2018 Best Of #4

Some finches and buntings from last winter................

Some smaller ones........

Not many small birds around at the moment.............

2017 Best Of #4

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

Miscellaneous late March birds............

Some more shots from Friday...........................

Yellow Throated Bunting and other stuff............

A male Yellow Throated Bunting in one of the local parks yesterday morning..............

On this day (November 21st)

November 21st 2008.


A male Yellow Throated Bunting and a female (?) Rustic Bunting on a very autumnal day 3 years ago in Goryokaku Park.

The latter is a very shy species, this is probably the only half decent shot I've ever managed of one.........

Thanks for clicking this link.

On this day (January 6th)....................

January 6th 2008.


 A female Yellow Throated Bunting on the outskirts of Hakodate. In Mark Brazil's latest book this species appears to have a new name: 'Elegant Bunting'. That sounds a bit better but for now I'll use the old name.........


These are winter visitors, usually in small groups. They like poking around under bushes on the edge of ricefields or parks. The males are much brighter but never come close enough to my camera.


This photo was taken down a dirt track in Kamiso, I had to flounder through heavy snow to get there. 2 years ago this spot was great for birds but despite going back there the last 2 winters I haven't seen much at all. The dirt track in question seems to be a favourite spot for locals to dump consumer durables and old tyres.

Yellow Throated Bunting

One of a group of several Yellow Throated Bunting in the local park yesterday. This is a female, indeed all these photos are, the brightly coloured males were much shyer........

Not much else around, the moat had frozen so no waterfowl. There were a few Hawfinch but not much else...........

I got approached by someone asking to use my photos on wikipedia, you can see them on this page, Asian House Martin.

Nothing else of much interest, here's another Brent Goose video from the other day.

Winter begins..................

Heavy snow and subzero temperatures hit Hakodate yesterday, a little earlier than normal.

Just before the snow hit I walked down to the area around Hakodate docks to check if the Brent Geese had arrived (they hadn't). Not much around in the harbour area except these Harlequin Ducks......





The day before I'd been in Goryokakau Park, the Coot was still there as well as several Long Tailed Rosefinch which all flew off every time I got near.





The temperature was a bit higher today so I went back to Goryokaku park. 3 Wigeon were poking around on the moat.



The rest of the time I was trudging through the slush and playing hide and seek with some Buntings. 2 species including this superb male Yellow Throated.





Keeping it company were 2 Rustic Buntings.





So my book arrived. The colours were OK (I calibrated my screen) and the pics are sharp enough but about 50% of the photos are too dark. I guess this means my screen is too bright. Luckily I'd saved all the edited photos so could easily brighten them slightly. Now I have to decide if any of my pics from the last 3 weeks (since I ordered my sample copy) are worth putting in the revised edition. Once I'm happy with the revised edition I'll put it on sale. I've sold 13 of my calendars so far, thanks if you've bought one. The website is only in English I'm afraid, I guess that means no-one in Japan will buy it then.

Looking forward to the finale of the Shield next week. Can't wait in fact. I hardly ever watch TV shows these days but this one has had me hooked these last few years.

The Ice Warrior

Me playing around with an icicle at Onuma this afternoon. Very cold but amazingly the sun came out today. There were a lot of Woodpeckers around today............



This is probably the best Woodpecker photo I've managed yet. A female Japanese Pygmy Woopecker. This species is the most common, followed by Great Spotted. Also around today was a male Grey Headed (no photo though) and this female White Backed Woodpecker, a species much scarcer than the similar looking Great Spotted (actually I probably overlook a few White Backeds).



No Black Woodpeckers around today. Jay, Varied, Marsh and Great Tits and Nuthatch were as common as ever.





The small flock of Rosy Finch I saw at the start of the month were still present but difficult to get a good shot of, here's the best of a bad bunch.



The lake is frozen solid now and I walked out on the ice a few times today (the ice is under a foot or so of fresh powdery snow). Some oyajis (a disparaging but useful term for 'traditional' Japanese men aged 40 and over) were out on the ice fishing for wakasagi, a small crunchy fish cooked in sweet sake, sugar and soy sauce. This bast*rd completely ruined my shot. Trampling all over the smooth snow and pitching his silly little tent on the ice. Bah.




Of course my wife has to listen to me banging on about oyajis all the time and she reminds me I'll be 40 later this year.

