A morning with some Brent Geese

I walked down to Mt Hakodate this morning to get some shots of Brent Geeese and Harlequin Ducks. The Geese were especially obliging and in much larger numbers than the last time I was here. Actually there are loads of them everywhere this winter.





Lots of Scaup on the sea but not much else. Still no Waxwings despite the fact there are berries eveywhere for them to eat. Lots of Grey Starling, Dusky Thrush, Brown Eared Bulbuls and a couple of Hawfinch were making sure the berries wouldn't be around for much longer and the Waxwings may go hungry if they ever arrive.



There seemed to be 30 or so Brent Geese.





They hung around for a while and then flew off grunting in annoyance about something (probably about me).







The Harlequin Ducks were nowhere near as co-operative. This male was the nearest I could get. It eyed me beadily before slipping off into the sea and out of range.





Not much else around town today. A couple of Redpoll, a Brown Dipper, a few Gulls of various common species. A couple of days ago we went back to the quarry near Menagawa to try and get some Rosy Finch pics. They were extremely flighty and impossible to approach. It didn't help they were being actively hunted by both a male Peregrine and a female Sparrowhawk and 2 Common Buzzard (I have crappy pics of all 3 on my PC). This is the best I could manage.



The wooded cliffside was full of birds actually. Japanese Accentor, Marsh and Varied Tits, Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker and several Rustic Bunting. Unlike the Rosy Finches they seem to avoid predation by skulking around. This one showed for a couple of seconds allowing me to fire off a blurry shot.



Also around was a White Tailed Eagle, lots of Glaucous Winged Gulls plus the inevitable seaducks and Brent Geese.



On Sunday I headed out to Kikonai with some new company. 2 other expats who had found this blog in fact. I wanted to show them some good stuff but there wasn't much about. Several Great White Egret, 4 or 5 White Tailed Eagles, a Black Throated or Pacific Diver plus the usual common stuff.

One of them lives up in Niseko and the other here in Hakodate. The former was talking about the booming economy of the Niseko area and afterwards I felt like I was living on another planet (I always feel like that when I meet successful people). The latter went to Yakumo last week on the train and impressively hiked down the river valley (with snowshoes handy) and saw the Eagles............I get my wife to drive and take photos out of the car window.

No pictures of mountains or frozen lakes today. Here's a couple of Hakodate scenes.





The boats are for catching squid in case you were wondering.

Around February 6 down the years:

Ths will be the last time I write this kind of stuff (I started doing it 12 months ago so I've dredged up all the remotely interesting stuff already) so I'll have to think of something else to pad out my posts.

1984 (Feb 2) Marshside. Hen Harrier, Snow Bunting, Twite plus all the usual waders and wildfowl.

2000 (early Feb) Yakumo. My first ever visut to see the Stellers Sea eagles. A wonderful day. They seemed to be feeding very close to the road and I still haven't found that spot again (and trust me I've looked). Very very heavy snow I recall.

2001 (early Feb) Rio Cauro in Venezuela.



I went on a week's trip into the Amazon jungle. There were about 10 of us on a small boat and we camped in local villages. Of course there were no roads. Together with my 2 trips to the Himalaya this was the most interesting place I've ever been. Some random memories from the trip.

I had quite nasty food posoining the first night. As I crouched over the hole in the ground just outside our camp with foul noxious things squirting out of my rectum I heard a humming sound. Oh no I thought. A huge hornet or something is going to sting my arse. But no. It was a hummingbird. It was beautiful, perching a couple of feet from my head and looking at me quizically. It flew off and I don't know what species it was.

A hike through the jungle to some amazing waterfalls. I have some crappy scanned pictures on my hard drive but they can't do it justice. I took a dip and whilst I was stripping off and chaging into my swimming shorts some local women (amazons I guess but they were pretty fat and didn't look much like warrior queens) came to look at my naked body with gasps of awe. OK I made the last part up but they did hang around the bushes reting to get a peek. Honestly.

