Autumn kicking in.........

Some autumnal scenes from a couple of days in Niseko.

Under those clouds is the first snow I've seen this season.........

We just had a spur of the moment trip up to Niseko seeing in a cheap and cheerful hot spring hotel (this meant it was full of noisy chain-smoking groups of Japanese retirees). Not so many birds about in Niseko, I heard a Black Woodpecker, saw a few Jay and Buzzard and that's about it. We stopped at Yakumo on the way up and there were a few interesting things at the river mouth including a group of about a dozen Black Legged Kittiwake, presumably deposited there during last week's typhoon.

The 7D is proving to be a great BIF camera..........

I flushed a young Goshawk (no decent pics alas) but it did startle all the ducks and gulls (as well as a lone Greenshank). There were 9 species of duck (just the common species including the first Pochard of the winter), 6 species of gull, Black Necked Grebe, a dozen or so Common Tern fishing offshore, lots of Grey Heron plus a Great Egret. The gull species included several Glaucous Winged Gull, a fairly common winter visitor.

I watched the England game online (free of course but with Ukrainian commentary). I'm relieved they lost in a way as some folk were beginning to think Capello's England were kind of invincible. A reality check and less hype is exactly what was needed. Damn, looks like Portugal are going to squirm through and how lucky are Argentina?

Not much in Hakodate last week, here's a Night Heron from a few days ago shot at ISO 1600 on a dark dreary day.

Not really one for the album or anything but good enough for a crappy blog like this. I only went to ISO 1600 once on my 400D (for some Owl shots) and the results were terrible. The 7D looks more of a goer for sure...........plus it has all the half stops like 500/640/1000/1250 which should be very useful too.

A quiet autumn week.......

Not much around the last week except the Night Herons which have been dwindling in numbers (only 1 today). I'm enjoying the 7D, it's great for action shots (like flying birds) but except the Night Herons there hasn't been much to photograph.

The frog below was on a dark rainy day at Onuma and the Temincks (?) Cormorant was a surprise find in the local park.

The first Rustic Buntings of the autumn have appeared but other than that nothing of note.

After 4 or 5 weeks of generally fine weather it's pouring down outside. A typhoon has hit central Japan and we're getting the tail end of it. 5 years ago a typhoon hit Hakodate before it had fizzles out and did a lot of damage. Trees down everywhere and no electricity for a day. Hopefully that won't happen tonight.

Looks like Liverpool's season will be over by Christmas.

Breaking the 7D's cherry.............

I was able to grab an hour or so before work this morning to test my new 7D. Luckily the Night Herons obliged.

It is quite a complicated beast compared to what I'm used to but on first impressions it's a winner. For flight shots the AF is fantastic.

Even the usual skulking shots seemed better.........

It can't work miracles though............

Goodbye and hello...........

So it's goodbye to my old 400D. These Night Herons were the last shots it will probably take birdwise. Ironically Night Herons were also the first too.

Well not strictly goodbye, I'll keep it for landscape stuff at least. And hoe can I get rid of it after all the thousands of shots it gave me over the last two and a half years?

Chopped the top of that one's wings off.......

But it makes a change from the usual view............

Not much else to report. Here's a fox from Onuma last week, lens wide open and ISO 800.

So goodbye to the 400D and hello to the 7D.

And here is a shot from my NEW 7D. Woohoo!

With the 7D and my old 400D kit lens wide open and at ISO 6400.

It seems a complicated camera especially after coming from the 400D. Plus at the moment I don't have an English manual (I downloaded a PDF one but it's just not the same as a book-I can't read it on the bog for starters).

One thing though. My 8GB card holds 765 pics on my 400D and at the same settings on my 7D it holds about one third of that. So should I get a 16GB or 32 GB one? Hmmm.......

Autumn begins.

A beautiful clear autumnal day again in south Hokkaido, the Night Herons appear to have mostly relocated downstream.

