On this day (November 3rd)...............

November 3rd 2011.

A Little Egret on the local river 7 years ago today. This is not especially common in south Hokkaido and generally comes in spring. This one stuck around for a few weeks that autumn.

A dreary week

A very quiet week.................

Waders in the smog

Strong west winds have blown over hazy smoggy air from China...................

On this day (October 14th).......................

October 14th 2011

A Little Egret on the river near my apartment 3 years ago today.

It was sharing the river with several Grey Heron and Great Egret.

This is not especially common in Hokkaido but I usually see 1 or 2 a year. This one stayed a few weeks and is the only individual of this species I've photographed much. Not as common here as they have become in the UK..............no dramatic northward invasion this side of the Eurasian landmass. Not yet anyway.

Mellow autumn continues......

A drake Harlequin Duck in Hakodate this morning, there were about 10 of them in their regular spot. This spot being a very quiet little fishing harbour at Irifune. They rarely come close, the above shot (cropped) was the best I could muster today.

The first Brent Geese have arrived too..........

They were rather wary though............

Not much else around. A Goshawk was a nice flyover, there were a couple of Pelagic Cormorants offshore, that's about it.

The weather has been extremely mild this week, warm even. The egrets are still on the local river, by Friday (today) there were 4 Great Egrets and 1 Little Egret. The latter isn't so common in Hokkaido, this last couple of weeks has given me a good chance to photograph the species.

It's a shame all these shots are looking down from the top of the concrete embankment: it's impossible to get down to eye level...........and lighting/exposure is a problem (for me) wherever they are anyway.

The Little Egret had an interesting method of fishing, it seemed to be stirring up the river bed with its feet. It looked bizzarre but it seemed to work: it flushed several fish which were gobbled up quickly.

And here's one of the Great Egrets........

Other stuff in Hakodate this week included Rustic Bunting, Coal and Varied Tit, Brown Dipper, Red Flanked Bluetail, Daurian Redstart, Jay, Little Grebe, Coot, Wigeon...........typical autimn stuff really. At Kamiiso there were more Great Egret  and Coot as well as lots of common ducks including Goosander, Pintail, Wigeon and Pochard, Glaucous Winged Gull and Long Tailed Rosefinch.

At Onuma yesterday I tried to get better photos of the Black Woodpeckers in nice light but they weren't co-operating at all and stayed well out of range of the camera. A shame as the light at Onuma was stunning........

Hopefully the first icy blasts will hit south Hokkaido soon and bring some winter birds with it..........

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As you were..........again

A nice autumnal day after several rainy ones saw me take a walk down the river. The egrets were still there, indeed there were more than last time. 3 Great Egret, 1 Little Egret and 2 Grey Heron.

I missed the Little Egret catching a reasonable sized fish (it was behind a bushy area). Not much else around town. 5 or 6 Daurian Redstart in the bushes along the river (including several females: usually we only get males here), a couple of flyover Hawfinch, some Rustic or Black Faced Buntings hiding in the grass, Bullheaded Shrike, Coal Tit, small flocks of flyover Jay...........

I've had my 7D just over 2 years now and it sure is easy to take BIF shots..........

The top one is a Great Egret, the bottom one Little Egret.

6-1!!!!! I didn't see that coming...........

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As you were

A pretty quiet week, with pretty much the same birds around as last time I posted........

The Taiga Flycatcher was around until Wednesday, not a great picture but you can see its' diagnostic tail pattern very clearly. It was very very active and always seemed to stay in the shady areas.

Not much else passing through, a few Rustic and Black Faced Buntings, several Daurian Redstarts too. The vegetation is thinning meaning all the garbage people dump next to the river is visible again.........

There were 7 species of duck in town, 3 Pochard had joined the Scaup in Goryokaku Park (7 of them now) and there was a female Pintail on the river today as well.

The egrets were still around. 2 Great and 1 Little Egret, the latter is a bird I don't often photograph so I tried to get a good shot of it today. It was very jumpy and all I could manage were BIF shots.

Last Sunday we went to Yakumo. On the way I saw the season's first eagles, 2 young White Tailed I think but we couldn't stop. At Yakumo there were Great Crested Grebe, large numbers of Scaup and Wigeon and 7 species of Gull including the first Glaucous and Glaucous Winged of the winter, here's a shot a of the latter.

In previous Octobers I'd seen lots of Kittiwakes and Terns fishing at the river mouth, this day there were only Black Headed Gulls.......

I enjoyed the Liverpool/Man U game last week. Liverpool should have won, why was Henderson on as a sub up front trying to knock in headers at the end when Carroll was still on the bench?

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Steady on Taiga

A heavily cropped shot of a Taiga Flycatcher near my apartment this morning. I'd first seen it yesterday, it was very difficult to photograph and this was the best I could manage. 2 years ago I saw the closely related Red Breasted Flycatcher just downstream from this place. I think this is a Taiga Flycatcher though, the call was a rapid buzzing trill, which seems to match the descriptions in my fieldguides anyway.

Other migrants around included Rustic Bunting, a lone female Narcissus Flycatcher, Japanese Bush Warbler and the first Daurian Redstart (a male) of the autumn.

