More of the same............

A Varied Tit on my wife's hand at Onuma this afternoon. It was a dark grey day which was annoying as the whole of last week saw quite beautiful autumn weather. My wife whose only current day off is Sunday was not happy.

Birds were almost identical to last Sunday. Still some Rooks ate Onuma but I couldn't find the Daurian Jackdaws. No eagles yet either. This is the last remaining Night Heron on the river a couple of days ago.





Not much else new to report. The Thayers Gull was still present.





And on the beach was this unusual Gull.



Note the yellow legs. I think this is a type of Heuglins Gull but all these recent splits of Gull species have left me somewhat befuddled.

The first snow will probably come next week sometime, the autumn colours were still very nice in Hakodate last week.



A bit of a dull week I suppose. I finished 'How to lose friends and alienate people' which started off well but turned out to be pretty crap by the end. I sold my first calendar (woohoo!). You can check out a preview here. The printing company finally sorted out its' shipping fees. I watched lots of sport last night. Dirk Kuyt is winning me round, the Villa v Arsenal game was pretty good and I followed England's lame efforts in the rugby live on a jerky flash player.

Why does life have to be so complicated?

Apologies.

So I made my calendar available on the internet for people to buy. The company who print it (Lulu) changed their international shipping rates so now they are absurdly high. There will be economy rates available but it isn't reflected on their website yet. So if you click on the link to the right and get an astronomically high shipping quote just check back later when hopefully the problem will be resolved.

Although I've just used their live help and the poor bast**d at the other end was clueless as to when the economy rates would be introduced.

Lulu? Makes me wanna shout. And not in a good way either.

Anyway. A Carrion Crow on the river yesterday..........

Lots more winter arrivals

Some Whooper Swans a few days ago on the outskirts of Hakodate. Lots of stuff arriving for the winter now. Around town in the last week the first Scaup, Goldeneye, Wren and Dusky Thrush have all arrived. And so has this individual.



The same Thayers Gull that has been on the local river the last 4 winters. Other Gull species have been arriving too, including this Glaucous Winged Gull on the beach at Kamiso this morning.



11 species of duck at Kamiso now as well as 3 Great Egret a few days ago too. We also went to Onuma twice in the last week and predictably took a lot of pictures of the tame regulars.





I could lie and tell you I didn't tempt them near my camera with sunflower seeds, but I'm too honest for such deceit.







Anyway I couldn't really photoshop those sunflower seeds away.........

A fox was hanging around waiting for some handouts too. Or eyeing the tiny birds that it would never be able to catch........







I was using the lens wide open which meant that although parts of the birds were often out of focus at least the background (bokeh) was nice. Very autumnal.







There were 5 species of Tit at Onuma including the above Varied Tits as well as Great, Coal, Long Tailed and Marsh Tits.



There were a few swans, grebes, ducks and egrets about too and lots and lots of Siskin though of course these weren't so tame.



Lots of small birds in Hakodate last week. Near my place I got Red Flanked Bluetail, Yellow Throated Bunting and lots of Rustic Bunting. This (and the Bluetail too) are one of my bogey species photo-wise. The best I could manage was this.



Here a few seasonal shots to round off.







Bird of the day was this species.





2 Daurian Jackdaw mixed in with the resident Large Billed and Carrion Crow at Onuma. There were also several Rook. Both species are pretty scarce autumn/winter visitors to Hokkaido and someone told us they weer around and we just manged to find them before sunset.

My Calendar finally arrived. You can buy it via the link if you want. A touch pricey for a calendar I agree but I have to say it looks OK. I don't make much profit, if you buy one the net profit will buy me 2 cans of beer. My book should be available soon too and I'll shamelessly plug that when it comes you can rest assured.

Just started watching 'How to lose friends and alienate people' which is pretty funny so far at least.

My other blog is still being experimented on. It'll be updated more often than this one, whether it'll replace this one is yet to be decided...........er I'll think about that later.

