Spring

Warm weather hit Hakodate this last few days. The temperature climbed to a dizzying 11.1 degrees celsius today. Thermal underwear and warm hats have been dispensed with, Oriental Greenfinches and Great Tits have been singing eveywhere, the slow is melting rapidly and has turned to mud and the birds have stayed largely the same. This was one of 2 Asian Rosy Finches in someone's front garden just round the corner from my flat.






New arrivals included a couple of Bullfinch and a female Pintail on the neighbourhood river. The Thayers Gull was still present and one of 5 species of Gull on the same tiny river. Crossbills are still aplenty in Goryokaku Park and Redpoll are still everywhere and some flew in front of my flat giving me a balcony tick. A Great White Egret also flapped over a couple of days ago andf this afternoon I watched a group of 15 or so Bohemian Waxwing flycatching at the top of some tall poplars (I guess they can't eat berries all year). Here's what may or may not be a Thayers Gull including a flight shot.......it looks different from the individual around Hakodate earlier in the winter. It looks a bit odd for a Vega Gull too mind.....





It's been a pretty lame few days for photos so here's some of the best of a poor bunch. It really has been a good winter for Finches.







These are a couple of sunset shots from my balcony on 2 recent separate days. Only slightly photoshopped.







So I hope Liverpool go through against Inter Milan tomorrow. Can't believe how inept the England cricket team have become over the last 2 years (well actually I can seeing as they've been like that most of my life). I watched Alien v Predator 2 yesterday..........what a stinking turd of a movie that was.

I got a new cellphone at the weekend. It has a decent 5MP Sony camera (though I need to buy a Micro SD card and card reader to transfer it to my computer), ok internet access (the full coverage isn't worth it as I, er, have a computer for that and I work from home), international coverage and lots of stuff I'll never use (for example a music player-I have to download stuff from NTT-no way, I mean I'd have to pay). It's pretty nice, I can upload photos to this blog which I may well do on summer road trips. It has an absolutely crap battery though.

Another morning with the Crossbills

2 weeks ago I got up early to watch live Champions League games and left the house early and was rewarded with some nice photo opps with this year's Crossbills. Today I did exactly the same thing (I got up and flicked between the second halves of the Man U and Arsenal games) and headed out before breakfast time to be rearded with lots and lots of Crossbills. There were over 100 of them in Goryokaku Park.





At first they were high up in the large evergreens in the centre of the park (which as you may recall is a huge construction project building a useless eyesore to provide unnecessary jobs for rude chainsmoking middle-aged men but I digress). The construction workers hadn't clocked on yet so I basically had the park to myself. The ground was frozen and it sounded like it was raining but it wasn't. The noise was dozens of pinecones dropping from the canopy after the Crossbills had extracted all the seeds. Luckily some of them came down lower allowing some photo opps. The usual problems here.............I overespose for birds against a dull sky and then they fly down and of course the lighting is different but I'm too careless and forget to change the settings. Anyway.







Crossbills have been common the last couple of weeks. The last big invasion was 5 years ago. Unlike northern Europe there's only 1 species here, the Common Crossbill. The vagrant White Winged Crossbill may occur, some of the males today had pale wing bars but it was difficult to get a decent look with all the to-ing and fro-ing. I think they were just worn feathers on 1st year Common Crossbills.........either way I didn't photograph any of those individuals.

As the ground was still frozen they had to eat snow for their breakfast beverage.





The crossed mandibles are interesting to look at but maybe incoveninet as stuff can get stuck in there.





I cleared out shortly after as hordes of Taiwanese tourists descended on the park. Plus the construction workers getting ready for a hard day's smoking, tea-drinking and chatting on cellphones at the taxpayer's expense.

Lots of Hawfinches in the park as well as smaller flocks of Brambling and Redpoll. Here are pics of 2 of the common winter species here. A male Daurian Redstart (I still haven't gotten a decent shot of one of these yet) and a Dusky Thrush.





I had a look down the river later on but not much down there (except more Redpolls) and as grey skies close in around lunchtime I headed home and took a well deserved nap. I'd been up since before dawn after all.

So maybe 4 Premier League teams in the last 8 of the Champion's League. That's if Liverpool don't f**k up next week. They'd better beat West Ham tonight too.......

A day by a lake

We took our guests out to Onuma to show them the tame Nuthatches and Tits which were bang on form as usual. Later on we even bumped into another expat from Hakodate who goes birding. There were a few Japanese photographers looking for the Black Woodpeckers. I saw this female earlier in the day...........here's a crappy record shot.



There were still no Eagles on the ice though we did see a lone White Tailed Eagle fly over the lake. The lake is still pretty much frozen and the Whooper Swans were still present. As was the lone Coot which at least struck some interesting poses.







Like I said the lake was still frozen, perhaps about 99%.



My wife managed to drop her cellphonne into the other 1%. We bought here a new one later on and my god cellphones have come on a bit since I was last in the NTT Docomo shop. My wife's new one has 5 TV stations , a 5 megapixel camera, full internet capabilities, she can use it abroad and lots of other functions she'll never actually need. I want one. I'll get it when we come back from England......

I got some nice shots of the local Great Tits which are usually much less approachable than its' congeners.





The Varied Tits were also posing nicely.





As were the Marsh Tits.





And the Nuthatches.





A slightly different view of Mt Komagadake to finish off, this one from the southern side with the railway in the foreground. My father's hobby is taking pictures of trains but sorry dad there's no train going past and I was too cold and tired to wait for one.



A busy last few days. Should I get up at 5am and watch the Champion's League and then go out for a day's birding? I'll sleep on it. Still got sh*tloads of movies to get through too.........time for a beer followed by a bath I think.

Waxwings

I had a couple of spare hours yesterday and took a quick walk near my flat and was rewarded with a flock of over 100 Bohemian Waxwing.



Bang in the centre in town on a busy pedestrian street. They would fly down from the wires/TV antennae, snaffle a load of berries and fly off again. In very poor light it was difficult to get many good shots. I also had to dash to and fro across a very busy road just in front of the local Police HQ. Locals stare at foreigners anyway and my apparently strange behaviour made all their birthdays come at once.





Only 1 of the 2 species of Waxwing were present in this flock. The other one, Japanese Waxwing, han't graced Hakodate with its' presence yet this year. The shots where they're sitting on top of people's house were ok but when they all swarmed down onto the ground I could only get burred or dark images that photoshop can't rescue. They do like their berries though, even the wizened withery looking ones on Hon-cho.







Blue sky would have been nice. High ISO settings and problems with exposure settings (once again I forgot to change settings at the wrong moments) meant I was a bit disappointed when I got home and downloaded the photos onto my computer.







An old friend with his new(ish) wife passed through Hakodate on Sunday/Monday so I had to go back to tidy the flat to make it halfway decent. By the time I went out again in the late afternoon the Waxwings had gone but there were flocks of Redpoll (30 or so), Crossbill (20 or so), Brambling (20-30) and Asian Rosy Finch (4 or 5). The light really wasn't good, here's pics off those 4 species.









We went out with the aforementioned friends and had a very pleasant evening where I drank and ate far too much and this morning somewhat tired and hungover today went to Onuma before they got on the train and departed to central Hokkaido.. Lots of pics which I'll post tomorrow I think.