2017 Best Of #4

Some more shots from earlier in the year: these are all from March and early April...............

Some Redpolls

We went back to the place where we'd seen the Asian Rosy Finches last week but they had long since disappeared.

2015 Best of #2

Some more shots from the early part of 2015.......................

Redpolls up close

There were yet more Redpolls in Oshamanbe................

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

2014 Best of #3

Some of my fave shots from late winter through to the end of spring........................

 

f4 and sore arms

A Crossbill in the east of town this morning....................there were quite a few of them around as well as lots of Redpoll................

Both of the above are males................

Although it was a bright, sunny (even warmish) day most of the time the birds were in shade. I was handholding the 500 f4 lens and it was wide open most of the time. I should have used a monopod or tripod: after a couple of hours my arms were pretty tired.

An invasion...................

There are loads of Crossbills in town at the moment, these shots are all from yesterday..............

East Hokkaido 2014 #1

A White Tailed Eagle at Akan a few days ago.................

We just got back from a weeklong trip to east Hokkaido and back. I was with 3 non birders so it was a birding trip as such...............but I managed to get some in of course.

A quiet week in February

A Siskin near my apartment a couple of days ago.

It's been a bit of a quiet week, very mild and sunny for most of the time. The snow has turned to slush finally. Not so many birds around though, I was hoping to find some Crossbills but nothing doing there yet.

The small Siskin flock contained one Redpoll.

There have been several finch species around this week. A flock of Brambling in Goryokaku park, Hawfinch, Oriental Greenfinch and Long Tailed Rosefinch too. But Siskins were the most interesting.....

Not much else to report. Grey Headed and Great Spotted Woodpecker in Goryokaku Park, Sparrowhawk, Wren, Dusky Thrush, Coal and Great Tit.........

This Oriental Turtle Dove near my apartment is a bird I normally don't see in winter, I've seen 1 or 2 on several occasions this year.

5 species of duck on the river including a female Red Breasted Merganser and the Great Egret is still around...........

Only another 4 weeks of construction noise to endure, today they were digging up some of the new road they'd laid last week. Sometimes I think they may as well just bang big drums whilst burning ¥10000 bills: it'd achieve the same results. Lots of noise, lots of money wasted and nothing changes at the end of it.

Thanks for clicking this link........

On this day (February 24th)....................

February 24th 2008.

The winter of 2007/8 saw a huge influx of Common Redpolls into south Hokkaido, they were everywhere.
I saw flocks of hundreds of birds on the outskirts of Hakodate and even in the city itself there were loads of them............

This individual was feeding along the river near my flat and posed nicely for a few seconds before flying off.

Spring

Warm weather hit Hakodate this last few days. The temperature climbed to a dizzying 11.1 degrees celsius today. Thermal underwear and warm hats have been dispensed with, Oriental Greenfinches and Great Tits have been singing eveywhere, the slow is melting rapidly and has turned to mud and the birds have stayed largely the same. This was one of 2 Asian Rosy Finches in someone's front garden just round the corner from my flat.






New arrivals included a couple of Bullfinch and a female Pintail on the neighbourhood river. The Thayers Gull was still present and one of 5 species of Gull on the same tiny river. Crossbills are still aplenty in Goryokaku Park and Redpoll are still everywhere and some flew in front of my flat giving me a balcony tick. A Great White Egret also flapped over a couple of days ago andf this afternoon I watched a group of 15 or so Bohemian Waxwing flycatching at the top of some tall poplars (I guess they can't eat berries all year). Here's what may or may not be a Thayers Gull including a flight shot.......it looks different from the individual around Hakodate earlier in the winter. It looks a bit odd for a Vega Gull too mind.....





It's been a pretty lame few days for photos so here's some of the best of a poor bunch. It really has been a good winter for Finches.







These are a couple of sunset shots from my balcony on 2 recent separate days. Only slightly photoshopped.







So I hope Liverpool go through against Inter Milan tomorrow. Can't believe how inept the England cricket team have become over the last 2 years (well actually I can seeing as they've been like that most of my life). I watched Alien v Predator 2 yesterday..........what a stinking turd of a movie that was.

I got a new cellphone at the weekend. It has a decent 5MP Sony camera (though I need to buy a Micro SD card and card reader to transfer it to my computer), ok internet access (the full coverage isn't worth it as I, er, have a computer for that and I work from home), international coverage and lots of stuff I'll never use (for example a music player-I have to download stuff from NTT-no way, I mean I'd have to pay). It's pretty nice, I can upload photos to this blog which I may well do on summer road trips. It has an absolutely crap battery though.

Waxwings

I had a couple of spare hours yesterday and took a quick walk near my flat and was rewarded with a flock of over 100 Bohemian Waxwing.



Bang in the centre in town on a busy pedestrian street. They would fly down from the wires/TV antennae, snaffle a load of berries and fly off again. In very poor light it was difficult to get many good shots. I also had to dash to and fro across a very busy road just in front of the local Police HQ. Locals stare at foreigners anyway and my apparently strange behaviour made all their birthdays come at once.





Only 1 of the 2 species of Waxwing were present in this flock. The other one, Japanese Waxwing, han't graced Hakodate with its' presence yet this year. The shots where they're sitting on top of people's house were ok but when they all swarmed down onto the ground I could only get burred or dark images that photoshop can't rescue. They do like their berries though, even the wizened withery looking ones on Hon-cho.







Blue sky would have been nice. High ISO settings and problems with exposure settings (once again I forgot to change settings at the wrong moments) meant I was a bit disappointed when I got home and downloaded the photos onto my computer.







An old friend with his new(ish) wife passed through Hakodate on Sunday/Monday so I had to go back to tidy the flat to make it halfway decent. By the time I went out again in the late afternoon the Waxwings had gone but there were flocks of Redpoll (30 or so), Crossbill (20 or so), Brambling (20-30) and Asian Rosy Finch (4 or 5). The light really wasn't good, here's pics off those 4 species.









We went out with the aforementioned friends and had a very pleasant evening where I drank and ate far too much and this morning somewhat tired and hungover today went to Onuma before they got on the train and departed to central Hokkaido.. Lots of pics which I'll post tomorrow I think.