August begins

A not very good heavily cropped record shot of a Striated Heron to the west of town this afternoon. This is, as far as I know, an overshoot visitor only to Hokkaido and I've only ever seen half a dozen or so in the last 10 years.

Ospreys and Japanese Green Pigeons were plentiful but no photo opps. A female Black Scoter at Kamiiso was the first 'winter' visitor of the season...............

Crap pictures but interesting birds.............

The warm weather in the last week brought a couple of interesting birds with it...............

OMG not again

A Wryneck on the edge of Hakodate this afternoon, it was part of a family, here's one of the young ones.

Regular readers of this blog may remember that my last 2 summers have been blighted by construction noise close to my apartment building. Well now it's going to be 3 summers running, this year it will be our actual apartment building. Actually it was looking a little tatty and now we have 4 or 5 weeks of painting and repairs to look forward to. Half the scaffolding was erected today (whilst we were out). the hottest time of the year and the whole building will be wrapped up in a nylon tarpaulin. At least this isn't so long and we'll get a nice new exterior but still another summer working to the sounds of hammering, drilling and shouting 6 or 7 days a week. FFS.

Stil lots of stuff singing, most of the common species were around this last 3 days. Chestnut Eared and Black Throated Bunting, Oriental and Black Browed Reed Warblers, Northern Hobby, Cuckoo, Brown Thrush, Night Heron, Lathams Snipe, Siberian Stonechat, Pacific Swift, Russet Sparrow etc............

This morning we stopped at Shikabe for a look at the Japanese Green Pigeons.

The only time they landed I wasn't paying attention and my settings were all wrong and they were well overexposed, I could rescue them a little on the computer though.

Offshore at Sawara there were lots of dolphins and at Onuma there wasn't much at all birdwise, here's a Red Fox instead.

Yesterday we went to Kikonai, I was hoping the Swinhoes Egret would still be around. It wasn't but there was this species.

A crappy record shot of an adult Striated Heron, fairly scarce up here. By the time I had walked down the river and crossed the bridge and walked back down the other side to get a closer view it had disappeared.

No waders passing through yet (well it is way too early although I have seen the odd ones in late July down the years) but the breeding Common Sandpipers and Little Ringed Plovers were both present. Oh and lots of Ospreys again.

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A hot day on the beach......

Part of a group of 4 Red Necked Stints on the beach at Kamiiso this afternoon.

It was a hot hot day yesterday and the sun was usually behind the birds making them look very pale.........

When they stand around in the flotsam they are very well camouflaged.........

The holiday period has just ended and the beach was pretty empty allowing me to stalk the Stints in peace...........

One of the birds was still showing the last remnants of its summer plumage.

 

I tried to get some shots of running waders but almost all were out of focus............these were the best of a bad bunch.

The wader season is one of my favourite events of the birding calendar. 28 years ago at the end of August I made my first trip up the Ribble and got Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Curlew, Green Sandpiper and I've always been fascinated by them.

 

The only other wader species around was Common Sandpiper. There were several immature Night Herons around as well as this one which looked a bit different..........

A heavy crop and a crappy record shot of an immature Striated Heron, a local tick (#196) although I have seen them just outside town before.

Not much else about, an Osprey kept me entertained but yet again didn't come close enough for a decent shot.

On the river near my flat Eastern Crowned Warblers have started passing through again and as the vegetation thins slightly I noticed the first Night Heron since June.........

I watched the Liverpool game, not a bad result I suppose but I used some fairly choice language when Reina dropped the ball in the back of the net.

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The construction work next to our apartment building still hasn't finished. That's 12 weeks now. They were cutting tiles the last couple of days (why they have to do this on site I just don't know) and also cutting and digging up the car park, the noise is just endless.....................at least I can escape to a beach and gently harass shorebirds to forget about it for a while every now and then.

A somewhat busy week......

After last week's dearth of pictures I have loads this week, including the above Coal Tit at Onuma a couple of days ago.

Spring migration is well underway. Near my flat in the bushes by the river were more Red Flanked Bluetail, several Japanese Bush Warbler and this species, a Short Tailed Bush Warbler.



Japanese Bush Warblers must qualify as one of the most boring looking birds on the planet.



But they do have a rather startling song......



Eastern Crowned Warblers have been everywhere too, near my flat, on Mt Hakodate and also at Onuma where I took this photo.



This is one of 3 phylloscopus (sp?) Warblers in spring and by far the commonest........

The Red Flanked Bluetails really remind me of Robins back home...



The cherry blossoms are out. This is a bit of a Japanese cliche.





I've been here for ten springs now and don't really get excited by these anymore but boy do the locals love them.......

Japanese White-eyes are locals I suppose.......





Other spring migrants in the last few days have included Blue and White Flycatcher, Grey Bunting, lots of Japanese Robin (these were singing on Mt Hakodate a couple of days ago) and several species of wader. Today at Shiriuchi and Kikonai we saw Greenshank, Bar Tailed Godwit, Little Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper and one of the 4 impossible to ID species of Snipe. This bird was the most interesting, an adult Striated Heron which is pretty scarce up here.....



Some wader shots are here.

The weather has been pretty warm the last few days and I can't believe last week it was snowing. The snow was still around at Onuma on Thursday though....



Onuma is a beautiful place.



It's a shame the forest is full of litter though. And this is the view I got when I walked out of the small station at Choshiguchi.



Looks like some kind of post-apocalyptic movie set. It also smelt strongly of natto. This is a foul smelling food not well known outside of Japan. It smells like very old socks dipped in ammonia. Either they were making natto or fixing the septic tanks, dunno which one.

The resident species were all present and correct....





The Black Woodpeckers were still at their nesthole but I left them well alone. This Grey Headed Woodpecker was a nice find nearby.......



And the turtles have reappeared at Omuma.......



More Onuma shots are here.

And in Hakodate a couple of Crossbills made a surprise appearance in the park near my flat......






So the 2 Champions League semi-finals were rather dull. Barcelona were particularly disappointing, I actually want them to win as I'm tired of the Premier Leagues's domination (unless Liverpool win it of course) but they looked a tad overhyped. God help us if it's Man U/Chelsea again...........

What else is going on? Not much, I'm in the middle of a few days off. Early May is a big holiday period in Japan (and it co-incides with the cherry blossoms opening here in Hakodate so you can imagine the hordes).

I'm off drinking tonight........let's hope Boro can pull of a shock against Man U before I leave the flat. Of course I hope Liverpool beat Newcastle tomorrow but I'll be sad if (or rather when) Newcastle go down. I went to university in Newcastle and in fact lived very near St James Park. I only saw 1 game when I was there, a 2-2 draw against Liverpool (1988 or 1989?). How times have changed. Much was made about one of Newcatle's line-up that day. They had (gasp in amazement) a Brazilian player!!! Who'd have thought it eh? Mirandinha or whatever his name was. Another thing which shows how the game has changed was that sections of the crowd made monkey noises when John Barnes got the ball. I'm not 100% sure but I think Newcastle got relegated that season too........

I'm going to open a galleries page on smugmug. I've already started actually.

This week's episode of 'Shameless' made me laugh out loud, Frank Gallagher at the funeral............