Channel Hopping

A Black Winged Stilt at Kamiiso this morning. This had arrived yesterday with a Common Redshank (a scarce bird in Japan and missing from my Hakodate list). The Redshank wasn't around but the stilt was...............and very shy it was too.

Summer plumage Great Crested Grebes were on the sea as well as various ducks including my first Gadwall of the year.

We then hopped over the Tsugaru Straits on a ferry................a poor man's pelagic.

The main bird to see at this time of the year is Short tailed Shearwater. There were quite a lot of them around (and they've come all the way from the South Pacific) but not as many as I'd been expecting. It was futile trying to get good shots of them. They never came close to the boat and the sea was so choppy 90% of my photos focused on the waves not the birds.

Here are a couple of shots to give you a flavour of the Tsugaru Straits anyway.

There were also a few small flocks of Red Pharalope.................these were also impossible to get a decent shot of.

I saw a couple of lone Red Necked Pharalope but the birding was pretty quiet.

Not as quiet as Oma (the town on the other side of the straits). This is a small economically depressed town on the northern tip of the main island Honshu. It is (was) famous for its tuna fishing fleet but it has to be the dullest most depressing place I've ever been in Japan. Horror of horrors it doesn't even have a convenience store. I had to kill 3 and half hours there and that is 3 and a half hours too long.

There were a few birds about. 3 Whimbrel, a Little Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper, Grey Tailed Tattler, some Red breasted Merganser, a small flock of Scaup and 3 Brent Goose.

Oma is in the news now because a new nuclear power plant is being built there and it is uncomfortably close to Hakodate. After what happened 2 years ago nobody in Hakodate is happy about that but Oma is so poor the money from the nuclear plant may well keep the town alive. It looks like the cash has already started rolling in. The ferry terminal is shiny and modern (it used to be tin shack) and the port had possibly the nicest public toilet I've used in a long long time. No squatter in sight, heated toilet seat and an ample supply of soft toilet paper.

Let's hope the power plant doesn't get hit by a tsunami then.

The way back was darker and windier but there were more shearwaters................

The Black Winged Stilt was still around when we returned................

And there were lots of Black Headed Gulls. They don't breed in Japan so we usually don't see much of them in summer plumage, so here they are looking strangely exotic............

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Grey waters and dirty optics

A Short Tailed Shearwater in the Tsugaru Straits this afternoon.

I joined a local birding group's outing on the Hakodate-Oma ferry. Oma is a smal port in the north of Honshu, it's a out 90 minutes away from Hakodate. Short tailed Shearwaters were the focus of the trip, countless numbers migrate through the straits and have come all the way from Tasmania. I've seen them from the shore before but this was the first time I've been close.

They were tricky to photograph, I have lots of shots of out of focus birds and in focus waves. Other stuff on the sea included Rhinoceros Auklet and a couple of flocks of Red Pharalope. This was a lifer for me.

In late May there is a heavy passage of Red Necked Pharalope (which again can be seen from the shore) but I didn't realise the other species was here too. Nice to see a few in summer plumage too.

There were also some Dolphins which were impossible to get a decent shot of.

So landed at Oma and had 2 or 3 hours to kill. Oma is a really rundown ramshackle place. It is noticeably poorer than Hokkaido and the town seems to lack any facilities whatsoever. This ferry service will close later this year meaning Oma will be even more of a dead-end. Me and the wife came here 10 years ago to visit the nearby Osore-zan to see the itako (mediums who can speak to the dead.............yeah right) do their thing. It was a backwater then too........

There were a few birds however. Brent Geese and Whooper Swan flocks were heading north and there was an Osprey fishing in the port. When I was taking these I was thinking 'wow, these are going to be my best ever Osprey shots'.

When I looked at them a couple of minutes later I was thinking 'wow, what the f**k is wrong with these?' I checked the camera settings and then looked at the lens. The optics were filthy, caked with sea spray I guess. I didn't have any lens cleaning gear with me and very gently cleaned it the best I could with the sleeve of my shirt.

There were several species of wader there too. Turnstone, Little Ringed Plover and a summer plumage Pacific Golden Plover. The resulting pics weren't quite as bad but still look as if they were taken through a dirty window.

The weather was better on the way back and there were still loads of Shearwaters. This one seems very pale, dunno if it was just the angle and the way the sun caught it or what...........

So an interesting day and a nice change. I met some friendly folk including a doctor from Matsumae who spoke extremely good English, the tour 'leader' who is a retired professor and a big expert on seabirds plus a couple from Sapporo who professed to be fans of this blog.

Next time I do this sort of thing I'll put a filter on my lens, a slight drop in IQ quality is better than a salty lens.

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*Edited to Add*

Whilst dumping lots of photos in the trash I've been looking through some of the other Pharalope pics and found at least 1 Red Necked Pharalope in there (not on the above pic though).