A bit of a crappy week

Some Harlequin Ducks near Menagawa this afternoon.

They say bad luck comes in threes and so it proved this last week. Firstly I got a nasty sore throat (which kicked in about 5 days ago and still lingers), secondly my wife had been expecting to start a new nursing job in a small clinic this month and had quit her former part-time one only to be let down at the last minute by some a**hole of a doctor who reneged on his promise and thirdly Liverpool lost their unbeaten record and lost top spot to Chelsea (what odds on Chelsea staying top to the end of the season?).

Last year at the same time I got some nice shots of Harlequin Ducks even with a crappy $100 Sigma lens. This time the ducks didn't allow such a close approach, apart from this obviously sick individual.



Something about the contrast and light/dark areas really confuse my camera (or confuse me, a bad workman etc). I ran all these shots today through the shadows/highlights in photoshop. Hmmmm..........slightly better.









Whilst I was waiting around for the Harlequins to swim closer there were several Blue Rock Thrush around. Not dissimilar in colours to the ducks, with similar dodgy results.





There were also lots of Gulls and Cormorants around. 2 species pf Cormorant, the Japanese and the Pelagic (the smaller glossier looking one). Not so many interesting Gulls yet and no Brent Goose in the harbours either.





Birds of the day were the 2 Stellers Sea Eagle high in the sky just east of Hakodate. Lots of raptors around actually. Sparrowhawk, Peregrine and Buzzard as well as the common Black Kites.

So in addition to my Lulu calendar I've also finally finished my blurb photobook at last and can concentrate on doing my new website.

It's coming on in fits and starts. Slowly. I've just deleted some pages actually. Now I have to, er, do some more I suppose. Tomorrow I think.

Return of some old acquaintances

The weather has been lousy the last week or so with lots of grey skies and heavy rain, a bit like autumn in northwest England actually. We ended up at Onuma this afternoon and the tame flock of Nuthatch, Varied and Marsh Tits was present and glad to be fed. It was rather dark though. I had my lens wide open at 5.6, exposure compensation at -1 or below and ISO at 800. I could only manage to get shutter speeds around 1/200 and so the pics are not so good. Still, nice to have some tame birds around.





There's a definite hierarchy. Nuthatch at the top, Varied Tit in the middle and Marsh Tit at the bottom. The Great Tits were staying well out of it.





Not much else at Onuma. A few Woodpeckers, a few Grebes out in the middle of the lake (probably Black Necked), a lone Whooper Swan, 3 Great White Egret, a few of common ducks and several cormorants.

Onuma was still looking very autumnal.





And when the cloud lifted momentarily the top of Mt Komagadake was dusted with snow.

Over at Kmaiso the 2 Whitefronted Geese were still around yesterday as were lots of the commoner duck species including large numbers of Wigeon.











Nearer home there were still a few migrants passing through. Here are 2 awful photos of what would be 2 highly twitchable birds if they flitting around the bushes back in England. Ir was raining and very dark when this Siberian Rubythroat and Red Flanked Bluetail were sharing the same spot in the undergrowth just round the corner from my apartment.





So Liverpool beat Chelsea. Not bad at all. I'd still prefer if they had 1 or 2 more local players (by 'local' I mean northwest England at least) but it is, for now at least, looking like they may, just may have a chance at the title at long last. The last time they won it I was young and freshfaced and also just about to start my finals at university. I'm now middle aged and grumpy as hell.

I've just about finished my blurb photobook and am awaiting the first copy of my calendar. I've been noodling around with my website a little too, that will next month's project now that the book/calendar have been finished. Here's another gallery for you to check out, this is some of best shots from last spring/summer.





This is a picture of my Uncle Tom, a bit of a legend in our family. He has sailed across the Atlantic and mined diamonds in Guyana amongst other things. I took this picture back in Australia back in 1994 when he put me up for a couple of months, that branch is a swarm of bees by the way. Sadly Tom is very very sick at the moment. My thoughts are with him and his family in Cairns.