Another hot humid Sunday

The weather is still hot and humid.........................

A quiet Sunday in early April

A low key kind of day.....................

More harbour stuff...........

The Long-tailed Duck from last week was still in the same harbour.............

Another grey Sunday

A quiet Sunday here in south Hokkaido, tight finances meant we didn't want to spend a lot so we just stuck around town.

The above Whooper Swans were sitting in a snowfield in Ono. Actually it is a paddyfield, in a 6 or so weeks the farmers will be ploughing it and preparing for planting. I noticed the first Skylarks of the year in the same place and there was also a small flock of Rook.

This is amazingly difficult to photograph, they are so wary compared to the resident crow species. It is actually a fairly scarce winter visitor but as I grew up seeing loads of them in England I tend not to bother photographing them much, this BIF was the best one I could get today.

Nothing at Kamiiso apart from the common winter seaducks so I ended up in the bay area, the light was terrible. Lots more common winter water birds here. These are 2 of the more interesting ones, a Pelagic Cormorant and Red Necked Grebe.

So Liverpool's season becomes more embarrassing every fixture (Wigan?!?!).

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Another grey autumnal weekend

After several fine clear days the grey skies and rain returned: another typical late autumn weekend. We headed out east to Esan, I tried to get some Harlequin Duck shots.

It was too dark and the birds were too skittish, the only time I got to this spot and found co-operative birds and nice weather was almost exactly four years ago. This shot from that day was taken with my old $120 Sigma zoom at just 214mm.

I need to go there and be patient, unfortunately it's not really accessible by public transport so I have to rely on the wife giving me a lift and hanging around so time is never on my side. Next year, next year.....

This Pelagic Cormorant was one of many at Esan........

Another common coastal bird around these here parts is Blue Rock Thrush, another blue skittish bird. This is a female.

A few recent annoyances have left me a little grumpy, even grumpier than usual. My computer seems to be having wi-fi problems with the new router and last night my ancient analogue TV finally packed in (just before the footy kicked off).  The analogue signal was switched off this summer, the only thing I watched was footy through the old Sky digital tuner (which still worked). So now I have to buy new TV and new tuner and maybe a new satellite dish too. Before my computer picked up various internet problems I could easily watch illegal feeds of the Premier League but none of the high quality ones seem to work anymore................

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Another morning with the Brents

On a beautifully clear and mild morning I headed down to the dock area yet again to check the Brent Geese and Harlequin Ducks. The latter were not co-operative for photos but the former certainly were and hung around in an area with the light behind me instead of behind them.

The same group of 5 were present but were joined by another 3 individuals, cousins perhaps?

Much better pics than the last 2 visits that's for sure.

Not much else around, here's a Pelagic Cormorant flying off before I could get a shot.

A few other common ducks and that's about it. In the local park the Pochard was still there as well as a flock of Hawfinches and this tame Dusky Thrush.

Weird photo of the day is this.

Some kind of bottom feeding inedible shark? The local fisherman just threw them away............in Japan the eat practically anything that comes from the sea so these must taste really bad.

Spring, homecomings and bye bye lens?

It's been an odd kind of a week. Very very mild springlike weather plus last minute preparations for my visit back to England. Nothing much happening on the birding front although the owner of the 100-400 lens I've been using over the winter will be shortly reclaiming it, on Tuesday perhaps. A bit of a wrench to let it go (and the photo quality on this blog will no doubt suffer, from average back down to fairly poor no doubt) but it's been great using it these last 4 months so merci beaucoup to Franck.

The Crossbills are still popping up around town and the last 'keepers' from the lens are likely to be these birds photographed today and yesterday.





I haven't left town all week. Furthest I got was Kamiso where this Pelagic Cormorant was fishing in the harbour.



This is the smaller and less common of the 2 local species of Cormorant.



The 2 Mute Swan were still present, this is fairly rare in Japan (though these are no doubt part of a small feral population found in Hokkaido).



The common Ducks and Gulls a are all still present. Here's a portrait of Black Tailed Gull, the commonest summer Gull.



Here's a yawning adult Glaucous Winged Gull on the river near my flat. A common winter vistor across the region.



The commonest resident Gull is the Slaty Backed Gull. At least this one is doing something interesting, eating a freshwater crab near my flat again. Shame the first pic is out of focus.





