Freezing cold and I hate football.

No festive Hawfinch pics this time. The Large Billed Crows had commandeered the red berries. Some very cold weather hit Hakodate this week........easily the coldest November I can remember in 9(!) years here. Lots of snow. Here are some more pictures of very cold Gulls. 4 species here.........with the pale adult Glaucous Gull standing out.





On the river near my flat the Night Herons were still there. 2 of them including the adult below. I still can't get a clear shot without branches or twigs in the way. A crappy cropped male Daurian Redstart was my only shot of this beautiful bird.





Lots of Common Teal on the river, still a bit tatty looking after the autumn moult.





Not much else around........Brown Dipper,Coal Tit and Dusky Thrush.

Football? One of the loves of my life until something started going wrong the last 2 or 3 years. The game is changing and not for the better. The Liverpool game is on live behind me but I can barely raise the interest to turn round and watch it. What a wretchedly depressing week. I won't even say anything about England. I don't need to. After 30 years of following football I feel jaded and fed up with it like never before. Like looking at a woman and realising I don't love her anymore or taking a drug that doesn't give me a buzz anymore..........I feel like it's over. It's finished.

The Liverpool team full of players I've hardly heard of from all over the world managed by a conservative Spaniard and owned by Americans. I loved them once but now they're just not the same team. The England team full of underperforming overrated overpaid chavs managed by a cluelesss assistant coach who got knocked out by a team that had just lost to Israel before triumphing 1-0 in Andorra. Who gives a sh*t?

I'm sure I 'll go back to football's arms one day.............but I need a long break from it. Time to catch up on some movies on Saturday nights methinks.

Hawfinch and some more India memories

This blue sky was a rare break in the weather allowing me to take a picture of this Hawfinch. A slightly less colourful race than the one seen in the UK. Actually I've only ever seen Hawfinches once in the UK. May 1983 to be precise. Churchwood Penwortham. This small tract of woodland has almost disappeared as it's next to a bypass that was constructed in the mid 80's. Anyway, they're very common here especially in winter.





As I was saying the weather over the last 3 or 4 days has been awful. It's blizzarding again outside and minus 4. Winter has come early this year. The window of opportunity to get the Hawfinch pic was about 20 minutes. Luckily it was in a park only 2 or 3 minutes walk from my flat.





Not much else around to be honest. A few Dusky Thrush, some Coal Tit, a male Daurian Redstart, a few Oriental Greenfinch on their way south. This tiny park has provided me with some pretty good birds in the last few years. Red Crossbill, Whites Thrush, various migrant Warblers and Flycatchers, Wryneck, Siberian Rubythroat, Red Flanked Bluetail, Siskin etc. But today Hawfinch was the most interesting.





A Great Spotted Woodpecker was also in the park but it wasn't sat against a bright blue sky next to red snow covered berries so the pictures are crap.



Around November 21 down the years:

1998 (late November). I was in India and visited the town of Puri on the Orissan coast. I don't really know why I chose this place to spend a week or so but I'm glad I did. It took almost 24 hours to get there by train from Varanasi and it seemed like a different planet once I was there.

It was the location of my only 'real' birding in the subcontinent. I rented a boat (with driver of course) and spent a very relaxing day on Lake Chilka, a huge nearby lagoon. The birds were pretty impressive. Huge numbers of ducks including thousands of Ruddy Shelduck, a flock of about 100 Greater Flamingo, White Bellied Sea Eagle, another Eagle with a snake on its' talons (Short Toed Eagle? God knows), Brown Headed Gull, lots of Terns including Whiskered, Various Egrets and Cormorants, various waders including Black Winged Stilt and Red Wattled Lapwing, White Bellied and Pied Kingfishers, severasl types of Bee-eater.............you get the idea. Here's a lousy scanned photo of the Flamingoes.



Puri is a bit of an odd town. My abiding memory is of people squatting on the beach and taking a dump followed by the local feral pigs who ate the fresh hot snacks left by the local citizenry. I didn't go swimming or go barefoot either. My hotel was in quite a modern building and I was on the top floor. Amazingly the room had a decent toilet (no visits to the beach for me) and...........SATELLITE TV. I watched Robbie Fowler bang in a hat-trick against Aston Villa and England draw the first test in Brisbane. Both live. Puri is also a 'holy' city meaning grass and opium were legal so
I passed the time pleasantly watching the sunset over the Indian Ocean and pottering around the streets of Puri (they have 1 amazing temple but not much else). Vultures and cattle Egrets flapped overhead as well as Paddybirds, Treepies, various Drongo species and the common urban birds of India.

