A grey day with Grebes

We headed out to Shikabe this afternoon. A very dull grey day didn't help with photos but at least it wasn't so cold. the snall fishing harbour in Shikabe has produced some interesting birds in the past couple of years (including my only ever firm ID of a Hen Harrier in Japan) and there are usually various Ducks, Grebes and Gulls around. Black Necked Grebes were bird of the day though the overcast weather meant ISO was rather high and most of these pics look rather poor at high resolution (but I'm the only person who ever sees that so who gives a toss).

One or 2 were coming into summer plumage.





The 5 species of Grebe in Japan are exactly the same as in the UK. The 4 larger species usually bob around on the waves way offshore but these ones were pretty close.







They seemed to be gorging on some disgusting looking long worms that prsumably dwell on the bottom of Shikabe Harbour.







We have a small infestation of bristleworms in our small saltwater fishtank. Maybe we should set some Grebes on to them.





Not much else new around. Some Bohemian Waxwing, Redpoll, various common seaducks and Gulls. Here are some shots of some of the commoner species including a ghostly looking adult Glaucous Gull, one of many Black Kites (amongst thousnads of Gulls and Crows) outside a stinky fish processing factory and a female Scaup.







Another win for Liverpool last night. The league table is looking interesting.......we're only 8 points off the top. If we keep winning and beat the top 2............plus Man U/Arsenal have to play each other and both have to play Chelsea......hmmmmmmm........of course it'll probably all end in tears or anticlimax but at least our rivals for 4th place are losing 1-0 at Fulham as I type. Some very big games coming up for all the top 4 anyway and not just in the Premier League either. I'll be home bang in the middle of it all too..looks like I'll possibly be watching the Champions League game against Arsenal in a pub in the Lake District.

Black Woodpecker #2

...........continued form yesterday.

It was crystal clear at Onuma and here's 2 familiar views of Mt Komagadake.






The female Black Woodpecker posed beautifully agianst the clear blue sky. Naturally I fired off lots of shots at various focal lengths/settings and ended up with about 200 reasonanly good shots that all look the same.

These selected are really no better or worse than the dozens of others on my hard drive.







There were other Woodpeckers around. 5 species at Onuma and we saw 4 of them today. The two most numerous are Japanese Pygmy and Great Spotted. Here's a shot of the latter.



No Nuthatch shots yesterday (though there were plenty around) as i was concentrating on the Black Woodpecker........but here's Marsh Tit instead.



We headed back to Hakodate in the afternoon and I took a walk in Shiki no Mori, a park in the northern part of town. I've seen some good birds here before but yesterday it was extremely quiet.........a few Jay and Nuthatch plus I heard some Crossbill somewhere off in the forest. We finished the day off at Kamiso. I haven't done much seawatching at all this winter so I dusted off the scope and scanned the waves. The usual seaduck were bobbing up and down offshore as weel as Great Crested and Red Necked Grebes. There were also several Glaucous Gull of various ages on the beach. This is a common passage visitor in late winter/early spring. Here's a coupls of shots of a 2nd winter bird with some of the more regular species in the background.





The sunset at Kamiso just before we went home.



So 2 weeks today I fly to England. It'll be my first visit home for over 3 years. At the moment the agenda consists of a trip to York, Hadrian's Wall plus a night in the Lakes, an Indian restaurant or 2, a night or 2 in my old local, some birding on my old local patch (the Ribble at Penwortham/Longton), perhaps a trip to Marshside or Leighton Moss...........

Ooooh........a video

A female Black Woodpecker at Onuma this morning provided fantastic views. I hadn't even intended going to Onuma. I got up at 4.45am to watch Liverpool beat Inter Milan (nice one there lads) and headed out to the local park to see if the Crossbills were still there. It was a beautiful clear morning and the Crossbills (and Rosy Finches and Redpolls) were all around. My wife called my cellphone suggesting we go to Onuma. So we did.



Although almost all the snow has gone in Hakodate, most of the lake at Onuma was still frozen and the forest is still under deep snow. I had to wade through snow to get these Woodpecker shots.





The male appeared briefly and the female kept getting buzzed by the Nuthatches who seemed to see her as a threat. The Woodpecker flew off after a few minutes to another tree (and I'll post those photos tomorrow plus see below).

The forest was full of birds, all the common stuff plus the first Japanese Grosbeak of the year. The Woodpecker got most of my attention however. I did spare a few moments to feed the usual Tits and Nuthatches.



One of the main reasons to go was to see if there were any Eagles on the ice like there were last winter when the ice starts thawing. This was the place.



Note the lack of Eagles. My wife flushed an adult Stellers Sea Eagle from the trees but I didn't even see it let alone photograph it. There were lots and lots of Ducks including several groups of Smew but all too far away to photograph.

We eventually found an Eagle sitting out on the ice. This was also too far out to photograph but I was there to take pics of Eagles so take pics of Eagles I did. The first is the original (the 400mm lens zoomed to the max) and the second is a 100% crop. An immature White Tailed Eagle.





At least I took a few nice eagle shots in January......

Anyway here's a video of the Black Woodpecker drumming. My wife took this on the Fuji F31FD, our (well my but it's been requesitioned (sp?) by her) first choice compact digicam..




I'll post the better Black Woodpecker pics in a day or 2.

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.......