 week peak around Christmas time.


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17

A Great Cormorant at Onuma today with nesting materials. All the waterbirds were concentrated on one ice free patch of the lake and there were a lot of birds it has to be said.

Not a great picture but this species is quite rare in north Japan and usually occurs only on freshwater. There is a colony at Onuma, it differs from the very similar and much commoner Temincks Cormorant in having a brown sheen to its plumage (the latter has a greenish sheen).

All I could get were BIFs today and not very good ones either.

There were also huge flocks of Pintail and various other ducks around as well as lots of Grey Heron and several Great Egret. The latter were coming into summer plumage.

The Grey Herons were catching large fish in an ice free pond.

The tame Nuthatches were around as were all the common resident species.

I saw 17 species of duck today. The most intersting were Smew and Mandarin at Onuma and pairs of Falcated Duck and Gadwall at Kamiiso. No good shots at all, only a hastily grabbed BIF of a female Mandarin survived the cull.

Other stuff around today included Whooper Swan, Brent Goose, Osprey, Sparrowhawk, Little Grebe, Coot, Grear Crested Grebe and Red Necked Grebe. Here is one of the latter at Sawara, unfortunately it was caught up in some fishing line and was looking in very poor shape.

For some reason the ports at Shikabe and Sawra had very low water levels and were almost birdless, I have no idea why the water levels were so low (I never really notice much in the way of tides here).

So it looks like spring is just round the corner then...........

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So this is March

A Red Breasted Merganser and some Scaup on the sea this morning. I walked/waded through the slush down to the nearest fishing port, not much around. In addition to the above there were Great Crested Grebe, Goldeneye and Wigeon. I could have walked down to Irifune to check out the Brent Geese and Harlequins but couldn't face the inevitable trudge through the deep snow, they'll still be around in a week or 2 when hopefully the thaw will have set in.

There were also 2 or 3 Red Breasted Merganser on the river near my apartment.

I don't really know why they are hanging around so far upstream. Not much else around: Wren, several Daurian Redstart, a handful of Dusky Thrush, a single Long Tailed Rosefinch. Very quiet. No Waxwings. No Crossbills or other winter finches.

The Grey Heron and Great Egret were still around yesterday.

Here's one of the commonest local birds, a Brown Eared Bulbul. It seems to be missing a tail.

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