The interim

It's the interim period, not winter anymore but not really spring yet either...................

A grey morning by a lake

We stopped by Lake Toya on the way back from our trip..............

Nice weather for ducks...........

It was raining on the eastern coast all day today..................

Still there

The Ural Owl was back in its hole in Omuma and the Pacific Diver was still in its port east of Hakodate..................

A pain in the neck. And shoulder. And arm.

A juvenile (?) Mandarin this afternoon near Asabu and an Osprey at Yakumo..............

A spring afternoon in Onuma

A beautiful spring afternoon saw us in Onuma for a couple of hours.......................

The shy ones.............

A Mandarin at Onuma this afternoon. This species is one of the 3 most attractive local ducks and they are all extremely shy. Smew ( a pair of which flew away literally as soon as I looked at them today) and Falcated Duck (small numbers of which will pass through soon) are the other two...............

Osprey high above on the river near my apartment for th last 2 days, the first Swallows of the year (yesterday), another osprey and the usual common stuff at Onuma today.....................otherwise not much around.

The prodigal Owl

A Ural Owl at Onuma this afternoon, the first one I'd seen in this hole for over a year............

Duck in a tree

I was in a park in the east of town this morning.................

Golden Week 2012 #3

A Marsh Sandpiper and 2 Grey Tailed Tattler at Kamiiso this afternoon.

I had 4 out of the last 5 days off and early May is one of the best (if not the best) times of the year for local birding. Unfortunately the weather for the whole 5 days was absolutely f*****g terrible. Very heavy rain led to landslides and floods..........the amount of debris washed down the rivers and out into the sea was unbelievable. The local river (usually so small I'm embarrassed to call it a river) turned from its usual trickle to a brown swirling deluge..........

And when it wasn't raining it was too dark for any photos. Yesterday at Ono there were 10 or so Pacific Golden Plover in the gloom and this Cattle Egret, at least you can just about see a white bird in such poor light.........

I had given up on any birding on my days off until the rain stopped this morning and we headed out to a park in the east of town. It was full of birds, thank god. Too dark for any decent shots but I had a very pleasant couple of hours chasing the birds around the bushes.

There were lots of migrants including 3 Eye Browed Thrush.

And a pair of Blue and White Flycatcher too.

Also around were Asian Brown and Narcissus Flycatcher,  Japanese Grosbeak, Japanese White-eye, Varied and Coal Tit. Goldcrest, Grey Headed and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker and this drake Mandarin Duck.

Not tame at all but at least it didn't fly off like the ones in Onuma always do.

We then headed east to Menagawa in sunshine and blue skies but there were no interesting birds at all except my first Grey Wagtail of the year and a Peregrine high in the sky.

We ended up at Kamiiso in the late afternoon and in the fading light on the beach was a Marsh Sandpiper.

A local tick (#216 I think): I've seen them in various nearby locales but never locally..............

As it was getting really dark I noticed a half dozen or so Grey Tailed Tattler, the commonest spring wader. It's pretty common in autumn too but it looks much nicer at this time of year even in the twilight.

So the end of the footy season is going to be pretty exciting: interesting games everywhere. The local Sky channels can only show 3 games at once. Shame Liverpool stopped trying 2 or 3 months ago, whatever game they have (I haven't even bothered checking who they're playing) is utterly meaningless.................

So let's hope the rain stops, as (bad) luck would have it I now have 3 busy days...........so let's say let's hope for sunshine from Friday then.

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17

A Great Cormorant at Onuma today with nesting materials. All the waterbirds were concentrated on one ice free patch of the lake and there were a lot of birds it has to be said.

Not a great picture but this species is quite rare in north Japan and usually occurs only on freshwater. There is a colony at Onuma, it differs from the very similar and much commoner Temincks Cormorant in having a brown sheen to its plumage (the latter has a greenish sheen).

All I could get were BIFs today and not very good ones either.

There were also huge flocks of Pintail and various other ducks around as well as lots of Grey Heron and several Great Egret. The latter were coming into summer plumage.

The Grey Herons were catching large fish in an ice free pond.

The tame Nuthatches were around as were all the common resident species.

I saw 17 species of duck today. The most intersting were Smew and Mandarin at Onuma and pairs of Falcated Duck and Gadwall at Kamiiso. No good shots at all, only a hastily grabbed BIF of a female Mandarin survived the cull.

Other stuff around today included Whooper Swan, Brent Goose, Osprey, Sparrowhawk, Little Grebe, Coot, Grear Crested Grebe and Red Necked Grebe. Here is one of the latter at Sawara, unfortunately it was caught up in some fishing line and was looking in very poor shape.

For some reason the ports at Shikabe and Sawra had very low water levels and were almost birdless, I have no idea why the water levels were so low (I never really notice much in the way of tides here).

So it looks like spring is just round the corner then...........

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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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