Another day with the Eagles

We headed up to Yakumo today to take another look at the Eagles. After the recent cold snap Yakumo was looking more wintry than ever with deep deep snowfields making off road birding almost impossible. I tried. Waist deep snow. I need snowshoes.........they're on the list for next winter.



There seemed to be a lot of Eagles today. I'd say at least 50, maybe more. About 20 or so adult Stellers, about 15 or so adult White Taileds and the rest immatures of both species. There were no Eagles perched in trees where it was safe to stop......except this one.



Now that would have been the perfect shot if the branch/twigs weren't there. This individual played hide and seek with me for a minute or so before it flew off. Still it's the closest I've ever been to a wild Eagle (no more than 6 or 7 metres).

Most of today's shots are of birds in flight ('bifs' to use birder's jargon).



Of course there were lots of birds perched on trees on the valley sides but not close enough for a picture. So bifs it is. I have to say I haven't really got the bif knack yet...........metering is tricky especially against white skies, I lose focus a lot of the time (should I be using AI servo? Single or continuous shooting? I was using one shot focus and single shooting-perhaps a mistake) and basically I'm just not quick enough most of the time.





In case you didn't know, the black and white ones are the Stellers Sea Eagles and the brown ones are the White Tailed Eagles.

And here are 2 immatures. The first is a Stellers and the second a White Tailed. I think. The first one has the big Stellers beak anyway.





It was very very cold..........my hands and feet were like blocks of ice when I got back to the car.





I also saw something else of interest today..................some birdwatchers. Not photographers (I usually see a few of those around) but actual birdwatchers dressed in green and carrying scopes on tripods. I only saw them as we drove past near the river mouth in Yakumo. Who were they? I'd never seen them before. Perhaps not locals. Did they know just 3 or 4km away there were loads of Eagles? They all had their scopes trained on a single White Tailed Eagle that seems to always perch on a tree next to the main coastal road (but not near enough for a good pic).............

Inland there wasn't so much around although I did see another Crested Kingfisher very briefly. Other than that lots of Brown Dipper, a few Japanese Wagtail, some Goosander and Goldeneye and a female Bunting of some sort out of the corner of my eye when I was floundering through a snow drift. At the river mouth were groups of Whooper Swan, a few common Ducks, a flock of 30 or 40 Dunlin and a few Gulls with several Glaucous and Glaucous Winged. Offshore were rafts of Scaup, Red Breasted Merganser, Black Scoter and Goldeneye with a smattering of Long Tailed Duck and a few Grebes including at least 1 Great Crested.

You know that mountain that I always post pics of? Here's a view of it from the back and a few km up the coast.

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.

Stellers Sea Eagles

An adult Stellers Sea Eagle at Yakumo this afternoon. These photos were taken from the roadside along the Yurappu River where every year Stellers and White Tailed Eagles spend the winter. And it is indeed a wintry place.......



The Eagles perch on riverside trees (or on rocks sometimes) and occasionally flap down to pick up a rotting Salmon carcass. Actually I was surprised to see quite a few live Salmon still swimming around in the shallows.

It can be rather difficult to get a good shot of the Eagles, simply because they fly off as soon as you get out of the car. There aren't many safe places to stop either as snow ploughs dump snow at the side of the road and also the icy road is full of bends and curves full of aggressive Japanese drivers. Well they seem aggressive when you're trying to go slowly checking for Eagles and they're right up your a*se.





We got lucky with this bird. I had about 2 minutes to fire off some shots with the car window open. The engine was running, the light was crap, it was snowing slightly and my wife was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel trying to get me to hurry up. Canon EF 100-400L IS USM I salute you.

I did of course get out of the car to try and get some flight shots but these weren't so successful. This was the best of a bad bunch. A White Tailed Eagle.



Of course blue sky would have helped. The perched Eagle pictures above needed almost no photoshopping at all apart from resizing for the web. This photo hasn't been photoshopped either............unfortunately Photoshop CS3 doesn't have an defatty filter.





We stopped at Onuma both ways to try and get a decent pic of the Ural Owl but it was nowhere to be found. Hope we didn't spook it yesterday...it was very confiding last year. The forest was again full of birds even if Onuma was even more wintry than Yakumo. 4 species of Woodpecker (including Black and Greyheaded), flocks of Brambling and Rosy Finch (the latter seems to be more common than usual this winter) and several Jay as well as the usual c common stuff. In Onuma village there was a very restless flock of about 30 or 40 Japanese Waxwing........here's a crappy heavily cropped record shot.



Hopefully there will soon be some flocks of Waxwing in Hakodate and I can get some decent pics.

We had a brief look at the flock of tame Whooper Swans which seems to be growing daily...........some appeared to be displaying.





If the Swans were full of New Year joy the small group of Geese looked as miserable as a bird can possibly look.



There was another Bean Goose somewhere but 2 of the 4 Whitefronts seem to have headed south to escape the cold.

Just before going out this morning I watched Liverpool v Wigan. A toothless display by Liverpool..........I mean c'mon.........TITUS BRAMBLE.