About minus 5 this afternoon, not as cold as a lot of places in the world but still pretty cold for the likes of me.



This winter is actually pretty standard. Last winter was very very mild and the one before was extremely harsh. Last winter I didn't even get my down parka out of the cupboard but it's seen some sterling service already this year. This was a couple of days ago just outside Hakodate.



Here are 2 Buntings I saw on the outskirts of Hakodate last week, a male Yellow Throated and a male Rustic Bunting (I think).





Not so much else about recently, I've just about shook off the cold I had last week. I watched Liverpool fall further behind last night but what about Newcastle? I went to bed after the 3rd goal and woke up this morning and saw that Man U had scored another 3! It must be hard being a Newcastle fan. I can remember when I was a student there in the late 80's and all the 'sack the board' chants. I only went to see them at St James once, a 2-2 draw against Liverpool. Liverpool were drawing against crappy northeastern teams then too. I even think Newcastle were relegated that season. Just to show how long ago it was some of the Geordie fans were making monkey noise whenever John Barnes touched the ball. Pathetic, especially as Newcastle had a black player of their own. Anybody remember Mirandinha? Didn't think so.

Big support, loyal fans, occasional flashes of brilliance amongst the mediocrity, used to be quite good a long long time ago, modern delusions of grandeur, an impossible job for a manager..........England are The Newcastle of international football.

Around January 13 down the years:

1987 (Jan 10) A male Red Crested Pochard at Seaforth, one week later on the 17th we went to Rivington Reservoir and saw Red Necked Grebe, Smew and Red Throated Diver (all 3 rare enough to twitch then, all 3 common in Hokkaido now).

1992 (mid Jan) a 2 week holiday to Portagul, I stayed with a friend in Porto. Winter in northern Portagul seemed a little grey and miserable.............I went to Spain a couple of years later and much preferred it. We did a bit of travelling around (including Lisbon) but it was basically 2 weeks of heavy drinking and I have almost no memories of the whole fortnight except lying on my friend's couch waiting for him to finish work so we could go out drinking again. Sad but true. He was an English teacher ironically enough. Birds? Black Redstart and Cattle Egret were the only 2 deemed noteworthy enough for my old logbook. The only wildlife I really recall clearly where the thousands of huge rats swimming around in the river in Porto. Still, very cheap place to get drunk and smoke cigs in........

1995 (most of Jan) a 3 week trip to Indonesia, sandwiched between Australia and Thailand.



My first ever experience of Asia. I visited Bali and Lombok. Bali was a shi*hole, I can't for the life of me understand why it is so popular (or at least the bit of Bali I saw first, Kuta). It didn't help it was the rainy season. The hawkers in Bali were the pushiest I've ever seen and the beach was covered with thousands and thousands of dead rotting fish. Nobody ever explained to me why this was so. Pollution? Seasonal changes in ocean currents? Fish 'flu?

Lombok was much much nicer, I stayed on one of the Gili islands for a week or so. It was my first 'tropical paradise' type experience and I loved it. My abiding memory is eating one of those 'special' mushroom omlettes and retreating back to my beach bungalow. There was a huge storm that night but I was unaware as I was busy trying to catch lizards in my room. I gave up and lay under the mosquito net listening to 'Second Coming' by the Stone Roses over and over again until the 'shrooms wore off, it's an album which I still have some fondness for. The next morning I woke up and saw the devastation wrought by the storm.........including the corpses of several huge monitor lizards presumably drowned out at sea. That was kind of weird as I'd been trying to catch their tiny Gecko kin the night before.

Birds? I didn't have a decent fieldguide but on the island I saw Brown Booby, Pacific Reef Egret, a few common waders including Malaysian Sandplover and Crested Tern. Elsewhere on Bali I got Javan Kingfisher, Scarlet Headed Flowepecker, Javan Pond Heron, lots of unidentified Frigatebirds, Brahiminy Kite, Spotted Necked Dove, Rufous Backed Shrike, Red Rumped Swallow and lots of unidentifiable stuff.

2003 (12 Jan) White tailed Eagle was a good flyover bird in Hakodate, a few days later I had my first ever Black Throated Diver too.


