On this day (August 26th)................

April 26th 2011.

A Red Knot in town 6 years ago today.

This is one of only 3 I've seen in Japan (Great Knot is much more common, in fact this was with 2 of its larger relative). I think it is an adult moulting into winter plumage (you can just about see some red on its bell).

Waderless

Typhoons, workload and various minor health ailments have kept me off the beaches this August more than I would have liked.................

Knots landing

I took a long walk down the beach at Kamiiso today and got another local tick (that takes me up to 209 now).

Can you spot the odd one out?

A Red Knot (the smaller one on the left) with 2 Great Knot. The latter is a fairly common east Asian species but the former is somewhat scarcer over here, it's only the 2nd one I've seen in Hokkaido and the first time in Hakodate.

You can clearly see the different jizz and structure.

These photos were taken in the harsh midday sun.

You can see the last remnants of sumer plumage in the Red Knot, well you can if you look really hard.

At this time of year the plumages do look very similar. The Great Knot doesn't have the same scaly pattern on its back though.

Here's a short jerky handheld video of the Knots plus some Red Necked Stints from a couple of days ago.

Not too much else around, 30 or so very skittish Red Necked Stint, a lone Osprey, Black Headed Gull, Grey Heron.............

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Moving swiftly on.................

A Pacific Swift up near Oshamanbe this afternoon. There were lots of swifts and hirundines flying south and I tried photographing swifts semi-seriously for the first time.

It was hard.

Some heavy cropping going on here.

In amongst the Pacific Swifts were smaller numbers of White Throated Needletails.

We were at Oshamanbe to check out the waders.

The bird on the left is a Red Knot, the one on the right is the very common Grey Tailed Tattler. Red Knot is a fairly scarce species in Japan and this is a new addition to my Japanese list.

There were other wader species around too; Mongolian Plover, Whimbrel, Sanderling, Greenshank, Common Sandpiper and Ruddy Turnstone. Here's a photo of the latter.

And of course the inevitable Red Necked Stints, they were everywhere in small skittish flocks.

This individual appeared to be colour ringed.

Other species today included the first Glaucous Winged Gull of 'winter', Great Egret, Japanese Green Pigeon, Night Heron, Sand Martin, Eastern Marsh Harrier and this young Peregrine.

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Still hot, when will it end?

No footy on tonight. How boring................