One day a group of pecaries (pig type things) swam across the river in front of our boat. Our guide asked us if we wanted to eat one. I said ok why not. Our guide leaned over the side of the boat and picked one up by its' hind legs and held its' head under the water until it drowned. He then battered it over the head with an oar to make sure it was really dead. It was the toughest meat I've ever eaten (until I tried Hokka Hokka Bento's Steak Donburi last summer that is).

Me and a Polish guy ran out of cigs. Our guide got us some raw tobacco and some leaves to roll it in. Everyone else looked on in bemusement as we rolled tobacco in the same way we rolled joints back home. It was pretty nasty and gave me a sore throat. We ran out of beer the next evening which was more serious. It was a bad night all round as i also fell out of my hammock later on as I was pi**ed out of my head on cheap nasty rum.

Birds? Absolutely loads and loads but I'm sorry to say I struggled trying to ID most of them. The bird I most wanted to see was the Harpy Eagle. I saw plenty of big (very big) raptors but couldn't get a firm ID on any of them. They probably weren't Harpy Eagles anyway. Macaws were abundant (Scarlet plus Red and Green) as were other parrots and toucans (I have no idea which species). A Bat Falcon was pretty cool as were Swallow Tailed Kites, Black Skimmer, several Caracara species, Large Billed and Yellow Billled Terns, White Necked Heron, Little Blue Heron, Collared Plover and oh lots of other things I can hardly remember. Fulvous Crested Tanager for example. The most common species were Spotted Sandpiper and Olivaceous Cormorant. We also saw those weird Amazon Dolphins and (I think-my mind is a little hazy here) some of those giant Otters. Oh and Pirhana of course..........


2005 (Feb 9) Yunokawa. Goshawk, Glaucous Gull, Red Necked grebe and Buff Bellied Pipit. Shame the construction lobby has completely ruined this area...........

A bird in the hand

One of several Nuthatches in my wife's hand this afternoon at Onuma. They're very tame (as you can see) and not scared by humans offering sunflower seeds. The Varied Tits are also bold enough to come to the hand but I haven't seen them around for a while. The Marsh Tits weren't as bold as last winter however and stayed their distance.



Lots of other birds in the forest today. 4 species Of Woodpecker, Long tailed and Willow Tits (the latter singing so I could ID them), Goldcrest and Treecreeper, Hawfinch and lots and lots of Redpoll. they were everywhere. At least 3 large flocks of 50 or more in each flock. Here's a male Greyheaded Woodpecker. You can imagine how I cursed those stupid twigs and branches.





Redpolls and Asian Rosy Finches both seem very common this winter but they're proving difficult to get a good picture of. These heavily cropped pics were the best I could manage of the many Common Redpolls all over today.





Also around were Jay, a couple of White Tailed Eagles and the Whooper Swans.

Sapporo, the major city in Hokkaido, has a huge internatiobally famous ice festival this month with lavish and intricate ice sculptures tens of thousnads of tourists come to gawp at. Not to be outdone, Onuma has its' own ice festival too. They were getting ready for it this afternoon and we sneaked a quick look. The more interesting ones hadn't been finished yet but there lots of ones like this designed to appeal to the 5 year old kid that inhabits the body of every Japanese adult.



Not so exciting so I rescued it in photoshop.



Despite the recent freezing weather there were a few patches of water on the icy surface of the lake. I'm assuming it's because of the increase in daylight hours (?). I walked out on the ice and my foot went through the crust and icy water slopped over the top of my boot..........

Still looks frozen in this photo though.



I'm starting to get a few comments and e-mails about this blog. Thanks for everyone who has taken the time to comment. It's appreciated.

Except that weirdo last year (they forced me to switch 'enable comment moderation' on for a while) who hasn't been back thank god.

A crapping Eagle

Yesterday we showed a reader of this blog (Megumi) a few of the places we usually go. Yakumo and Onuma and some stops in between. It was a pretty good day for birds if not for bird pictures. Both species of Eagle were present and afforded good views through the scope at least. Not much flying around though and I had to be content with this individual snapped out of the car window. As you can see it was snowing which didn't really help much.





We did get a very good view of a Crested Kingfisher flying yards in front of us as well as the usual common winter species of the area at the river mouth. Glaucous Gulls, Whooper Swans etc as well as a Long Billed Plover and a Great White Egret. Tis picture was at the river mouth from the bridge on Route 5.



