A grey July day, a video and a mistake

My latest videoscoping experiment: a Black Browed Reed Warbler singing just outside Hakodate this afternoon. The weather has been awful the last few days with lots and lots of rain and uniformly grey skies.

I got a new compact digicam last week, the Canon 780 IS (that's the name in the US, it's the IXUS 100 IS in Europe and the IXY 210 IS in Japan). It's a tiny thing and I got it mainly for the HD video. The above video was through the scope, I had to crop it as I seemed to have moved the camera on the adapter so it wasn't properly lined up with the eyepiece..............I need more practice I think. Focusing accurately is quite hard I have to say and a 65mm scope in poor light doesn't quite fit the bill especially with a 32X eyepiece......

The sound is OK except for my heavy breathing........

You can view it in better quality here. It may take a while to load and it seems to stick halfway through.

The same bird posed nicely for some regular photos.

 

 

 

 

Not much else around this last week to be honest. I achieved my 15 seconds (not minutes) of fame at least...... in a local free magazine. I am the featured 'foreigner of the month' for August!



Note the spelling of 'Hokodate'. Not my error, the editor of the magazine even called and apologised and brought round a box of cakes to emphasize the point.

A boring week, no sport on TV last night so I got drunk instead and now I'm hot, tired, grumpy and hungover as well as bored.

The construction work continues, both next to and opposite my apartment. The trees across the road have been cut down and the grass has been replaced by mud. I saw some good species in those trees........ Japanese Waxwing, Crossbill, Asian Brown Flycatcher, Arctic Warbler. The noise will become unbearable soon I'm sure. 6 (or 7) days a week of hammering, drilling, sawing, whirring, tapping and shouting. 8am start to deny me a sleep-in too. Why are they building new houses anyway? the population of Hakodate is falling and there are empty apartments everywhere. This country is run by and for the construction industry.

The next General Election is coming up. That's almost as noisy as pointless construction projects. Electioneering here consists of volunteers driving slowly around the streets blasting out propaganda from loudspeakers or candidates bellowing out their names over and over again and asking people to vote for them. They don't say why we should vote for them of course.

The same people always win anyway, Japan has such a conservative and passive electorate. The word on the street this time round says that might change next month though but I doubt it............

Things will look up in a few weeks and I can stop my moaning; the Ashes resumes this week, the footy season will start in 3 weeks, the waders will come through in about 5 weeks at about the same time as the election finishes, we have a 4 day holiday in September, the construction goons will finally finish and f**k off in about 9 weeks and oh yes the 60D might be announced in a couple of months and I can finally upgrade my DSLR.

July babes

 

A baby Moorhen at Onuma this afternoon. A hot day and a last days birding with Dan who is back off to Canada next week. He got 2 new for his J-list today, Sand Martin (a group of 10 or so at Kamiso) and Japanese Green Pigeon near Mori.......

 

The Sand Martin were also a new species on my local list. Other stuff at Kamiso included the usual farmland stuff plus Osprey, Kingfisher, Common Sandpiper, Night Heron and Little Egret. At Onuma there was nothing much about although my wife did manage to see a Flying Squirrel.....

Up the coast there were some baby Little Ringed Plover.....

 

And Mt Komagadake was looking as nice as ever.

 

England managed to win the 2nd Test with the minimum of fuss, I was expecting Australia to either win or to get very very close. If Flintoff and Pietersen are fit (a big if I know) it could be England's summer. Australia can't play as badly as that again and will presumably change the side around. I predict the Ashes will still be up for grabs in the 5th Test, something that looked very unlikely this time last week when they were grimly hanging on in Cardiff......

More house-building

 

Not much around this week, heavy rain has meant the river is swollen so the Night Heron has nowhere to stand. These Asian House Martins were gathering mud in some of the puddles....

 

 

 

Just watching the second day of the second test............England's 10 and 11 got some unexpected runs and Australia 22/2 at lunch..........hmmmmmm..............

A long day...........

 

 

 

 

Some of the common birds around this afternoon in the ricefields on the edge of town. Barn Swallow, Night Heron and Skylark........

All the usual stuff is still present, the most difficult one to photograph yesterday afternoon was this Chestnut Eared Bunting......





I stayed up until 3am to watch England somehow cling on for the draw in the 1st test. Now I'm exhausted and lounging around the apartment listening to the rain outside (at least the rain means a temporary lull in the construction noise).........

More of the same.......

 

 

The Night Heron was in the same place again and striking a few nice poses too. The light was a bit poor though......

It seems to have developed into a bit of a local celebrity; I noticed several people stop and peer into the bushes it usualy flaps off into as soon as it realises it's being watched.

The cricket took a turn for the worse, England's bowling (Flintoff aside) looked very average indeed.

A quiet week in July

 

A Black Crowned Night Heron on the river this afternoon, in a dark shady place so not a great shot. No sign of any of the young ones......

A quiet week, not much around. Hot, humid and boring, July is my least favourite month of the year in Hokkaido. At least I found a site to watch the Ashes live, I managed to catch the whole of the 2nd and 3rd sessions of the first day of the first Test. Nicely poised game too.......

Quiet summer days begin.......

Another hot day and summer is here in south Hokkaido. From the second week of July to the end of August there generally isn't much to photograph birdwise. This big 'orrible frog was at Onuma yesterday.