Ducks are building up: Teal, Tufted Duck, Mallard and Wigeon were around today and yesterday there were 5 Scaup in Goryokaku Park. A bit of a surprise, normally they usually arrive later and I've never seen them inland before.......

I've been going back and manually resizing old photos to fit my new resized blog template. One thing that struck me was that, in the last 4 years, in mid October almost all my photos were of Night Herons. This year there don't seem to be many at all, I saw a few several weeks ago but since then.........nothing. Where are they? Are this years' birds better at hiding? Was it a poor breeding season? Do they know something we don't and have already fled south in anticipation of an ultra cold winter? Who knows.......

There were 3 species of Heron on the river today. Grey Heron of course. Plus a Little Egret...........a bird I've yet to get a decent photo of.

All BIF shots..........

They were sharing the stretch of river with 2 Great Egret.

Thank god the Premier League is back tomorrow, England's international footy and rugby teams were hard to watch last weekend. I'm listening to the ODI against India now on BBC's websites. Only available to the UK eh? Someone at the beeb forgot to switch the international feed off. Shhhhhhhh................don't tell anyone.

Just about over my cold, it prevented any trips to Mt Hakodate for the peak migration, lots of Mugimaki Flycatcher and accipter species apparently......

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OMG Sunshine

Well well well, we finally got some sunshine this morning and early afternoon (followed by a really heavy thunderstorm though).

We were at Shikabe and I was trying to get some Japanese Green Pigeon shots. BIF shots are tough for such fast flying birds and the 100-400 perhaps isn't the best BIF lens anyway (and of course I'm no expert either). When they fly against the sea it was often impossible to AF but luckily there was a patch of blue sky with the light behind me.

One problem with setting the camera up for BIF shots is when you're suddenly confronted with a bird doing something else your settings are all wrong, I can change them in slightly more than a split second but often that's not enough.

The white background was the surf, there was a big swell after yet another typhoon. The birds had to deal with big waves.......

Next year I'll approach this more seriously and sit near the rocks hidden and camouflaged. Today it was mainly BIF shots...........

Not much else around here, a few Common Sandpiper and Grey Tailed Tattler on the rocks, nothing else.

The day started early in Kamiiso with the last waders of the season (probably).

A Bar Tailed Godwit and a Grey Plover. Other waders included 1 Dunlin, 4 Red Necked Stint and several Common Sandpiper. Lots of Black Headed Gulls around now as well as the first Pintail and Teal of the autumn. There were 3 Heron species; Grey Heron, Black Crowned Night Heron and Little Egret. Actually 1 of the egrets had me thinking of Swinhoes again (bill seemed shorter and yellowish) but it probably wasn't. Here's a lousy heavy crop of 2 egrets, the one on the left seems to have a shorter lighter bill and shorter legs...........or is it just my imagination?

When I went back in the evening there were 3 egrets and they all were clear Little Egrets.

I put an ID request on birdforum anyway, you never know.......

In the ricefields there were lts of Stonechats and hirundines moving south as well as a small flyover flock of Pacific Golden Plover. I was looking for waders here, I flushed a couple of Common Snipe (I could ID them by the white edge to their wings), yet another new bird for my Hakodate list.

Not much in town last week, the weather was terrible most of the time. I did see a few migrants however.

A female Blue and White Flycatcher I think.

The commonest migrant was Asian Brown Flycatcher, they were everywhere. Other stuff included Arctic Warbler, Siberian Stonechat, Grey Wagtail as well as several unidentified thrush type things. Large flocks of Grey Starlings are around as well as the last few Red Cheeked Strarling, here's a male near my apartment.

So it's autumn now, time to get used to wearing socks and jackets again.

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Another day on the beach

Another day off and another day on the beach at Kamiiso. I didn't find any rare waders but I did find a very tame Bar Tailed Godwit.

I had a lot of time and it wasn't going anywhere so I took some wobbly handheld video. Apologies for the ropey sound quality.

Bar Tailed Godwit from Stuart Price on Vimeo.

It tended to feed higher up the beach than the Red Necked Stints, that long bill comes in very handy I guess.

Lots of pictures of the same bird but it's not a bird I usually get close to.............

There were 6 species of wader; Greenshank, Grey Tailed Tattler, Whimbrel and of course lots of Red Necked Stints. Again............

Forgive me for posting so many Stint shots, they come and go pretty quickly and are a very photogenic bird indeed.

I was hoping to find something interesting with the Stints. Last week in Hakodate other folk saw Curlew Sandpiper and Red Necked Pharalope with the Stint flocks, today all I could find was Mongolian Plover (these seem very numerous this year).

I stuck around until late afternoon to catch the Godwit in nice light. You can see it catching little worms here............

There were 4 species of Heron around. Grey Heron, Great Egret, Black Crowned Night Heron and this lone Little Egret, another bird I don't often get to photograph up here in Hokkaido.

And the Ospreys are still around.

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I watched the latest 'Robin Hood' movie last night. Wow, talk about dodgy accents and wild historical inaccuracies.................