A rainy Sunday in mid April

It was raining all day today...................

A sleety Sunday

We headed out east today...................

Springlike

Very mild weather yesterday saw us head west...................

A quiet Sunday out east

We spent a quiet Sunday afternoon to the east of town.................

Some nasty weather

A close-up of a Blue Rock Thrush this afternoon.............

A grey January day #2

We were on the SE side of the peninsula on a still grey rainy day, not so great for bird photos....................

Out east

Sunday afternoon, we ended up in a small port on the southeastern point of the peninsula where we live................

Eagle season past its peak...........

I think the eagle season is starting to slowly fizzle out.................

A windy Sunday

An Osprey at Yakumo this afternoon.................

Siskins and Redpolls......................

Spring, I think...................

A sunny springlike day in Hakodate, well it is the end of March I suppose.

This afternoon I was in the harbour at Kamiiso.............

A grey windy Sunday in March

2 male Black Scoter at Sawara this afternoon, the fishing ports had the usual birds: Scaup, Goldeneye, Red Breasted Merganser, Black Necked and Great Crested Grebe, the usual winter gulls and several Harlequin Duck.

It was sunny but very windy and my fingers were frozen after 10 minutes outside, we headed back to Onuma. The weather was pretty poor here, grey and snowy but the thaw has started, slightly. 2 White Tailed Eagle were sitting on the ice next to an open area in the middle of the lake, the first Great Cormorant of the year had arrived and was swimming around in another area of unfrozen water. The Pintail and Smew were still present as were Goosander, Goldeneye, Whooper Swan and Great Egret.

Most of the common woodland stuff was around including Grey Headed Woodpecker and lots of Jay. The poor light didn't help with the photos, it was very dark. They were foraging on a bank which amazingly................was snow free.

By the time we got back to town it was very overcast, the port in Kamiiso had several Red Breasted Merganser eating rather large flatfish.

So Liverpool appeared to have totally given up and have stopped trying to even win games in the 2011/12 Premier League season. Nice.

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So this is March

A Red Breasted Merganser and some Scaup on the sea this morning. I walked/waded through the slush down to the nearest fishing port, not much around. In addition to the above there were Great Crested Grebe, Goldeneye and Wigeon. I could have walked down to Irifune to check out the Brent Geese and Harlequins but couldn't face the inevitable trudge through the deep snow, they'll still be around in a week or 2 when hopefully the thaw will have set in.

There were also 2 or 3 Red Breasted Merganser on the river near my apartment.

I don't really know why they are hanging around so far upstream. Not much else around: Wren, several Daurian Redstart, a handful of Dusky Thrush, a single Long Tailed Rosefinch. Very quiet. No Waxwings. No Crossbills or other winter finches.

The Grey Heron and Great Egret were still around yesterday.

Here's one of the commonest local birds, a Brown Eared Bulbul. It seems to be missing a tail.

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A day on the coast

An Osprey at the river mouth in Yakumo this afternoon.

It was a nice spring day, alternating between mild and sunny and cool and foggy. Lots of stuff on the move, skeins of White fronted Geese and smaller flocks of Bean Geese high overhead, flocks of Whooper Swans here and there and large numbers of ducks of many species everywhere. Scaup were abundant in several fishing harbours.

I managed to take a crappy handheld video too.......

I've seen about 20 species of wildfowl this week but not many pictures were worth posting from today. Still no grebes anywhere except loads of Great Cresteds at several locations. This is usually the scarcest of the 4 marine grebe species but this year it has been by far the commonest.

At the river mouth and on several beaches I tried to get some Gull shots. 7 species were present including lots of Glaucous Gulls of various ages.

Dunno why the biggest Gull species is so shy, I could only get BIF shots.

Yu can see how pale they are, especially on a sunny spring day. Indeed the Japanese name is 'shiro-kamome', literally 'white seagull'.

Glaucous Winged Gulls were also common.

And here's one chasing an Osprey.

The Osprey was one of a pair fishing at the river mouth at Yakumo.

At the port at Oshamabe I was surprised to find a flock of 30 or so Dunlin............

There were many common seaduck offshore like these Red Breasted Merganser.......

The day started at Onuma, the Varied Tits were on form here.........

Other stuff at Onuma included a couple of White Tailed Eagles sitting out in the middle of the still frozen section of the lake, Great Cormorant, Whooper Swan, Bean Goose, Smew, Goosander and Pintail, plus the usual Tits and Woodpeckers. At Yakumo there were the usual common ducks, more Swans and at all locations there were singing Skylark, a sign that spring is here......

Yesterday I went to Kamiiso and there was nothing at all really, a lone White Tailed Eagle high overhead and that was about it.

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Red Flanked Bluetail appears......

A female Red Flanked Bluetail in a small vegetable garden next to the river this morning. As is usual with this species it kept flitting around in the shade, at least this one kept still long enough for this shot, shame it was so dark. At 1/250 sec it's on my personal limit of handholdability for the 100-400. Hopefully I'll get a nice shot of a male this spring.........

The first Bullheaded Shrikes have appeared and the first buds are on the trees. It's spring.

Not much else around, still quite a few Red Breasted Merganser on the sea. This Black Kite was from a particularly fruitless trip to Kamiso last week.

Things should pick up in the next week or 2, there should be a big influx of migrants at the end of April/start of May. I have to show a couple of visiting birders around on Thursday, hope there's some interesting stuff in the forest on Mt Hakodate.

Due to a delay in paperwork we are still carless but we should definitely have it by the end of the week just in time for spring in Onuma and the May wader passage in Yakumo.

Well haven't Liverpool been pathetic in their last 2 Premier League games? If they'd beaten B'ham and Fulham they'd be in with a great shout of 4th place. But a team that relies on a 4th rate player like N'gog to lead the line has no right to expect a place in the Champions League.

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Hoopoe

A nice find this morning, a Hoopoe about 100 yards from my flat!

A scarce bird in Japan but probably commoner than in the UK. I've seen several in Japan over the years.

It was a bit nervous and kept flying off, the local Crows were harrying it.

This is the second I've seen in Hakodate, the last one was on March 30th 2005. That arrived after some very strong westerlies as did this one (last weekend saw some terrible windy weather with heavy snow too).

Strange to see them when there's snow on the ground, they're a bird I associate with sunny olive groves.

This is the second exciting bird since I last posted. The other was a juvenile Stellers Sea Eagle flying over the sea yesterday. Too far off for anything but a record shot (I won't bother posting one here) but a local tick, I think that leaves my Hakodate list on either 194 or 195.

I went to Kamiso last Friday but not only were there no birds it was absolutely freezing too. No photos from that day. Yesterday I walked down the river and was surprised to see a pair of Red Breasted Merganser well upstream. Here's the male.

I got much closer than this and the bird was in perfect light and just as I was ready to press the shutter one of those right wing propaganda trucks switched on its loudspeaker and the ducks flew off never to be seen again. Morons. '"F**king Facists Foil Foto" was the working title of this post until the I saw the Hoopoe.

Lots of Hawfinches too, this one was from yesterday.

I think I overdid some of the colours in today's photos, some (like the one above) look a bit artificial.........hmmmm.

These ones were taken through a mesh fence this morning.

I could have added 'fences' to the original title of this post too.

So Liverpool decided to start playing well with only half a dozen games to go. Looking at Villa's collapse and the run-ins for Spurs/Man City 4th place may still be possible I suppose.

Click on this if you have the time, I'll be grateful as it means I'll shoot up the rankings.