I could hear lots of birds in the forest but couldn't see much, the baby Moorhens have left the nest though.........



Back nearer Hakodate this summer plumage Cattle Egret was a nice find.......



I spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to get shots of Reed and /or Chestnut Eared Buntings without any success, luckily the Night Herons and Stonechats were still around (the latter being much shyer than a few weeks ago) as well as all the common stuff.







Lots of Little Cuckoo calling but I couldn't locate any..........

I'm just debating whether to pay $25 for a 3 month subscription to JustinTV to try and watch the Ashes online. I'm reluctant to fork out money just to watch unreliable (and illegal I suppose) internet feeds..........hmmm..........I'll wrestle with this one for a couple of days..........

Can't believe Owen signed for Man U. Surely Benitez could have got him on a similar cheap and almost risk-free contract? Sorry to say but obviously I hope it doesn't work out for him, or at least he doesn't score against Liverpool and/or doesn't provide enough goals for another title for Fergie.

House-building, hay fever........and a rarity.

The weather was pretty hot again today and I spent some time with some Asian House Martins who were gathering nesting materials on a muddy patch on the small river near my flat. Tricky things to get the exposure right on.......









House-building of another kind continues next to our apartment. The noise is driving me crazy as is my hay fever, not something I usually suffer from this last few days but I've been spluttering and sneezing like a coke fiend.

Lots of nestling activity in the neighborhood and several other species came down to take a drink from the river........like these Oriental Greenfinch, Red Cheeked Starling and Tree Sparrow.







I was hoping to get a shot of a young Night Heron but nothing happening there, I saw them several times in early July last year but can't locate them this time.

In my last post I mentioned a Tern I'd seen last weekend in Yakumo. I assumed it was just the East Asian race of Common Tern (which has a black bill) but when I actually looked at my crappy record shots it became clear it was something else. It isn't grey underneath, the tail streamers are not so long and that bill looks chunky.





It's a Gull Billed Tern (ハシブトアジサシ in Japanese), a bit of a rarity. June is a good month for rare terns, 3 years ago I saw a Caspian Tern at Asabu but as I didn't have a camera you'll have to take my word for it.

A short trip

One of many Black Browed Reed Warblers from our weekend away.

We went up to Noboribetsu for just the 1 night, this is a hot spring resort about 3 or 4 hours drive from Hakodate. It's an OK place but a bit of a tourist trap with all the tackiness that entails.



We stopped at Yakumo both ways. Black Browed Reed Warblers were abundant here.







Also around were all the common stuff plus a lone Tern. On first impressions it was probably just the eastern race of Common Tern but Terns of any species are scarce around here (and normally only occur on passage so one at the end of June was unusual). I got some crappy record shots, I saw a Caspian Tern 3 years ago (before my DSLR days so no pics) which was apparently a first for Hokkaido but of course I had no evidence so I wasn't taking any chances this time though, I'll check it out later on my computer at 200% size to confirm ID. The only half decent BIF shot was this Black Kite.



Further up the coast we explored the wetlands (which weren't wet at all) near Oshamanbe. I'd never been here before but they looked pretty good. Common and Oriental Cuckoos, Black Browed Reed and Oriental Warblers, Stonechats, Chestnut Eared Buntings and Bullheaded Shrikes were everywhere and there were also several of these. Lathams Snipe, a bird with one of the strangest calls you'll ever hear.



And here's a male Long Tailed Rosefinch. I call these type of shots 'bird in habitat' ones (as opposed to 'tiny image of out of focus bird' ones).



We also heard lots of Grays Grasshopper Warblers, an impossible bird to find in the undergrowth. It has a cheeky little song but no songflight and it doesn't sing atop bushes either. It has a very similar call to the Little Cuckoo, another bird we heard but couldn't see........

It was pretty hot, by far the warmest weather of the year so far. With it being the weekend the hotel we stayed at was pretty full. I took a hot spring bath before it got too busy and then got drunk in the hotel room in the afternoon before eating way too much at the buffet and then passing out about 9pm............a good night then.

Here are a couple of crappy snaps from the Noboribetsu area......





And we got back to Hakodate just as the sun was going down.........



The construction work nearby continues, it looks like we're getting a new 2 storey apartment block in the vacant land next to our building. This will mean lots and lots of noise and inconvenience for 3 months. I work from home so I notice this kind of stuff, if I was an office drone leaving the house at 8am and getting home after 6pm I wouldn't even notice it but because of my lazy self employed 'lifestyle' I'm going to have to listen to every bang, clank, buzz and whirr. F***ing hell. I'll have to find some new stuff for the ipod and buy a decent cooler so I can shut the windows when I have to work..............

I'm starved of sports, can't wait for the Ashes to begin. At least England should still be in the series until the football season starts..................

Bird photography is just about over until the waders pass through at the end of August. I may get some young Night Heron shots or some more Reed Warblers at Yunokawa in the next week or 2 but apart from that there's nothing much around............

I can borrow my wife's macro lens and try to get some bug shots though. It'll make a nice change from walking around with the big 400mm at least.

Devil's Brew

I'm in a hotel in Noboribetsu drinking the local beer.Hope the photo is the right way up.