On this day (March 15th).............

March 15th 2015.

A male Merlin just outside Hakodate 3 years ago today. This is an annual winter visitor in small numbers but the usual sighting of one usually only lasts a couple of seconds as it flashes across the road and disappears into the fields.

On this day (December 5th)....................

December 5th 2014.

A female Merlin just outside town 3 years ago today. This is a regular winter visitor but usually we only see them flash by across the road and then disappear into the fields.............this one was obligingly atop a streetlight................

Red and Blue

2 red and blue species that commonly occur on the local coasts...............Harlequin Duck and Blue Rock Thrush.

End of year blizzards #2

Some more shots from yesterday (last year!) in Yakumo.................

As you can see it was snowing. Again.

Well it snowed at last

Well it got cold finally and snowed a bit...................

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

December 14th 2008.


Female Merlin just outside Hakodate.


A regular winter visitor, this species sometimes hunts in the town, I've even seen it from my living room window.........

On this day (January 28th)....................

January 28th 2008.


A male Merlin on the outskirts of Hakodate, just before sunset. This is a winter visitor in small numbers. They favour the snow covered ricefields in Ono and Nanae but I've also seen them in town, on one occasion I saw a female from my living room window.


They like perching on wires and fenceposts and have a canny ability to fly off the second before the camera's AF locks on.

A quiet week in November

A quiet week just went by, for various reasons I couldn't get out much...........

The 3 species of Heron (including the above Great Egret) were on the local river and a couple of days ago I relocated the Red Breasted Flycatcher. Not great shots (the camera settings were intended for large airborne Herons against bright skies not little skulkers in the bushes) but here we are.......

We'd heard reports of a Great Grey Shrike nearby and we went to look for it this afternoon. Nothing doing (and no Rooks or Daurian Jackdaws either) but we did see this male Merlin. This was the only shot I could fire off before it disappeared...........

There were loads of Salmon in the river in Ono. And hundreds of dead ones in the fields next to the river too, presumably a result of last week's heavy rains. Sadly no eagles feeding on them though........

A dull old week not helped by Liverpool plunging out of the Champions League.

Nothing interesting to say, I'll sign off for now.........

Merlin, Owl and a Fox.

A female Merlin by the side of the road in Ono this morning. Lots of birds in Ono, Goldcrest and Hawfinch everywhere, flocks of Rook joining the resident crow species, lots of common ducks in nearby Kamiso and also a pale buteo species that was probably just a Common Buzzard but which disappeared before i could check for Roughlegged.

The main bird of the day was this Ural Owl at Onuma.







The top one is only cropped sideways.It was off a side road in a huge tree. Someone was already there with and absurdly expensive lens and I wasn't sure how close one could go without a) scaring the Owl and b) incurring the wrath of the taciturn Japanese photographer. It was hard to choose which ones as all the pics basically looked the same.

Here's what it looked like at 400mm totally uncropped.



I also tried digiscoping. I didn't have any adapters or my decent fixed eyepiece so I just handheld the camera against the zoom eyepiece using only the automatic settings. This was my best effort, cropped to remove vignetting. I'll take the better eyepiece and adapter/cable release etc next time.



Lots of common stuff around today. White Tailed Eagle, Treecreeper, Siskin, Goosander and 3 species of Woodpecker. Here's a Greyheaded Woodpecker in an unusual pose.



The lake was starting to freeze in places.



There was however still lots of open water so the Whooper Swans were spread all around the lake.





The tame Tits and Nuthatches were around as per usual.





They were being eyed hungrily by this Fox.





And here's the obligatory shot of Mt Komagadake to finish up with.



So Liverpool seem determined not to break clear at the top of the Premier League and the England cricket team seem determined to allow India to win with a record last innings total. Here's hoping West Ham can do Chelsea later tonight and Flintoff can rip through the Indian top order tomorrow.

Song of the week: 'Mean Heart' by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, I just can't get it out of my head.

This week has been really hard. I just couldn't stop thinking about my friend Michael's death but last night at least I could talk to another old (mutual) friend from England and it was good to get some things off my chest as well as share some memories of the good times we'd had with Michael over the years up and down England.

Life goes on even if it is tinged with sadness. One thing me and Michale had in common was music, we both liked indie stuff in the 80's and early 90's. Last night I listened to some of the songs we used to play on the stereo and make compilation tapes of in his parent's living room all those years ago. Joy Division was a big fave of both of ours, not exactly the most cheerful music in the current circumstances I know but I listened to some of their songs last night and it brought back some nice memories.

I hope there's a decent stereo system wherever Michael is now. Hopefully he's already telling the angels to stop warbling all that religious droney crap and put on some good tunes instead.

#100

I have discovered bad light and an absent minded approach to camera settings results in crappy photos.







Well this is actually my 100th post on this blog. Nothing especially interesting to say today. The lousy weather has resulted in sparse photo opps and today's pics are heavily cropped and photoshopped. The male Merlin was one of 2 present at Kamiso where there were lots of Long tailed Tit and the mammal above. Some kind of Weasel I guess. The usual problems with twigs in the way again, for example with this Jay.



There were quite a few birds at Kamiso again. Several Common Buzzard, the aforementioned Merlin and Jay, 3 Brown Dipper, Goldcrest, 2 species of Woodpecker and 3 species of Tit, Whooper Swan, Mute Swan, several Glaucous and Glaucous Winged Gull, Great Crested Grebe and the usual common Ducks.

The Long tailed Tits were so active it was impossible to get good shots in the gloomy light.





The Weasel hung around for a few moments before disappearing into some snowhole.





Ther are lots of tracks in the snow, some I guess belonging to Foxes(or dogs) and others to Weasels and mousey type things. No Bears alas. Not that there would be any so near town as they'd be shot and turned into bearmeat before you even had time to say 'oh sh*t there's a Bear!'. Plus they should be fast asleep now anyway.

It was nice to get a Merlin photo, this was just before sundown and it was rather dark. There were actually 2 of them on the wire but the female flew off as soon as I got out of the car.



We went east of Hakodate yesterday. We both had nasty hangovers and the weather was awful. There was a flock of about 40 or 50 Asian Rosy Finch. I fired off some shots of these and also Harlequin Duck, Pelagic Cormorant and Brent Goose. And all the pics were complete crap. I mean really crap. Later on I discovered I'd switched off my lens' IS system. I was using a 1.4kg 400mm lens at shutter speeds of between 1/50 and 1/200 in poor light without IS. After I return the lens I now know IS is essential and will settle for nothing less when the time comes to buy my own big lens. Great for photos, bad for bank balance. Here's the best of a very very bad bunch.



So I've been pretty bored the last week. I've uploaded loads of photos to my flikr page (see link on the right) but have used all the half decent ones I posess. Watched a couple of FA cup ties on sopcast (that headshake goal celebration thing of Ronaldo-what a tosser), met a friend on Saturday night and drank way too much........and just wrote my 100th post on this blog.