There are probably some funny captions you could make for this picture. 'How not to behave on a first Eagle date' perhaps. If I was Gary Larson I'm sure I could think of something much better.

Driving back to Hakodate I noticed some Japanese Waxwings and managed some record shots before they flew off.





It was a productive stop as there were also some Brambling and Redpoll feeding in the same trees.



Nearby I also saw a couple of Daurain Jackdaw mixed in with the crow flocks but again they flew off before I could even take the lens cap off. We started and finished ths day in Onuma.





A male Smew was the most interesting bird. We showed Megumi the tame Nuthatches which came to the hand to be fed. I'm still searching for that perfect Nuthatch shot.





If the Nuthatches are always reliable, the mountain is even more so.



No Waxwings yet in Hakodate but this winter's influx of Redpolls continued. This was part of a group near my flat the other day.



Today there were 2 Night Herons, a single Peregrine, 2 Daurian Redstart as well as flocks of Dusky Thrush and Grey Starling.

Liverpool lost again last night. I taped it but couldn't be bothered watching it this morning so I checked the score on the internet. Thank god I didn't watch it. A penalty in the last minute..........just watch them draw against Sunderland at the weekend. Tha fans are blaming the owners but why is nobody questioning the purchases of Benitez? Kuyt and Voronin in particular are just not up to it and Kewell (who was already there when Benitez arrived) should have been moved on a long long time ago..........and a lot of the OK players he bought are just that. OK. Useful squad members perhaps.

How many Liverpool players would the top 3 actually want? Torres, Gerard perhaps. Carragher as defensive cover maybe. Reina is pretty good I suppose. Alonso (when fit) and Mascherano..........Babel as a future prospect I guess. Not many anyway......

#100

I have discovered bad light and an absent minded approach to camera settings results in crappy photos.







Well this is actually my 100th post on this blog. Nothing especially interesting to say today. The lousy weather has resulted in sparse photo opps and today's pics are heavily cropped and photoshopped. The male Merlin was one of 2 present at Kamiso where there were lots of Long tailed Tit and the mammal above. Some kind of Weasel I guess. The usual problems with twigs in the way again, for example with this Jay.



There were quite a few birds at Kamiso again. Several Common Buzzard, the aforementioned Merlin and Jay, 3 Brown Dipper, Goldcrest, 2 species of Woodpecker and 3 species of Tit, Whooper Swan, Mute Swan, several Glaucous and Glaucous Winged Gull, Great Crested Grebe and the usual common Ducks.

The Long tailed Tits were so active it was impossible to get good shots in the gloomy light.





The Weasel hung around for a few moments before disappearing into some snowhole.





Ther are lots of tracks in the snow, some I guess belonging to Foxes(or dogs) and others to Weasels and mousey type things. No Bears alas. Not that there would be any so near town as they'd be shot and turned into bearmeat before you even had time to say 'oh sh*t there's a Bear!'. Plus they should be fast asleep now anyway.

It was nice to get a Merlin photo, this was just before sundown and it was rather dark. There were actually 2 of them on the wire but the female flew off as soon as I got out of the car.



We went east of Hakodate yesterday. We both had nasty hangovers and the weather was awful. There was a flock of about 40 or 50 Asian Rosy Finch. I fired off some shots of these and also Harlequin Duck, Pelagic Cormorant and Brent Goose. And all the pics were complete crap. I mean really crap. Later on I discovered I'd switched off my lens' IS system. I was using a 1.4kg 400mm lens at shutter speeds of between 1/50 and 1/200 in poor light without IS. After I return the lens I now know IS is essential and will settle for nothing less when the time comes to buy my own big lens. Great for photos, bad for bank balance. Here's the best of a very very bad bunch.



So I've been pretty bored the last week. I've uploaded loads of photos to my flikr page (see link on the right) but have used all the half decent ones I posess. Watched a couple of FA cup ties on sopcast (that headshake goal celebration thing of Ronaldo-what a tosser), met a friend on Saturday night and drank way too much........and just wrote my 100th post on this blog.