Spring, homecomings and bye bye lens?

It's been an odd kind of a week. Very very mild springlike weather plus last minute preparations for my visit back to England. Nothing much happening on the birding front although the owner of the 100-400 lens I've been using over the winter will be shortly reclaiming it, on Tuesday perhaps. A bit of a wrench to let it go (and the photo quality on this blog will no doubt suffer, from average back down to fairly poor no doubt) but it's been great using it these last 4 months so merci beaucoup to Franck.

The Crossbills are still popping up around town and the last 'keepers' from the lens are likely to be these birds photographed today and yesterday.





I haven't left town all week. Furthest I got was Kamiso where this Pelagic Cormorant was fishing in the harbour.



This is the smaller and less common of the 2 local species of Cormorant.



The 2 Mute Swan were still present, this is fairly rare in Japan (though these are no doubt part of a small feral population found in Hokkaido).



The common Ducks and Gulls a are all still present. Here's a portrait of Black Tailed Gull, the commonest summer Gull.



Here's a yawning adult Glaucous Winged Gull on the river near my flat. A common winter vistor across the region.



The commonest resident Gull is the Slaty Backed Gull. At least this one is doing something interesting, eating a freshwater crab near my flat again. Shame the first pic is out of focus.





The right wing propaganda buses were out in force again today. I wonder what life is like is a Japanese rightwinger's home. You can imagine it.......

"What shall we do today dear? It's a beautiful spring day. A walk in the park perhaps followed by a spot of lunch? A round of golf maybe? A visit to see the grandchildren? Nah. Let's drive around town in the black bus annoying the whole city blaring out crappy military style music and mouthing off racist slogans that wouldn't be tolerated in any other civilised country. Ok! Sounds like a plan!"

Here's some shots of little Japanesey things that would warm the cockles of their little pure Japanese hearts.





I walked down to Mt Hakodate last week and took a look in the forest. It's eaxctly a year since I got the camera and one of the first places I went after I got it was the feeding station at the bottom of the hill. For some reason the active feeders weren't even close to the hide (unlike last year)....these were 2 of the better shots I could manage. A Great Spotted and a Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker.





Not much else in the forest, certainly no spring visitors. A male Bullheaded Shrike has been the only migrant I've seen so far. Other stuff around has included Redpoll, Kingfisher, the aforenmentioned Crossbills, lots of Hawfinch and Dusky Thrush, Brent Goose, 2 species of Cormorant, a Blue Rock Thrush, 7 species of Gull and a dozen or so species of Duck, a few Brambling, Jay, 5 species of Tit, Nuthatch, Wren and Black Backed Wagtail.......here's a Dusky Thrush and an overexposed pair of Brent Goose.





So an interesting 12 months with my first DSLR. I got some ok shots, especially with the 100-400 but also with the shorter 70-300. It'll be back to that one until at least the autumn.

Unless something dramatic appears in front of the camera on my short walk tommorrow my next post should be from England. It's been a long time since I've been back. I'm prepared to be shocked by prices, lots of semi-awkward conversations with people I haven't seen in ages and ages, delighted by decent bread and Indian food and am really looking forward to going to my old local patch with a scope and camera. I'm dreading the long uncomfortable journey, though we at least have 24 hours in Tokyo on Wednesday/Thursday at the beginning of the trip.

So Liverpool have FIVE huge games coming up and I'll be in England for 3 of them. I have a sneaking feeling they'll finish the season extremely strongly. Exactly how strongly and to what end we'll have to wait and see. But please god at least let's not lose to Man U again.

*EDITED TO ADD*

Mascherano is an idiot, Steve Bennet is a moron, Ronaldo is a smarmy w*nker, Kuyt is useless and football I hate you.

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.