The right wing propaganda buses were out in force again today. I wonder what life is like is a Japanese rightwinger's home. You can imagine it.......

"What shall we do today dear? It's a beautiful spring day. A walk in the park perhaps followed by a spot of lunch? A round of golf maybe? A visit to see the grandchildren? Nah. Let's drive around town in the black bus annoying the whole city blaring out crappy military style music and mouthing off racist slogans that wouldn't be tolerated in any other civilised country. Ok! Sounds like a plan!"

Here's some shots of little Japanesey things that would warm the cockles of their little pure Japanese hearts.





I walked down to Mt Hakodate last week and took a look in the forest. It's eaxctly a year since I got the camera and one of the first places I went after I got it was the feeding station at the bottom of the hill. For some reason the active feeders weren't even close to the hide (unlike last year)....these were 2 of the better shots I could manage. A Great Spotted and a Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker.





Not much else in the forest, certainly no spring visitors. A male Bullheaded Shrike has been the only migrant I've seen so far. Other stuff around has included Redpoll, Kingfisher, the aforenmentioned Crossbills, lots of Hawfinch and Dusky Thrush, Brent Goose, 2 species of Cormorant, a Blue Rock Thrush, 7 species of Gull and a dozen or so species of Duck, a few Brambling, Jay, 5 species of Tit, Nuthatch, Wren and Black Backed Wagtail.......here's a Dusky Thrush and an overexposed pair of Brent Goose.





So an interesting 12 months with my first DSLR. I got some ok shots, especially with the 100-400 but also with the shorter 70-300. It'll be back to that one until at least the autumn.

Unless something dramatic appears in front of the camera on my short walk tommorrow my next post should be from England. It's been a long time since I've been back. I'm prepared to be shocked by prices, lots of semi-awkward conversations with people I haven't seen in ages and ages, delighted by decent bread and Indian food and am really looking forward to going to my old local patch with a scope and camera. I'm dreading the long uncomfortable journey, though we at least have 24 hours in Tokyo on Wednesday/Thursday at the beginning of the trip.

So Liverpool have FIVE huge games coming up and I'll be in England for 3 of them. I have a sneaking feeling they'll finish the season extremely strongly. Exactly how strongly and to what end we'll have to wait and see. But please god at least let's not lose to Man U again.

*EDITED TO ADD*

Mascherano is an idiot, Steve Bennet is a moron, Ronaldo is a smarmy w*nker, Kuyt is useless and football I hate you.

Err...........more Brent Goose and Gulls

A bit of a grey Sunday in south Hokkaido. Not especially cold. But grey. I met Franck today (the French cheesemaker from Date Monbetsu). Franck is the person who kindly lent me the nice lens for the winter. You can check Franck's pictures here.

We went to see the Asian Rosy Finches near Menagawa. Except they weren't actually there. I did mamange to find a Japanese Accentor for Franck (a lifer for him) and there were also Peregrine, White Tailed Eagle, Rustic Bunting, Long Tailed Rosefinch and Harlequin Duck. There were lots of Glaucous Winged Gulls, they were everywhere. here's a 3rd winter bird with a 2nd winter Glaucous thrown in for good measure.





The Cormorants are coming into breeding plumage. Here's a shot of both the local species. The larger one is a Japanese Cormorant and the smaller one is a Pelagic Cormorant.



The Brent Geese are photogenic even in crappy light like today.







One annoying habit I have is that I change camera settings and then forget to change them back to something more suitable, like this horribly underexposed Red Breasted Merganser that photoshop couldn't quite rescue.



The Brent Geese are as relaible as the Nuthatches.







So I just watched Man City win the Manc derby, a bit of a surprise (and their fans didn't boo during the minute's silence either which was also a surprise). Hopefully Liverpool can spring a surprise at Chelsea (and lord knows we need the 3 points considering everyone else around us is winning these days).

I downloaded the recent series of 'Shameless' and the League of Gentlemen movie (which passed me by when it was released). Good solid north western fare for me stuck here on the other side of the Eurasian landmass.

Nobody is saying Hakodate is the Garden of Eden either by the way.

Goryokkau Park has been completely taken over by an absurd white elephant construction project, the area around the river at Yunokawa is being defiled by an unnecessary shopping centre (which we all know will be a mildew covered semi derilict eyesore within 10 years). And the people don't even know how to throw a party. Scatter.