So gently back to work tomorrow...............and my diet is finally underway. Soba noodles for lunch, diet soup for dinner. And no beer anymore (except on Saturday nights and other 'special' occasions). Roll on Saturday night then.

New Year in Hokkaido

A wintry new year in these here parts.



A Ural Owl at Onuma this afternoon. This is presumably the same Owl I photographed last winter. My wife found it today in the same hole as last year. She had forgotten her cellphone so she rushed back to find me and just as i got to the right tree the Owl, which had been sitting in full view, dived back into its' hole as the exact moment I raised my camera some snow fell off an overhanging branch onto the Owl's head. It emerged about an hour later, flying off before I could get a shot. The above pic was the best i could manage after I relocated it a few minutes later. For a digiscoped shot of the same Owl in the same hole last year please click here.







Strange weather so far in 2008. A lots of blizzards and snow, some hail and even some brilliant sunshine. The feeding 'log' in Onuma is covered in snow. All the usual suspects were there, and despite the heavy snow, the forest was full of birds.In addition to the usual species we heard a distant Black Woodpecker and saw a small group of a dozen or so Hawfinch. None of those wanted to be photographed so here are some predictable shots of Marsh Tit and Nuthatch.







En route to Onuma both days we stopped in Ono in a vain attempt to see the Rough Legged Buzzard (which has probably move on by now anyway). Lots of Common Buzzard, a Merlin, a few Yellow Throated Bunting, a flock of 200 or so Redpoll and Siskin and a lone male Bull Headed Shrike. Here's a pic of a Black Backed Wagtail in Ono yesterday.



This morning we also had a look at the Kamiso area. Lots of stuff on the sea, 4 species of Grebe, huge flocks of Red Breasted Merganser, smaller numbers of displaying Black Scoter, another 9 or 10 species of Duck, Whooper Swan, 7 species of Gull including several Glaucous and Glaucous Winged plus Japanese Wagtail and lots of Dusky Thrush. Here are some crappy pics of a male Black Scoter flying off as I got out of the car.







Around January 2 down the Years:

1984 (1st week of January). In my teenage years I always went birding a lot in early January, something about year lists I guess. On the 1st I was in Penwortham with a flock of 100 Golden Plover on the fields down Howick Cross Lane being the highlight. They seemed to decline and last time I was home at New Year (1998/9 and 2004/5) they were nowhere to be seen. The 2nd I went to Marshside and got the usual Twite, waders and wildfowl, on the 4th was at Leighton Moss (nothing special here) and on the 7th me and some friends had a big twitch for Franklins Gull and Great Northern Diver in south Lancs (we missed both and in fact I've never seen either species in my life to date). We did get Little Gull at Seaforth.........and in amongst the Gulls was an odd one.........from my 'notes' at the time........."Common Gull size, slate grey body, paler wings with black tips, stocky with yellow bill".

1985 (1st week Jan). A similarly hectic week........my only ever Pintail at Penwortham was among 48 species on the first 2 days on my old local patch, the usual stuff at Marshside on the 3rd and Purple Sandpiper and Snow Bunting at Fleetwood on the 5th.


1986 (Jan 6). I must have had some kind of social life by this age as the only birding all week was a visit to Martinmere. Short Eared Owl, Hen Harrier and some Barnacle Geese (which I think were geniunely wild) were the pick of the birds.

1987 (Jan 2). Fleetwood again...............and by now my friend could drive. Glaucous Gull, Purple Sandpiper, Snow Bunting and lots of Common Eider offshore were the highlights.

1988 (Jan 4). A jaunt around north Mersyside, Ringed Billed Gull and Little Gull at Seaforth but we dipped on the Ross' Gull (although I did briefly get my face on the local news that night).

1994 (Jan 2). Me and 2 friends flew to Granada in southern Spain for a week. It was a great holiday that I look back on with a lot of fondness. There were 3 of us who had been friends at University and had all ended up living in London. None of us even live in England anymore (as far as I know, I've lost contact with one and have only seen the other one a 2 or 3 times in the last 10 years) and I suppose I may never see them again which is kind of sad. Anyway...........we drove around Andalucia, drank San Miguel and drank cheap wine, smoked a lot of hash, saw some Moorish palaces (well, one), hung out with some interesting people. Birds? It wasn't a birding trip at all but I did managed my first ever Hoopoe, Griffon Vulture and Crag Martin and also Crested Lark, Little Owl, Black Redstart and Serin. Here's a pic of me and one of the aforementioned friends. Happy happy times.



2004 (1st week Jan) Hakodate. Some good local stuff included Goshawk, Long Billed Plover and White Tailed Eagle.

2006 (Jan 2) my first ever day trying to get pictures of birds. A bitterly cold wintry day in Yakumo..........here's my very feeble first attempt at Stellers Sea Eagle. This was the coldest winter I've ever experienced........



I have yet to master bird photography but at least I've improved in the last 2 years. This was with my Pentax scope, a 4mp Nikon compact, a crappy zoom eyepiece from ebay and a crappier than crap Baader adapter. Still, at least you can tell what it is.