Noisy Woodpecker......and more Eagles

A female Black Woodpecker at Onuma late this afternoon. It was just before sunset so I had to use my lens wide open at ISO 800.........hence the title of today's post. To make it even halfway decent I had to use noise reduction filters in photoshop, something I normally never have to bother with. Actually it was noisy in the conventional sense too, retiring to a hole and crying out loud for about 5 minutes.





I was pretty close, none of the above 4 photos were cropped. I hope I can get as close to this species again (especially before I have to return the 100-400 lens). I wouldn't go as close during the breeding season of course. I think this female just uses this hole for roosting, I often see her around this area just before sundown.

Earlier in the day we had been up to Yakumo. Today was relatively mild but the eagles were nowhere near as co-operative as last week. This adult Stellers and immature White tailed were the best pictures of the morning. The Whitetailed is the only cropped pic of the day (and only slightly at that).





Once again there were lots of Eagles (I estimate 50-70). Most of them just sitting around in the distance like this.



2 Crested Kingfisher (very brief viiews), lots of Brown Dipper, a few Jay and common Ducks were the only other stuff around, Onuma was even quieter (though we only got there just before it got dark). At Kamiso 2 days ago a Black Throated Diver was the most noteworthy species and I haven't seen any Waxwings in Hakodate yet.......

Here's yet another view of Mt Komagadake, this one from the west.



Another draw for Liverpool, looks like they have a battle on just to finish 4th. After they started the season so well and England had those 2 victories in the qualifiers I had high hopes for the 2007/8 season. Now I'm hoping Liverpool can finish 4th and am trying to forget international football exists until next season. Sad but true.

Around January 23 down the years:

1983 (Jan 29) Gale force winds blew a Fulmar upstream to Penwortham.

1984 (Jan 21) Ribble at Penwortham again. 72 Whooper/Bewicks Swan, Corn Bunting and Tree Sparrow, Pinkfooted Goose, Dunlin and Snipe. The following weekend (29th) a Green Sandpiper was a surprise find.

1985 (Jan 20) Same place. same birds pretty much. 3 Ruff, 300 Dunlin plus the usual wildfowl.

2001 (mid-late Jan). I was in Venezuela, me and a friend were visting another friend who was working for the BBC. Not a birding trip really. actually not all. My only ever experience of South America to date. I landed in Caracas and my friend (who had developed an interest in birding) took me to the local park near his flat. Wow. Scarlet Ibis was the most memorable species but there was also Chestnut Fronted Macaw, Red Capped Cardinal, Plumbeous Kite, Yellow Headed and Oriole Blackbird, Saffron Finch, Blue Grey Tanager and the abundant Kiskadee and Black Vulture and oh lots of other stuff. It was a bit overwhelming to be honest, all those totally unfamiliar species.

The next day we headed off to Henri Pittier National Park. This is one of the best birding places in the whole world but I saw almost nothing...............as we were lying on the beach drinking beer. I did see Brown Pelican, Magnificent Frigatebird, Green Kingfisher, Blue and White Swallow plus a few unidentified Terns and Swifts........

I then met my other friend and we headed off to Merida in the Andes. We got the cable car up to the top (the highest in the world no less) and hiked over a high pass and down to a sphagetti western looking village whose name I can't remember. I did see Bearded Helmetcrest (a rare high altitude hummingbird) and manged to identify a handful of other species........Rufous Spinetail, Great Thrush, Velvet Fronted Grackle, Paramo Seedeater and Plumbeous Sierra Finch. The pass was over 4500 meters and we had ascended rapidly from about 2000 (I think, maybe less) and I was as unfit as ever as well as a heavy smoker. It was a brutal hike especially as were carrying all our luggage (why? I forget). Here's a pic of me from that day taken by my good friend Franny.



2003 (22 Jan) Hakodate. My first Waxwings in Japan a mixed flock of Bohemian and Japanese Waxwing, about 50 in all). They had all gone the next day.

2004. This time the first (unidentified) Waxwings were on Jan 21. On the 26th a flock of 100 Bohemian with a couple of Japanese were near my flat.......they hung around for a few days.

2005. A Waxwing-less winter in Hakodate. Not much else around either.......

2006. A bitterly cold winter and i entered hospital at the end of the month for a knee op. The Waxwings arrived early this tear on Jan 18 and there were several influxes throughout the winter. the early waves were mainly Japanese and later on Bohemian....right until later March.

2007 Even earlier last year...the 17th. Mainly Japanese Waxwing and again several influxes right through winter and early spring.......on the 25th there was an Ancient Murrelet at Moheji.

Winter continues

The cold winter continues here in southern Hokkaido. Over the last few days I've been to Onuma, Menagawa and Kamiso, all pretty near Hakodate. Friday had the best weather and ths usual common species were at Onuma.







There were also Redpoll, the usual Woodpeckers and several Jay........



The mountain looked great against a blue sky with the frozen lake in the foreground.



Over at Kamiso I got 1 local tick. 2 Mute Swan were in the fishing harbour. They are a feral species in Japan but a tick is a tick. Also around were several Yellow Throated Bunting, 2 Common Buzzard mewing to each other in a duet, 2 Great White Egret, the usual Ducks and grebes on the sea, an adult White tailed Eagle, a female Merlin and this Brown Dipper.



Today we went east to Menagawa and it was cold. We actually found a new spot neither of us had been to before. Instead of going through a long tunnel we took a side road, parked the car and walked round the coast. There were cliffs and a quarry that would make a great set for a low budget BBC post appocalyptic TV drama. There was 1 adult Stellers Sea Eagle,1 White tailed Eagle and lots of Rustic Buntings as well as various Ducks offshore including several groups of Harlequin Duck.



There were also some pretty cool icicles.



This is a female Blue Rock Thrush, lots of these on the coast.



Whilst I take photos of birds my wife prefers to take pictures of clouds. Here's one of hers from today. Like I said it was cold.



Cold and dark. I could get pretty close to these Brent Goose but shutter speeds were so low most of the shots were pretty crappy.





And to finish off here's a very cold looking Glaucous Winged Gull.



The footie was pretty dull last night. I know it's PC to drool over Arsenal but I find them so sterile to watch. Chelsea are as boring as Liverpool. Whilst I'm dutibound to watch Liverpool I have no such obligation to Chelsea thank god. Mau Utd. Pah. Good but annoying.

Can't believe the Keegan thing........are Newcastle insane?

Can I be arsed to stay up and watch tonight's game? Man City v West Ham. Probably not.............but I may change my mind.

Still no Waxwings in Hakodate, hopefully that'll change in the next few days.

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.