The most dramatic thing that happened in this very peaceful week was me dropping and smashing my glasses. the local glasses shop man looked at my good lens and made me a copy without giving me an eye test. They were fine.

Aftr Puri I headed north to Calcutta where I spent 1 night before getting yet another overnight train/bus to Darjeeling. I thankfully didn't go by this 'toytrain' though........surely the slowest form of commrcial mechanized transport in the world.



I was a little tired of travelling by this stage but I have to say I liked Darjeeling. The people were ethnic Nepali and seemed more laidback than lowland Indians, I had a spectacular view of the Himalaya from my fleapit window, I had some tasty Indian food that didn't give me the sh*ts. I even went to the zoo on a kind of 'date' with a local girl. I wasn't sure of her intentions.........I think it was perfectly innocent and she wanted a penpal or something. The zoo was predators only........Tigers, Wolves, Leopards and Snow Leopard. It was a weird day and in the evening I played snooker with a Naturalized Nicaraguan citizen from France. In Darjeeling I took a rest from smoking so much dope and my head cleared. Unfortunately my throat infection had got worse and I made plans to go back to England. Then there was a general strike............but everyone was still friendly and polite. And always possible to get a nice cup of tea of course.

2002 (Nov 26) A female Smew on the moat in Goryokaku Park.

2004 (Nov 26) A female Grey Headed Woodpecker in the same park as above. A female Goshawk was there a few days later on the 28th.

2005 (Nov 22) I first noticed the odd Gull on the river that turned out to be a Thayers Gull.

2006 (Nov 24) a White Tailed Eagle was a nice flyover species in Hakodate whilst on the local river on the 26th there was the Thayers Gull, a drake Gadwall and a Blue Rock thrush.

s**t it's cold...........

A crappy picture but at least it gives you an idea of the weather this afternoon as I stepped out of my flat for a very short walk. Yesterday was freezing cold and when I woke up this morning everything was white. Almost no birds about except for the common resident species. What usually happens is a day or 2 after the first snow there is an influx of birds moving south (Hakodate is their last stop before sunny Honshu). Sometimes just common stuff like Grey Starling, sometimes interesting stuff like Crossbill or Whites Thrush can be seen in the city parks.



We went to Onuma yesterday. Exactly the same birds a few days ago basically but I decided to concentrate on Marsh Tits instead of Nuthatches this time.





Lots of Goosander on the lake, a lone Great White Egret, flocks of Dusky Thrush and the other regular woodland stuff were around. Our visit was cut short because of my wife's shoes. Or lack of. She always removes her shoes to drive (don't ask me why) and this time she forgot to put them in the car after she took them off. She didn't notice until we were at Onuma preparing to get out and go for a walk. Just time to feed the Nuthatches and off home we went to find the shoes unmolested in our flat's parking space.



We ended up in Kamiso just before sunset and it was now very very cold with a biting wind blowing from the northwest. A few Scaup on the sea and this adult Glaucous Winged Gull braving the wind were the only noteworthy birds.



Errr............Israel won. I wasn't expecting that. Maybe next spring's road trip may not have to be arranged in the middle of June after all. But I'm not even thinking about that until after Wednesday.

a day on my local patch

I spent a rather cold Friday looking on the river near my flat and then finished the day over at Kamiso (where the above Scaup was hanging around in the fishing harbour just before sunset).



Only 1 Night Heron left now. Also on the river were Kingfisher, Brown Dipper, Grey Heron, 5 species of Duck including a lone Wigeon, Daurian Redstart and lots of Great Tit. In the local park a couple of Little Grebe were skulking in the corner of the moat and a Great Spotted Woodpecker was high up in the trees.

Hakodate's ex-mayor's 'legacy' is a huge multi million dollar white elephant project slap bang in the middle of the park. The park is the remains of a historical fort and the bufoonish ex-mayor decided to build some 'cultural attractions' in the previously pleasant park to boost tourism (or more likely line his pockets with construction bribes). 2 years and counting and it's nowhere near finished. Idiot. Rumours are we'll have to pay to even enter tha park in the future. F#*k that.

Bird of the day was this Thayer's Gull which posed nicely whilst fishing allowing me to check the wing pattern.









At Kamiso there were Red Necked, Great Crested and Black Necked Grebes offshore as well as 10 species of Duck and 6 species of Gull. I scanned offshore until sunset but no Albatross today.