There were also loads of Arctic Warblers. Their buzzing calls were everywhere along the river......

Unfortunately they were hanging around in a dark shady area meaning crappy photos..........

Bird of the day was a briefly seen Siberian Rubythroat which was attacked by a Bullheaded Shrike and disappeared before I even had my camera out.

Lots of Asian Brown Flycatchers again yesterday............

The top one kind of looked like a Sooty but the bill is too long and the wings appear to be too short.

I'm determined to photograph (or at least find) a Sooty Flycatcher this autumn although time may be running out.

I had a trip to the dentist this morning. A small part of one of my teeth separated from a filling fell out earlier this month. The dentist took a look and said I had 2 options. He could polish it up and leave it be for a while (ie indefinitely) or completely rip out the filling and replace it. Let me see, I thought. I could take the first option (no pain, cheap and quick) or the second (pain, multiple trips to the dentist and loads of money). Well duh. Polish and be damned I said.

A short trip

We just got back from a short trip to the Tomakomai area. We stopped at Utonai-ko, a well known bird reserve near Chitose Airport. This Bean Goose is wild but tame, I think it's the same individual we've seen several times before here. The Whooper Swans are also wild, some of them are sick or injured birds who couldn't make the spring trip north........

There were also small numbers of Pintail, presumably the first arrivals of the winter.

Other stuff here included Siberian Rubythroat (hiding in the bushes) and the usual common stuff including several Great Egret.

We also checked out the mouth of the Mukawa River. This is a site we visit once or twice a year, it's famous for waders. However the area seems to be under some kind of development, most of the wetland has been drained. This has been going on the last couple of years. It's a bit sad, I really hope the reason is not just somebody is using up government taxes to create useless unnecessary construction projects.

The only things of interest here were Eastern Marsh Harrier and an unidentified kind of Snipe.

Waders were thin on the ground everywhere. Apart from the odd Common Sandpiper the only shorebird we saw during the whole 2 days was this bedraggled scruffy looking wader that I thought was just a Dunlin at Oshamanbe.

But thanks again to Unravel who pointed out it is fact a Curlew Sandpiper....................

One possible reason for the lack of waders on the beaches were the hundreds (or thousands) of fishermen trying to snag Salmon, they were lined up on every beach from Hakodate up to Tomakomai.

We stayed in a cheap hotel in Tomakomai. This was due to the fact this week is a big holiday in Japan so all the decent hotels in the general area were either booked up or too expensive.

Dinner wasn't included in our hotel so we went for a major eating and drinking session at a nearby izakaya. This was snapped with the camera on my cellphone.

Tomakomai is not an attractive city. A gloomy industrial town. 8 years ago I had to work there for a couple of weeks, it made Hakodate look like Venice or something. It is surrounded by very nice countryside though: mountains, forests and lakes. Here's a view of the smoking top of the nearby volcano Mt Tarumae.

We went to one forested area just north of the city that is famous for Black Woodpecker and Crested Kingfisher. We heard the former but saw nothing of the latter (although we did see a Common Kingfisher). Actually the forest looks great for birds but as today was not in the best season for woodland birds plus it was a national holiday with gorgeous warm clear autumnal weather so the trails were packed. I reckon an early morning visit in May would more than compensate for having to stay in a hole like Tomakomai.

Lots of Japanese Grosbeaks were up in the treetops but they remained up there and didn't come down for a photo. I borrowed my wife's macro lens to try and shoot some of the many bugs...........

Not so good I know.

Macro is hard. DOF is so difficult to gauge. My camera isn't so great for manual focusing (it has a smallish viewfinder). Bugs move and flowers/twigs blow around in the wind. The macro lens my wife has (the Tamron 90mm one) is OK but the AF is lousy and of course it doesn't have IS. If I had it on a tripod with liveview to help with manual focus the results may have been better. I now have a lot more respect for macro photographers.

Wow there are loads of different kinds of insects. I had no idea.