A very tame Rough Legged Buzzard

The long staying Rough Legged Buzzard east of Hakodate this afternoon.

I got really lucky with this individual this afternoon, we'd ended up at this location after a long fruitless morning in Onuma and along the coast via Esan. When we arrived it was sitting in its favourite patch of trees.

Whilst I was watching it I noticed lots of small birds in the bushes and trees: Rustic Bunting, Siskin, Coal Tit and Hawfinch. Eventually it flapped off..........

Now at that point I was more than happy with these shots, easily the best I'd managed of this species. My wife wanted to take a nap in the car so I hung around for a while and it flapped back into sight and sat up on some wires..........

It was very tame and ignored me standing underneath it (Common Buzzards on the other hand fly off as soon as you wind down the window of your car). Then, as luck would have it, it hopped of its perch and started hovering low down about 10 meters away!

I had to zoom out to make sure it fitted in the frame. It also hovered in front of the only patch of blue sky in view, with the sun breaking through the grey clouds behind me.

Some days in this hobby we are lucky. Today was one of those days.

It had started off pretty poorly however. Onuma was really cold and there has been lots of snow these last few days. The pair of Smew has been joined by another male and there was an adult Night Heron on the same pond but it was impossible to approach them as several tons of snow have been dumped there. The tree where we feed the tame Nuthatches and Tits was also buried under snow, this was taken on the top of our car!

Not much else at Onuma, just the common species. Ditto the drive round the coast to Esan. Several Common Buzzard but no Rough Leggeds (except for the one in the photos of course), no Pine Bunting.

After the Rough Legged Buzzard we headed to a park in east Hakodate which was birdless except for this Ringed Necked Pheasant next to the road.......

So chaos in the cricket again, what a crazy series it has been, 16 wickets down on the first day!

Liverpool won, let's hope they can keep it up........

So it's still bitterly cold here, my feet were f*****g freezing again today. I quit smoking a few years back but all those cigarettes from my youth may have affected my circulation (maybe, I have no evidence to back that up with) and I suffer a little in the winter even with 2 pairs of socks and insulated boots.

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Oh No

A Great Egret near Kikonai this afternoon. Winter birds are arriving, Black Scoter and other ducks on the sea, lots of Gulls everywhere...........

I was surprised to see this female Pheasant cowering in the bushes near my apartment.

On Sunday I went to Yakumo with a Japanese friend and there were plenty of eagles, they were pretty skittish though and stayed up high. Here's an immature White Tailed followed by an adult and then immature Stellers Sea Eagle.

It was in the car after taking these photos that I began to experience excruciating pain down my legs. I seem to have a herniated disk meaning I have back pain and the pinched nerve has seized up my calf muscles meaning I can hardly walk. I think it's called sciatica, a term I was unfamiliar with until Sunday evening. My wife drove me around a little this afternoon and I hobbled a couple of hundred meters on Monday to see if there were any Waxwings around near my flat (there weren't). It took me 10 minutes to complete a walk I'd normally do in about 90 seconds.

Forgive me but I'm not feeling very positive at the moment. An expensive trip to the hospital beckons in the next 2 or 3 days (followed no doubt by an online fight with my insurance company as they try to pay as little as possible) and a long plane flight with a bad back and not being able to walk properly when I go back to the UK isn't filling me with mirth either. Throw in some money worries into the mix too. The construction noise means I can't even relax in peace at home. 

A bit of a downer but I know most of my visitors to this blog are Japanese and don't (or can't) even read what I say, for those that do I apologise for my whining, hopefully things will look up soon. In the meantime I don't think I'll be able to do much birding at all.

Those Ruddy Kingfishers

I've taken a lot of photos over the last couple of days and I've learned something valuable. People have huge expensive lenses mounted on non-budget DSLR bodies for a reason. I struggled with some forest shots at Onuma........at ISO 800 and with the lens wide open I left most of the photos uncropped. I even used a tripod too.......

Birds out in the open, like these in Ono, are much easier.







So the Ruddy Kingfishers are back in the same tree as last year. Right next to the road. Just a little too far for my 100-400 lens alas and my digiscoping camera seems to have given up the ghost so no respite there either. The only time they came fairly close they were a) hiding behind a branch and b) I had stupidly left the image stabilization off.





My shutter speeds weren't fast enough for flying birds in a green forest. Although the explosion of wood chips as they left the nest hole was pretty impressive.



And the pics weren't much better when they weren't moving much either.......





A couple of miles further round the lake there was Great Spotted Woodpecker nest.





The Woodpeckers had some help...........and this is a bit bizarre I have to say.





This female Red Cheeked Starling seemed a bit confused and insisted on feeding the Woodpecker chicks. Why? Had her own chicks died? Do some birds instinctively provide food when they hear chicks of other species begging for food? Either way the woodpeckers didn't seem to appreciate it and would chase her off every few minutes or so.



Otherwise lots of activity in the forest at Onuma. Lots of singing Warblers, Flycatchers and Thrushes. Wailing calls of Japanese Green Pigeon that sound uncannily like the Clangers, Long Tailed Rosefinch, oh lots of stuff.

Over at Ono there were Stonechat fledglings, more Night Herons and lots of Black Browed Reed Warblers.







Star bird yesterday was an Oriental Pratincole swooping arounnd over the ricefields at Ono (no picture I'm afraid). It was my first new bird of 2008 and a bit of a surprise find. Another surprise was this immature Kittiwake in amongst the gull flocks at Kamiso. The 9th Gull species of the year in Hakodate.



And a slightly hazy view to finish with......



Not much exciting going on in my life at the moment. I watched 'A Mighty Wind' and thought it was pretty funny. I can't get some of the songs out of my head.

I watched the opening 10 minutes of Switzerland v the Czech Republic but couldn't muster any enthusiasm for it and went to bed (the half dozen or so games even a jealous bitter little Ingerlunder like me would watch are all on at 4am), looked at our finances again and thought oh sh*t another tight summer ahead, read an interesting book on the genetic make-up of us Brits (the basic premise of which was we're mostly descended from stone age hunters from Iberia with a stong dash of central European neolithic farmers. Celts, Anglos-Saxons and Vikings merely added a bit of seasoning. And, according to Mr Oppenheimer the indigenous population may have been speaking some form of Germanic language before the 'English' barbarians arrived anyway. Anyway.....).