We're planning a round Hokkaido road trip next year. June in fact. There was something else on at that exact same time that would have made me alter such plans but now it looks like I won't have to bother. Unless something amazing happens in tel Aviv tomorrow. If so the road trip will be in May.

Winter came. And a new lens too.

Winter 2007/8 came last night to SW Hokkaido. Snow flurries were in the air and the tops of the hills were white and frosty.



That was the only blue sky in the last week. Rain and sleet then snow. We spent last night at Lake Toya, a hot spring resort 2 or 3 hours drive from Hakodate. We stopped at Yakumo en route. Still only a few Eagles and none of them posing for photos. I did see 1 new bird though. Crested Kingfisher on the river. I only saw it for about 5 seconds. A big pale bird flashing in front of me. I got my binoculars on it, it dived into the river and flew off downstream. Other stuff on the way included Whooper Swan, Great White Egret, lots of Gulls of 7 species with the brilliant white second winter Glaucous Gull being the easiest to identify from a speeding car.



Lots of Black Necked Grebe on the lake were the main birds of interest at Toya. The hotel was the usual hot-spring type. OK room, edible food and a free spa. I have a new lens, the Canon 70-300 IS. I didn't really have much chance to try it out until I got back towards Hakodate. The Scaup at the top of this entry were in 1 of the fishing harbours that proliferate along the coastline here and back at Onuma the cold weather meant the Nuthatches and Marsh Tits were looking for food and very tame again.







The lens is sharper and the IS means I can use much slower shutter speeds (though of course this is no help if the birds are active) and get acceptable shots in gloomy light like this afternoon. This will be my last optical purchase for a while.................. well until next year's interest free installment plans anyway.



Also around at Onuma were lots and lots of Dusky Thrush and Oriental Turtle Dove feeding on all the berries, some Treecreepers and a Goldcrest that buzzed around my head and perched on my hat but didn't stay still enough for a photo.

The nasty weather meant absolutely no shots from Toya so here's a trusty one of Mt Komagadake at Onuma in a rare break in the clouds.



Nothing much in Hakodate since my last entry.......... the Night Herons were still around a few days ago when I last checked and a Brown Dipper has been making daily appearances on the river near my flat.

The weekend should see England put out of their misery by Russia in Israel. Of course I hope we squirm through but I'm assuming we won't. The last time we didn't make a final was the World Cup in 1994. I can remember watching that game against Holland in Rotterdam on my portable TV in my crappy flat in Finsbury Park. Dodgy home favouring ref that night the same as in Moscow (yes I know England have had dodgy decisions go in their favour too but this isn't the time for such level headedness). And then that game in San Marino while Holland were getting the win they needed in Poland. Awful night and now it's happening again. Sometimes I wish I was from a small country that never qualifies for anything. Something like the Faroes or Malta maybe. Then I could just relax, enjoy the games and not care who was playing and never agonising over my country not being there in the finals.

If Israel win I'll convert to Judaism. Perhaps.

After the rare Crane last week there were some more rare birds around Hakodate. If you check out Sato's blog linked on the right you can see pictures of Laysan Albatross with Mt Hakodate in the background. Taken from the short distance ferry from Hakodate to the top of Honshu. Apparently there were FIFTY of them. It's only a 1 hour ride........ and he also got South Polar Skua. Plus a Whiskered Tern alighted on the boat! If I was a twitcher I'd be gutted by the Crane/Albatrosses............. but I'm not a twitcher so it doesn't hurt. Well only a little bit.

I downloaded all the John Peel festive 50's from 1976-2004 last week and put some tracks on my ipod. I enjoyed the Black Keys, old New order and Joy Division stuff, the White Stripes and an old fave of mine, Loop. I'd forgotten what a turgid load of crap the Smiths were (none of their songs made it onto the ipod). And all that sensitive indie-rock like the Wedding Present sounds crappy now. 'Preposterous tales' by I, Ludicrous made me laugh though. That song had slipped out of my memory banks long ago.


Around November 15 down the years:

1985 (Nov 16). A Little Owl near my parent's house plus 16 Whooper Swans as a flyover.

1994 (all November) Cooktown Australia. I was working in north Queensland in the somewhat remote backwater located at the site where Cook first made landfall. What a weird 5 or 6 weeks I had there. I was painting the exterior of the Motor Inn. I had no experience of painting and decorating and was hired on a whim by the new owner of the Motel after we'd got drunk and stoned one night.

