Hoarding

One of the disadvantages of having cheap external hard drives with lots of space is the accumulation of thousands of photos...............

A short Waxwing window between blizzards..........

There was a heavy snowstorm in Hakodate on Thursday night/Friday morning and again on Friday afternoon..................

2017 Best Of #2

Some shots from Jan/Feb this year.............

March winding down...........

March is winding down. Not much about locally, just a few Dusky Thrush, Common Teal and a small flock of Hawfinch (one above) of any interest.................

Note the grey sky. After a week or more of sunshine looks like some dull weather is coming............just as I have a few days off coming up.

Yellow Throated Bunting and other stuff............

A male Yellow Throated Bunting in one of the local parks yesterday morning..............

A tame one................

A tame Hawfinch in one of the local parks yesterday................

More parklife

There were some common species in the park yesterday..............

A scruffy duck

I had a spare hour or so to kill and the weather was mild and sunny so I took a short walk along the local river........................

Hakodate under the snow

With an unusually light workload I took a 90 minute or so walk around the neighbourhood this morning...............and the snow was pretty deep. I was hoping for some waxwings but the only birds around were a few Dusky Thrush and Hawfinch (above).................

Almost no snow until christmas and then lots after, winters are getting shorter.

Early spring Parklife

I took a short walk in Goryokaku Park this afternoon.................

2014 Best of #2

Well another quiet week combined with a heavy cold means no new photos to post so here's some more stuff from earlier in the year............







In late February we went to east Hokkaido...............and I took rather a lot of photographs.

East Hokkaido 2014 #5

After the eaglefest at Rausu I didn't do so much birding...................

Back down south

A break from my East Hokkaido posts...............

The Gyrflacon was still at Sawara yesterday...........

It has been fairly mild since we got back but the strong wind at Sawara yesterday made it brutally cold (especially as I wasn't well wrapped up).

After some very long posts recently I've started inserting these 'jump breaks'..............so please click if you want to see more pictures and read my pearls of wisdom.

On this day (February 25th)

February 25th 2009.

Normally Hawfinches are very very shy and difficult to approach but 3 years this one in Goryokaku Park let me get close enough to pretty much fill the frame. It didn't mind getting its beak dirty either.

Most years Hawfinch is a common winter visitor but this winter there have hardly been any.

Thanks for clocking this link

On this day (February 1st)....................

February 1st 2009.

Hawfinch at Onuma. This bird was very close and was through a rather dirty window too............

Thanks for clicking this link.

On this day (November 21st)....................

November 21st 2007.


A Hawfinch in the park near my apartment after an early bite of wintry weather.


They tend to be much commoner from midwinter onwards when large numbers from mainland Asia arrive in Japan, I guess this may have been a local one.


This was taken with a 70-300 lens.

Hoopoe

A nice find this morning, a Hoopoe about 100 yards from my flat!

A scarce bird in Japan but probably commoner than in the UK. I've seen several in Japan over the years.

It was a bit nervous and kept flying off, the local Crows were harrying it.

This is the second I've seen in Hakodate, the last one was on March 30th 2005. That arrived after some very strong westerlies as did this one (last weekend saw some terrible windy weather with heavy snow too).

Strange to see them when there's snow on the ground, they're a bird I associate with sunny olive groves.

This is the second exciting bird since I last posted. The other was a juvenile Stellers Sea Eagle flying over the sea yesterday. Too far off for anything but a record shot (I won't bother posting one here) but a local tick, I think that leaves my Hakodate list on either 194 or 195.

I went to Kamiso last Friday but not only were there no birds it was absolutely freezing too. No photos from that day. Yesterday I walked down the river and was surprised to see a pair of Red Breasted Merganser well upstream. Here's the male.

I got much closer than this and the bird was in perfect light and just as I was ready to press the shutter one of those right wing propaganda trucks switched on its loudspeaker and the ducks flew off never to be seen again. Morons. '"F**king Facists Foil Foto" was the working title of this post until the I saw the Hoopoe.

Lots of Hawfinches too, this one was from yesterday.

I think I overdid some of the colours in today's photos, some (like the one above) look a bit artificial.........hmmmm.

These ones were taken through a mesh fence this morning.

I could have added 'fences' to the original title of this post too.

So Liverpool decided to start playing well with only half a dozen games to go. Looking at Villa's collapse and the run-ins for Spurs/Man City 4th place may still be possible I suppose.

Click on this if you have the time, I'll be grateful as it means I'll shoot up the rankings.

OMG no car for a while................

I went back to Kamiso today with high hopes after last week. Today the light was good and the wind not too strong, perfect for photographing birds in the harbour. Only one problem. There were no birds at all when I arrived. Just a few of the resident Gulls. I looked around a few other spots and found a few ducks and other types of Gull but nothing especially interesting. Black Scoter, Glaucous Gull and that's about it.

When I returned to the harbour the above Red Throated Diver was there. Judging by the odd shaped beak it must be the same one from last week. Most of the time it was way out in the middle of the harbour.......it was a bit more active than last week at least.

I sat down and eventually it swam a bit closer, dived and popped up a few metres away.

It then swam out of the harbour and back out to sea where this photo was taken.

The only other birds in the harbour were 2 female Scaup, one female Goldeneye and this male Red Breasted Merganser.

Not a single Grebe anywhere, even on the sea.

I took the train to Kamiso, the first time I'd taken the train there since this day with the Red Necked Stints last year. I may have to do a lot more train journeys as our car is officially dead, it's not worth fixing and is probably too dangerous to drive anywhere in its current state. We aren't really in the position to get a replacement: that will have to wait until the autumn so it looks like 6 or so months without wheels. I'll miss quite a few interesting birds; the spring/autumn wader passage at Yakumo, the offshore Shearwater/Pharalope movements at Esan in May, the breeding warblers and wetland stuff at Oshamanbe......................but it can't be helped I suppose.

So I'll have to concentrate on stuff nearer home. You can't get any nearer than this, a Hawfinch snapped out of my living room window this morning.........

Didn't know they could do that with their heads.

Dusky Thrushes

Well it's been a quiet last few days since the grebe-fest last week. Not much in my neighbourhood. Quite a lot of Dusky Thrush have been passing through.......

They are the only Thrush species in Hokkaido in winter (unless you're lucky enough to get a vagrant such as Fieldfare). 6 other species either breed in summer or pass through on migration but they are all timid and shy forest dwellers. Dusky Thrushes hop across gardens and parks just like Thrush species do back in the UK..................

As you can see we had a little more snow this week, the weather has been pretty poor the last 3 days. A Peregrine was a nice fly-over bird yesterday but a feast bird against grey skies didn't produce any decent photos. A Little Grebe was on the river today, Grey Heron and Sparrowhawk were seen from my living room window (flying) and there are still quite a few Hawfinch around.

And this must be the scruffiest looking White Wagtail in East Asia at the moment.

I got up to watch the Chelsea v Inter Milan game this morning, surprised at how poor Chelsea were. They're starting to look a little old in the tooth.

Looks like no car at the weekend, I may catch the train to Kamiso, hopefully the Grebes and other waterbirds will still be there.............