Some Long-tailed Tits

One of the most popular subjects for bird photographers here seems to be the Hokkaido race of Long-tailed Tit.........

2017 Best Of #2

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

A Late Spring Trip #7

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

Survivor

The sick looking Black Scoter we saw over a week ago was still there...............

Some BIF surprises

It was a beautiful clear spring day in south Hokkaido.....................

The residents

Some of the local residents at Onuma yesterday afternoon......................

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....................

Miiscellaneous

An Eastern Crowned Warbler at Onuma earlier in the week.

From April 29th to May 5th I had a lot of time off and it was all pretty hectic birdingwise and I updated my blog a lot, here's some of the other stuff I photographed in that time............

Another Winter morning in Onuma

A Long Tailed Tit and a Eurasian Jay...............

Monday morning was spent in Onuma again..............

A rainy Sunday..............

A very grey misty wet November day in south Hokkaido today...................

Snowy again.......................

There was a big dump of snow yesterday and through last might meaning yet another slow weekend's birding.

I had a long walk today around town looking for something interesting, waxwings perhaps or maybe crossbills but there were none of either species. There were still  lots of Goosander on the river and a Peregrine resting atop one of the communications towers but not much else except this small flock of Long Tailed Tits.

Very difficult to photograph: small and very active and even when they sit still there is usually a branch in the way.

Yesterday was a write off, between the blizzards we managed to feed the tame tits and nuthatches at Onuma.

On the way back home in Ono we saw a White Tailed Eagle and a flock of 20 or so Bullfinch but the driving snow made photos impossible.

Glad I didn't get up to watch the Liverpool v West Brom game.

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Another year done

We got up very early this morning and headed up to Yakumo, I was hoping for a repeat of last week's eagle action........................but despite the good weather the eagles just weren't co-operating.

I got a few BIFs, inevitably. But truth be told I have a lot of photos pretty much identical to this one.

They just sat in the trees mostly.

The river is full of dead salmon and there are still quite a lot of live ones. I guess the eagles will be well fed this winter and can afford to be wary..................

I hope I can get some shots of them actually doing something next time..............

Also around were a few small birds including a flock of Long Tailed Tit....................

Some of them even starting flopping around in the snow..................

The weather was awful over Christmas and nasty weather is forecast for the remainder of the year so this will probably be my last post of 2012. So thanks for reading my blog, all 50 or so of my regular readers and I hope you all have a good 2013.......................
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A Friday morning in Onuma......

A Jay this morning in Onuma. We spent a couple of hours there, it is still snowbound except along the road but there were quite a lot of birds around.

The Jays were eating some of the food we'd left out for the tits and nuthatches.

They were a little shy and seemed to be playing hide and seek a lot of the time.

There were lots of woodpeckers around, no Black alas but plenty of Japanese Pygmys.

This is a common species and although not at all shy is so active it is difficult to get a clear photo of.

This Long Tailed Tit was also very hard to pin down.

There was quite a bit of open water at one end of the lake, the summer Grey Herons and great Cormorants have started arriving as have this species, one of the shyest of them all.

A female Mandarin Duck snapped from the car window, there was also a male but that was behind some branches. They both flew off as soon as I'd taken the above photo, after 5 years I still don't have a single decent shot of one.

Other wildfowl included Whooper Swan, Goosander, Smew, Goldeneye, Wigeon and Pintail, here's one of the latter.

Also present were Goshawk, Peregrine, Brambling, Hawfinch and lots of Oriental Greenfinch singing everywhere. Nothing at Kamiiso except the Great Egret flock and a lone Red Breasted Merganser in the harbour.

I don't even care about Liverpool's capitulation against QPR, I just don't expect them to even try to win league games anymore.

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On this day (February 17th)

February 17th 2008.

A Long Tailed Tit near my apartment 4 years ago today. That winter there was a regular flock of this species foraging in the trees and bushes next to the river. Since that time I've seen the grand total of one LT Tit in the same area.

You have to say it's cute. Admit it.

Nothing doing this week photo-wise, nothing at all. The heavy snow finally relented from Monday but it is still lying in big piles everywhere meaning it's difficult to walk around, it's still pretty cold. There have been a few birds present: a distant adult White Tailed Eagle was a nice balcony bird on the 15th,  there have been a couple of Peregrines around, a lone flyover Great Egret, Sparrowhawk, a couple of Red Breasted Merganser well upstream near my apartment and large flocks of Dusky Thrush. Still no Waxwing though, maybe this winter will be waxwingless.

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Painkillers on a dark day

A Varied Tit at Onuma this afternoon. It was a dark dark day with driving wet snow but a trip to the hospital a couple of days ago at least resulted in painkillers that seem to have taken the edge off my limp. Slightly.

They're pretty tame, as you can see.

Not much around except the resident woodland birds, I spent half an hour watching a flock of Long Tailed Tits, these are much harder to catch in a nice pose and they aren't like the Varied Tits which behave like pets.

The northern race is very cute it has to be said.

So a real crappy week comes to an end, I have to endure yet more construction noise from tomorrow (the house next door enters its seventh month of construction, the building to the rear of my flat is being pulled down leading to god knows what future noise and oh yeah for no apparent reason other than using up its' budgets  Hakodate f***ing City hall is gonna spend 4 months fixing the b****rd road in front of my flat from next month) and I also have to go back to hospital in a few days too.

At least I can escape to the UK for a while from the middle of December. I'll be jaded, bitter, angry and frazzled inside but serene on the outside as you can see from this pic my wife took of me this afternoon.

Looks like England will manage to save the First Test, I spent most of the second day following the commentary on cricinfo on my cellphone as I waited in various waiting rooms scattered across one of the local hospitals........

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