Cooktown is an odd place. Only 3 pubs. My favourite was the West Coast. Friday nights were wild........ the aborignes from the nearby reservation poured into town to spend their dole money on booze. They arrived Thursday and were gone Saturday every week without fail. I remember line fishing off the pier watching tropical storms in the distance and hiring small boats to go off into the mangroves. One time we saw a huge saltwater Crocodile sunning itself on the bank. Every evening thousands of flying foxes flapped over the hotel going god only knows where. Mango trees were everywhere and the aggressive green ants that lived in them were the bane of my life. Swarming over my sandfly decimated legs whilst I was atop a rickety ladder in the tropical heat.

There were some seriously odd people in Cooktown, People on the run from the law, complete social misfits, alcoholics, druggies, hippies, rednecks. I liked it. The person I was painting the hotel with had run away from home (he was about 18) with a suitcase containing a change of clothes, a pump action shotgun and a rifle. He'd been refused entry into the Australian army for reasons he refused to elaborate on. There was also an ex sailor with a posh accent who was named Cook. Captain Cook. Honestly I'm not making this up. He was over 60 and mentally ill and had run off from his young Asian trophy wife, stopped taking his medication and was drinking very heavily and shacked up with a toothless old aborignal hag in the room directly below mine. His family eventually came and picked him up.

I drank a lot of VB and smoked a lot of dope whilst watching England get thrashed in that year's ashes series. Despite the cricket it was one of the happiest times of my life. Birds? Lots of them. Off the top of my head I can recall lots of waders in the mangroves (actually the same ones I see on passage in Hokkaido...............probably even the same birds or their descendants-Grey tailed Tattler, Eastern Curlew for example), the noisy Pheasant Coucal hiding near the pool, White Bellied Sea eagles and Brahiminy kites always overhead, Crested Tern, mangrove kingfisher, Torresian Imperial Dove, Mangrove Kingfisher, the Rufous owl swooping around the pier at night and lots and lots of other stuff.

1995 (Nov 11/12) Ribble at Penwortham. Lots of waders including 80 Dunlin and a single Golden Plover. And a Peregrine.

1998 (mid November) I was in Varanasi India. If i thought Cooktown was weird it had nothing on Varanasi. I travelled across the border from Nepal to India and all the worst cliches of travelling in India happened to me. I got ripped off by the bus driver's heavy mob, got sick and in fact lost my voice (a nasty case of laryngitis which had started whilst I was trekking in Nepal) and arrived in Varanasi at dawn and didn't get to the hotel i wanted to because of some bullshit from the taxi driver that I couldn't be arsed dealing with in my fragile sate. Varansi was a pretty interesting place if you could ignore the people trying to con money out of you and the stupid Euro-hippies that infested every cheap hotel like bedbugs. I hired a boat and went out on the Ganges at sunrise. Here's a crappy scanned photo from that morning 9 years ago. The beautiful early morning light, cremations, riverside temples, people bathing in the filth of the river. An extraordinary place.




I saw the biggest cockroach I've ever seen in my hotel room and the bastard could fly too. Ever seen David Kronenburg's "The Naked Lunch"? That's what this monster reminded me of. The hotel staff were some of the shadiest people I'd ever met. Still sold me some weed mind. Egyptian Vulture, Rose ringed Parakeet, Red Whiskered Bulbul and House Swift are the only bird entries from that time in my birding logbook.

2001 (Nov 17). Yakumo. Lots more Eagles than there were today.

2005 (Nov 16). Also at Yakumo with Eagle numbers similar to today (ie less than 10). Also 9 Great White Egret and the usual Gulls and Ducks.

2006 (Nov 12) Onuma. After a lots of looking I got my first (semi) local Black Woodpecker. Seen loads of them there since of course. 1 year ago today (the 15th) we were at Yakumo yet again with about 20 Eagles (with 8 Stellers) and 13 Egrets this time.

Nice weather for Harlequin Ducks

I finally got some semi decent shots of Harlequin Ducks (in my 3rd winter of trying). This male was one of a group of 20 or so near Menagwa. I even had to clamber over slippery rocks in a rare display of athleticism. The background is not so nice.......these tetrapods are everywhere in coastal Japan. 'Defence' against typhoons and tsunamis apparently.

The duck I got closest to seemed to be missing 1 wing. I hope this was just because the bird was in mid-moult.



We were in Menagwa looking for an extremely rare bird. A Siberian White Crane. A friend of my wife's contacted here to say she'd seen a picture in the local paper yeasterday of said bird at Menagawa. We'd actually been in Menagawa on Sunday. So we drove over to the place it was seen. Of course the bird was no longer there (we later discovered it had left on Sunday morning whilst I was sleeping off a hangover).

