Wader Season #5

Wader season continues in south Hokkaido, this week is usually the peak..............






The Red Necked Stints were still on the same stretch of beach at Kamiso. They are surprisingly difficult to see sometimes and for non birding folk walking on the beach they are probably just about invisible..........













They were pretty tame. As you can see from this pic of my wife.........



There were also quite a few Grey Tailed Tattler around too........





The Tattlers and Stints are by far the commonest passage shorebirds but there are other species around too. Here's a crappy record shot of a Grey Plover, a local tick no less.



The only other wader species today was a Common Sandpiper. A few Harlequin Duck were around, the first of the winter visitors (even though it was a hot sultry day).

I fell asleep during the England game last night. I see Diego Maradonna is proving the rule that great players generally make crap coaches/managers. If I was a French/Portuguese fan I might start looking at alternative plans for next summer. Just watching the 2nd ODI, seems like a real anticlimax after the Ashes...........

Wader Season #4

We had a couple of hours in the late afternoon today so we headed out to Kamsio and there was a group of 10 or so Red Necked Stints on the beach.................







They were pretty tame and posed nicely, these pics are only slightly cropped...........





The late afternoon light helped a lot with these shots..........







Not much sport online to watch, guess I'll watch Scotland crash out of the WCQs, can't be bothered staying up to watch the meaningless England friendly though.........

What the hell are these things?

Yes I know what these are, one immature and one adult Night Heron on the river this lunchtime.

But I'm not sure about these..........most of these are from Tuesday this week. Lots of flycatchers passing through, but which species.........?

Are they Asian Brown or Sooty Flycatchers? They do look pretty dark (which would suggest Sooty) but I have no idea to be honest.





This is obviously a young one, I think Asian Brown.



This one looks pretty pale, is it just an Asian Brown?



God knows. Here are some more shots.





This one was today (Friday).



And this is from Monday.



If anyone can help me out here with this Flycatcher ID mental block I have I'd be grateful...........

Bad luck comes in threes...........it's true.

Yesterday was very clear sunny weather bang in the middle of the peak of the wader migration season. I had most of the day free and was planning to go to the beach at Kamiso.

But I couldn't go due to an attack of gout, something of a family curse (not helped by my love of beer and seafood). All I can do is hobble around my apartment with a very painful red swollen big toe cursing life in general and the construction noise specifically. I also have had a chronic sore throat the last 3 or 4 weeks and half of one of my teeth fell out last week. F**king hell! If it really comes in threes I've used up all my bad luck for a long while....

I was bored so here are some photos from earlier in the year that never made it onto this blog. They were on my 2 abortive attempts at a second blog, both of which bit the dust.............

This Spectacled Guilemot was in one of the fishing harbours in town in January. It just about managed to swallow that big fish.......







And here is its relative, an Ancient Murrelet also in January out at Menagawa..........



The influx of Crossbills in March/April provided lots of photo opps very close to my apartment........









And here are some Eagle in flight shots at Yakumo last winter where I messed up the exposure..............







And on the ground.............







I don't know why I didn't put this Crane shot on this blog, it's one of my fave ones.....



The Black Necked Grebes in Shikabe were very photogenic in early April.......in both winter and summer plumages..........





I rarely get to take shots of this species: a White Backed Woodpecker in Yakumo in January...........



And here is a Daurian Jackdaw, a scarce winter visitor. This was last winter just outside town.......



Hope there are still some waders around when I can walk properly again in a few days time..............