So hopefully there'll be some Waxwings passing through Hakodate soon. I booked my ticket to England finally (March 27, can't wait). I watched 'Control' last week, kind of interesting but boy was it depressing............think I'll watch 'Waiting for Guffman' next to cheer myself up.

I feel like sh*t

Very very cold gloomy weather the last 4 or 5 days................plus I caught a cold and feel like crap.

I have discoverred a new place for birds though, a little river tucked away in the countryside just outside Hakodate. It's basically where I was looking for the Rough Legged Buzzard (which I never did get to see). Lots of raptors...........Merlin, White Tailed Eagle, Peregrine, Goshawk, Sparrowhawk, Common Buzzard and the ubiquitous Black Kite. But no Roughlegged. Lots of snow the past week, I've been wading through deep snow a lot and the countryside looks like that movie 'Fargo'.

Today there was a flock of paridae which included a bird I've been trying to get a shot of a lot recently but they are so fidgety. Long Tailed Tit. Lots of photos of birds with branches in the way today.



Also in the flock were Varied Tit, Coal Tit, Great Tit, Treecreeper, Goldcrest and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, which looked a bit odd climbing around in the reeds. This was taken in a one hour break in the snow.




The small river held Brown Dipper, Black Backed and Japanese Wagtail and 3 Great White Egrets flew overhead presumably flying south as quickly as possible. We went there on Sunday too (just as my cold was kicking in) and saw Eurasian Jay and Yellow Throated Bunting amongst other stuff.







Didn't really look on the sea at all today..............last week most of the usual stuff was around including thousands and thousands of Red Breasted Merganser offshore. We had a quick look at the fishing harbour in Kamiso today, lots of retirement age Japanese men fishing for chika, a kind of small fish. This attracted quite a few Gulls and lots of Scaup.





One of the annoying things about Japan is medicne, especially simple stuff to relieve the symptoms of a cold. Basically, over the counter stuff isn't strong enough to medicate a newborn white mouse in a western lab. To get stuff that might actually work you have to go to a doctor and pay through the teeth (and pay for all the extra crap like blood tests) if you don't have local health insurance. You can't just pop down to Boots and get some flu strength decongestant, oh no. That would mean the doctors make less money wouldn't it?

Here's a couple of crappy record shots of Brown Dipper and a Black Woodpecker just before sunset at Onuma a few days ago (co-incidentally when I noticed I had a cold).





Black Woodpecker is a target bird photo-wise this year, I've located a hole where I think a female roosts. Oh great........more standing around in the snow.

A quiet week for sport, I watched Ipswich v Portsmouth in the FA Cup on my ancient PC via sopcast at the weekend. I can't believe David James is still playing. I saw Spurs play Liverpool at White Hart Lane in the early 90's and saw him walking down the Seven Sisters Road, sports bag over his shoulder after the game, with 2 or 3 friends presumably off for a night out in London. I think he must have been a sub that day. Maybe.

I hope the weather and my cold improve soon.

Black Woodpecker

A bit under the weather today. My first cold in over 2 years. And it was snowing too!

At Onuma this afternoon we pulled in to the lay-by where the Nuthatches and Tits feed. On the log where all the birds feed there was a male Black Woodpecker!

Of course it flew off straight away. It would have been an amazing photo if it had waited around a few more seconds. But it came back a few minutes later. Not in an obliging position though. I had to use manual focus (lots of branches in the way) and it was very dark and overcast so the ISO level was at its' maximum. And not exactly close either. But here it is.



With Stellers Sea Eagle this is one of the star birds of this region of Japan. The woods seemed more alive today despite the lousy weather. Varied Tits were eating out of my wife's hands again, lots of the commoner residents were around including Long Tailed Tit, Japanese Pygmy and Great Spotted Woodpeckers. A male Yellow Throated Bunting was the second most interesting bird.

Varied Tit and Nuthatch. Again.

I wish the Black Woodpecker had been as confiding.






And not so great but an ok 'record shot' of the Yellow Throated Bunting.



At Kamsiso this morning there were 3 Shoveler on the river and 1 Pacific Diver offshore. I find Divers difficult and this one was bobbing around in rough seas. I think it was a Pacific anyway. Lots of Wigeon, Scaup and Gulls (6 species) too. Not so much over at Shikabe. Lots of Glaucous Gulls but none close enough for a photo.

I'm going back for the Woodpeckers on Wednesday hopefully.



Damn this cold.