Lots of Salmon (alive, dying and already dead) in the river. Fishermen aren't allowed to catch them within a certain distance of the river mouth so the coastline is dotted with little coves and beaches with men fishing for the salmon.





I even did a bit of digiscoping with my Fujifilm F31. I got this camera a couple of months ago and have been using it as a snap camera. I tried shooting some of the Japanese Cormorants on the tetrapods. Hmmmmm.......



Looks like I'll have to practice a bit more with that then.

The worst ever Eagles photo

We drove up to Yakumo today to check if the Eagles had arrived for the winter. They had. About 8-10 individuals (it should peak at around 60-70 in mid winter). 3 adult Stellers Sea Eagles, 2 adult White Taileds and 2 or 3 immatures. And they were miles away. This one disappeared just as I was getting the camera out of the car.



Hopefully in a month or 2 they'll be as co-operative as this individual was last January.






For more of these Eagle photos please go here


Other stuff I saw whilst looking out for the Eagles included lots of Brown Dipper, a pair of Black Throated Diver offshore and a few of the winter Ducks and Gulls. We finished up at Onuma. Sunsets are easier to shoot than mile high Eagles with crappy lenses.



So 8-0 last night wasn't a bad result.

Common stuff and some Himalayan memories

A Black Kite and Eurasian Jay, both near Hakodate in the last week.

A bit quiet birding wise the last week or so in Hakodate. A lot of the commoner stuff around. Lots of Jays everywhere, flocks of Rustic Buntings, flocks of paridae with Nuthatch, Treecreeper and the common Woodpeckers mixed in, Dusky Thrush and Daurian Redstart newly arrived for the winter, a few Common Buzzard flying south, 10 species of the commoner ducks and 5 species of the commoner Gulls at Kamiso and a few things still flitting around in the bushes proving very difficult to photograph. Like this Red Flanked Bluetail and Japanese Bush Warbler.






Outside town has been equally quiet. A dozen or so Great White Egret at Onuma, a few Harlequin Duck near Menagawa.



And that's about it. I have some photos of maggoty salmon corpses and a few small blurry Treecreepers which I'll leave on my hard drive.

Around November 6 down the years

Not a lot happening in my birding logbook in November.

1998 (1st week Nov). I went trekking in the Anapurna region of Nepal.Here's a crappy scanned pic of a fading photo. It doesn't do the scenery justice.




Sunrise over one of the peaks in the Anapurna sanctuary. It took me 5 days to hike there from Pokhara. I went with a fitness instructor from Amsterdam and a German whose hobby was marathon running. I was overweight and a chain smoker. Still made it to the top. Birds seen on the trek included White Breasted Kingfisher, Egyptian Vulture, Treepie, Yellow Cheeked Tit, Whistling Thrush, Plumbeous Redstart, White capped river Chat, Alpine Chough, Tickells Flycatcher, Robin Accentor, Yellow Billed Blue Magpie, White spotted Fantail, Brown Dipper and lots of Bulbuls, Babblers, warblers and other stuff I couldn't ID. I was always so knackered it was difficult to check every bird.



Naturally I cut a dashing figure on the trails. I forget now how hard it was. Since the trek followed a river valley up over 4000 metres into the mountains it involved constant ups and downs as the trail crossed the main river's tributaries. At any one time either my knees or lungs were at breaking point. The best time was the late afternoon when I was booked into whatever lodge I ended up at, drinking hot tea, eating chapattis with cheese omlettes and smoking dope (which grew everywhere along the trail) before climbing into my sleeping bag before the next day's exhaustion. If only I'd been fitter...........

This was 9 years ago now. I don't know whether the civil war or commercialization has changed the trekking experience much buy I'd love to go back to the Himalaya. This was my second time.............I hope it won't be my last. Chomorong (sp?) was my favourite place on the trail. Amazingly the lodge there had a hot shower and a western bog. One day, one day.

2005 (Nov 8) a male American Wigeon at Kamiso was one of the few rarities I've managed to find myself. Actually it's not that rare but still pretty good for Hakodate.

2006 (Nov 5) again at Kamiso. 3 Great White Egret followed by a White Fronted Goose on the 8th.


So Liverpool have an important game tonight. I hope this doesn't lead to meltdown for the 2007/8 season.

I enjoyed the Arsenal/Man U game on Saturday. Living well away from any having to listem to real life Man U fans I've ceased hating Man Utd. I actually wanted them to win. Worrying.