2018 Best of #5

Some shots from last spring.................

A spring cliche

Japanese White-eyes in the cherry blossoms at Matsumae yesterday...............

2017 Best Of #5

Some more shots from earlier in the year, these are from spring.................

An autumn camping trip

We just got back from a 2 night camping trip..................

A Late Spring Trip #7

A final batch of photos from last week...........

Mayday

We were out west in beautiful spring weather yesterday...............

Kingfisher and other stuff

A Kingfisher near Yakumo this afternoon.................

Another long and fruitless day

We were up bright and early for another long day in the spring sunshine...............

Some common forest birds............

The forest pool is a good place for some of the commoner forest species, some of which are usually difficult to photograph....................

Spring cliches and a rarity

We were on the west coast on Monday morning...............

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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Some more white-eyes............

It was dark and drizzly today but I had some spare time so I checked the river again for migrants.

The Japanese White-eyes were still about................

They are a very common resident in most of Japan but here in Hokkaido they are summer visitors and not so numerous, certainly worth pointing the camera at.....................

The Goldcrest were still around too. Lots of Dusky Thrush and also several each of Pale and Japanese Thrush (the latter including a singing male). A very vocal Wryneck was the highlight of the day (but too far away for any pics). The first Red Cheeked Starling of the summer put in an appearance as did several Red Flanked Bluetail, a Japanese Bush Warbler, Bullheaded Shrike, Blue Rock Thrush, Black Faced Bunting, Hawfinch, Swallow and Asian House Martin.

No warblers or flycatchers yet, hopefully they'll start showing at the weekend.


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Green on green.

I had a spare hour this afternoon so i took a short walk down the river to see if any migrants were passing through. Red Flanked Bluetail, Daurian Redstart, Coal Tit, Black Faced Bunting and Japanese Thrush were all around as well as various unidentified stuff only momentarily glimpsed.

Most of the trees along the river have been felled the last few years but the remaining trees are turning green and there were small groups of Goldcrest and Japanese White-eye feeding in the emerging foliage.

The goldcrests were as tricky as ever..............

The Whuite-eyes are slightly bigger and slightly less active but they too were a tad tricky...............

It has been a busy week workwise. Last Sunday was very quiet at Onuma, not many migrants there yet but lots of woodpeckers. All4 of the regular species were around, here's a Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker.

So we're approaching the best birding period of the year...............from the end of April to about the third week in May. My workload has increased dramatically recently (a good thing as being poor  is never nice) which means my birding time may be restricted to short jaunts like today................

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