A pelagic visitor..............

OK I know it's a crappy picture and a very heavy crop  but it is quite an interesting bird....................

It was identified as a South Polar Skua, a visitor to northern oceans in the the southern winter I guess.

Taken from the pelagic trip off Tomakomai on Sunday. I was the only person who saw this individual, I didn't even ID it until a couple of hours later. when it was suggested it was a South Polar Skua................there must have been more than one around because luckily the other people on the boat saw a distant one later (I missed that one).

**Edited to add**

It seems to be that this was misidentified and  is actually a Pomarine Skua, check out the comments below and on this thread on birdforum.

I made a bit of a fool of myself, after 4 boat trips I still haven't worked out how to put on the lifejacket properly and have to be shown how to do it. I think I've worked it out now but I fully expect to stare at one in a dumbfounded way the next time.

Apart from the Skua it wasn't a productive trip...........................there were almost no birds on the sea at all. Really, virtually nothing. Except a few Streaked Shearwater, none of them particularly close.

Very nice autumnal weather and it was quite relaxing on the boat.

I don't regret missing the Liverpool v Stoke game at least.

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Grey Skies and grey seas

3 species from the latest Tomakomai pelagic trip. Sooty Shearwater, Streaked Shearwater and Common Tern (the east Asian subspecies).

As you can see it was very dark, a really grey wet day which wasn't so good for photographs. I struggle getting the birds in focus on a moving boat anyway and the terrible light made it even worse.

This Sooty Shearwater was nice to see up close and provided the day's nicest photos.

Streaked Shearwaters were very common.........

And there were also several flocks of Common Tern.

The terns were being harried by several Arctic Skua but they were too fast for me to capture any shots. Bird of the day was an Aleutian Tern which appeared momentarily in the gloom. Other folk saw some Japanese Murrelet but I missed them. There were also Red Necked Pharalope, a distant Laysan Albatross and a few migrating passerines on their way south (warblers and flycatchers mainly).

Back onshore Tomakomai's Magpies were everywhere (even seen from our hotel window). A Little Stint (rare over here) was reported from the harbour where the boat had departed from but we couldn't locate it, only Red Necked Stints (hell they look identical anyway). We spent a pleasant afternoon at Mukawa with some of the birders from Hokkaido University. Wood Sandpiper, Long Toed Stint, Spotted Redshank and Common Snipe were around (the latter being new to my Japanese list).

On Saturday morning I'd tried the ricefields in Ono looking for waders but the rain defeated me. I did disturb a couple of Snipe which may well have Common Snipe but it was nice for better birders than me to confirm the ID.

On the way back home we stopped briefly at Yakumo. the first Wigeon of the autumn, a lone drake, was calling from the middle of the river and I disturbed a Japanese Green Pigeon on the beach but there wasn't much else except for a lot of crows.......

I think that's a Giant Sea Turtle? At first I thought it was a cow(!), the pecked out eyes I'd mistaken for nostrils.........

Anyway, yuk.

I hooked up the wife's laptop to the internet at the hotel and watched the Tottenham v Liverpool game. I went to bed after the second red card/3rd Spurs goal. Oh dear.

September 2011...............wow what awful awful weather.........

By the way Blogger seems to be having some problems with the images, if you click on the images they may appear in a 'light box' style, this is beyond my control. On older posts it may be impossible to click on the photos to enlarge them. Hopefully this bug will be sorted out soon.

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Tomakomai Pelagic

A Black Footed Albatross off Tomakomai yesterday, one of around 20 or so offshore...........

I joined Tomoyuki and friends for a 4 hour pelagic trip. It was a warm overcast day but the sea was fairly calm (a good job as the boat was pretty small) and the birding was great, I got 6 new birds for my Japanese list and 5 of those were lifers.

Bird of the day (for me at least) was the Black Footed Albatross.

Some were quite tame and approached the boat looking for scraps........

Looks at that huge bill...........

I fired off lots of shots but I kind of forgot to get any close ups (some of these shots were under 200mm).............

Still there's always next time..............

My first ever Albatross species.........

  

I tried some action shots but these weren't so successful, I need to pay more attention to my technique/settings here........

The Albatosses were very confiding but most of the seabirds weren't so approachable. WE also saw a more distant Laysan Albatross but it was on the way back and we didn't have time to stop and take a good look.

Tomoyuki and friends were very good with IDs. The most common birds were Sooty and Streaked Shearwaters. the latter were easy to identify.

Wheres the former looked very like Short Tailed Shearwater, not sure if I'd be able to tell the difference to be honest.

There were big flocks of Sootys but none of my pics from yesterday are worth posting, as I said, next time next time......

It was difficult to photograph birds from a small boat, I'm a total landlubber and I was aware that I could slip and be tipped off any time and found it tricky to move around. Most of today's shots (except the Albatross ones) were pretty poor, not helped by the fact I'd decided to put a protective filter on my lens. My last trip on a boat had resulted in my lens front element getting soaked with sea spray and unuseable until I could get home and clean it properly. There was no spray this time and I took it off towards the end and the IQ improved noticeably.

Plus the fact I need to experiment and practise a bit more with some of the 7D's AF capabilties........

The species of the day for most on the trip was this. A crappy record shot of a Fork Tailed Storm Petrel.

There was even a flock of them around.............

There were also lots of Red Necked Pharalope, these have a knack of always flying just out of photo range............

A few Skua were also seen, Arctic and Pomarine..........here's a record shot of an Arctic resting on some flotsam.

Other birds included Rhinoceros Auklet, Common Tern, Great Crested Grebe and a flock of Japanese Green Pigeon flying around the harbour. On the drive up we got a surprisingly large number of Grays Grasshopper Warbler calling from various roadside locales and Tomakomai's famous resident Magpies.

We saw some Dolphins and for a few minutes what we thought was a pair of Minke Whales. On closer inspection it turned out to be a tree.........

Thanks to Tomoyuki for organising the trip, it was great and I hope to go back at least one more time this year. And thanks to my wife for getting up at 2am to drive us up there..........

We were lucky with the weather on the day of the boat trip, for 3 days before there was a typhoon with very heavy rain and the rain returned today too. On driving back we had a real south Hokkaido rarity: a traffic jam. Heading back south wasn't so bad but the northbound lane was tailed back for many miles. This weekend is one of Japan's three big holiday periods and we usually avoid travel at those times.

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Liverpool's first game of the season tonight. 2010 has been a footballing nightmare so far, will this be when things begin to look up?