On this day (May 3rd)....................

May 3rd 2013.

A mushy record shot of a Red-rumped Swallow in Kikonai 5 years ago today. Terrible weather..........drizzle and poor light I recall but the camera was just about up to the task of a BIF shot at least. This is a scarce overshoot visitor to Hokkaido: I've only ever seen this species twice here and both times were in early May..................

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

May 5th 2011.

A Red-rumped Swallow near my place 6 years ago today.

This is the rarest of the 4 hirundine species to be found in Hokkaido and that morning I was surprised to see several of them over the local river. I've seen them a couple of times since but they remain a bit of a local rarity....................

More nice birds in awful weather

Ther first day of the 4 day Golden Week long weekend...................and it p***ed down with rain virtually all day.

At Kikonai there wan't much around except for a few hirundines skimming over the river in the rain. Mainly Asian House Martin and Barn Swallow but the flock contained 3 Red Rumped Swallows which were very tricky to get any shots of with my decrepit old lens in the terrible weather. These were all I could manage.

We headed over to Onuma but mnothing here except a few common birds in the rain.

Back nearer home the Black Winged Stilt from last week had found a friend.

I think they are both males so even if they decided to stay the summer up north we won't be hearing the pattering of little stilt feet this summer in Kamiiso...................

It was really dark when I was taking these photos, I hope they stick around and I can get them in better light as they were actually pretty tame today.

A lot of very samey shots, in mitigation this is a fairly exotic bird up here.

I tried to get some feeding shots but it was too dark to get fast shutter speeds.

Not much about today apart from the above 2 species. A pair of Gadwall and a Kingfisher at Kamiiso, several osprey here and there, a few common duck species still present.

I have to work most of tomorrow daytime, it'll probably be sunny.

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Red Rumped Swallow...........

I got up early to catch the second half of Man Utd's reserves beating some German pub team and as the sun came up it became apparent that we were finally to get some nice weather this Golden Week.

I had a quick look down the river, a lone Red Flanked Bluetail was flitting around in the bushes and this Kingfisher was flying up and down the river.

I was hoping for some of the scarcer migrants, a Wryneck maybe or perhaps a Whites Thrush. There didn't seem to be any migrants around (apart from the Bluetail) except lots and lots of hirundines. Just Asian House Martins and Barn Swallows I thought  but I was wrong...............

The flock contained 3 or 4 Red Rumped Swallows, a new bird for my Japanese list. I've seen them before in Indonesia and Greece, both times I remember thinking eh that swallow looks a bit weird.

I'm raking in additions to my Hakodate list, this was the 7th of the year so far (#204 I think).

My wife disappeared to take some cherry blossom pictures and I went back to bed for a couple of hours. We then headed out to the ricefields at Ono, no waders inland today but lots of Siberian Stonechats as always.

In the hills I got my first Sakhalin Leaf Warbler but otherwise not much else around so headed home visa Kamiiso where I saw several wader species on the beach (I'll post those later).

Back home the cherry blossoms are out. I prefer views of them like this rather than whole trees of them.

Lots of Red Cheeked Starlings arriving now.

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