Hoarding

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

Some crappy shots of some interesting migrants..................

Well we had a fairly eventful day. Sleet and an earhquake this morning and some interesting migrants this afternoon.

In Goryokaku Park there were several Dusky Thrush (above), Hawfinch and Swallow but no more bluetails.

On the river there were lots of birds passing through. My first Asian House Martin, Chestnut Eared Bunting and Siberian Stonechat of the year. Several Daurian Redstart, Coal and Varied Tit, a female Red Flanked Bluetail and yet another Osprey. A Woodcock flushed by crows was a surprise. This is the first photo of this species I've ever posted.

A male Pale Thrush. A crap photo and it isn't even  rare but like I say this is its first appearance on this blog.

Here's another even crapper photo.

A Hoopoe near my flat, the second one I've seen locally now and my 4th in south Hokkaido. It was very skittish and the above heavily cropped record shot was all I could manage....................

So some interesting things appearing. I hope it isn't f***ing sleeting again on Sunday/Monday (my days off).
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On this day (March 29th)

March 29th 2010.

A Hoopoe near my apartment 2 years ago today. This species appears to be reasonably regular in early spring, this was the 3rd time I'd seen Hoopoes in south Hokkaido.........

Still snow on the ground this March and very few birds around town.........

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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.

Hoopoes!!!

A bit of luck today. We were checking out some land near Onuma (with a view to buying some maybe) and when we eventually found the plot of land there were not one but two Hoopoes on the grass. A pretty rare bird in Japan. I saw 1 in Hakodate a couple of years ago and 1 on the vagrant hotspot Tobishima in 2004. I think it may have been split from the Hoopoes found in the Med. Anyway what a great bird. A possible omen? Does this mean we should buy the land? Believe it or not I've actually had several dreams about taking pics of Hoopoes recently. Spooky.



The day started at Kamiso. Not so much here. A few Ducks, the first Common Sandpipers of the spring. A second year Glaucous Gull.

Up at Yakumo we checked out the Heronry (about 20 or so Grey Herons and 1 Night Heron). Also around were Osprey, lots of Reed Buntings, my first Black Faced Bunting of the spring (a singing male), my first singing Japanese Bush Warblers of the season, the usual common Ducks plus a female Smew, a northbound Eurasian Hobby and lots of Glaucous Gulls.

We stopped at Onuma on the way back but there were no Black Woodpeckers. The usual common stuff included a party of 10 or so Whooper Swan resting on their way north, another Osprey and the first singing Brown Thrush this year.

Here's a pic of a female Bullheaded Shrike checking out nest sites near my house last week.




And yet another Nuthatch.



These are 2 pretty crappy pics. 6 species of Gull at Kamiso this morning and a Common Kingfisher near my flat a couple of days ago.



Second year Glaucous Gulls are common at this time of the year and extremely conspicious.



It seems that when birders start taking photographs Kingfishers become their favourite subjects. I still have lots to learn quite clearly.

Exciting end to the footy season with some big games coming up. Are Man U going to end up with nothing? Injuries are exposing the fact their squad is a bit thin. Much as I dislike Man U though I'd rather they win the League than Chelsea (but it'd be nice if they sweat a bit). Liverpool will stop Chelsea winnning the quadruple at least.

The elections are over. Thank god.