Colourful birds and grey grey weather......

A male Harlequin Duck near Hakodate dock this morning. I went to a nice spot I know to see if the Brent Geese had arrived yet but there was no sign but the Harlequins were not as shy as usual and came much closer than normal.

Shame about the weather, it's been awful this last week. Rain earlier on and snow the last 2 or 3 days. One day I'll get a photo of a Harlequin Duck up close and in good light.

They were diving for small crabs, as you can see in this picture.

On the way I walked over a long bridge that looked down into the bay and noticed this strange little bird in the distance.

Lousy photo (a 100% crop) but it shows an Ancient Murrelet, a Hakodate tick and #193 on the local list......

A couple of weeks ago I saw lots and lots of Black Legged Kittiwakes at Yakumo. Whilst I was watching them I spoke to 2 birders from the Hakodate branch of Hokkaido University. Kura and Kim. They said they hoped to see a Red Legged Kittiwake (much rarer) amongst all the Black Leggeds. And see some they did as you will see if you click on the links. They must have been blown in by the big storm last Sunday. The birds in question were in Sawara which is fairly near Hakodate (I often go there). From their blogs I note the Rooks/Daurian Jackdaws have returned too.........and in the local paper I noticed  a Japanese Wood Pigeon flew into someone's window in Shikabe.

Not much else around Hakodate for my good self today though. A few Wigeon, Pelagic Cormorant, lots of Dusky Thrush. earlier on in the week saw the usual birds in Goryokaku Park and the local river. Here are some more BIF shots that show the 7D can do it in crappy dull grey snowy weather too...........

Thierry Henri, what a cheating tosser. I didn't watch the game but I've seen the incident on youtube many times now.

I think of 2 times England suffered from extremely  bad refereeing/cheating in my time following football since the late 70's. Maradonna's hand of god of course but also that game in Holland in 1993. The 'do I not like that' game when Koeman scored after he should have been sent off for a penalty that wasn't even given either. It meant we didn't go the 1994 World Cup Finals in the USA which still rankles. Still, we won our only World Cup thanks to a dodgy linesman so I'll shut up there. Glad I'm not an Irish fan though.

Off to Yakumo for a couple of days at the weekend, hope the eagles have arrived and they skowly flap around just like those Great Egrets and Grey Herons.

Rain Rain Rain

It's been raining a lot the last few days. Not much birding although I did relocate the Taiga Flycatcher (no pictures worth posting though). There were a few Scaup in the harbour at Kamiso at least........

Lots of other common ducks around (especially Wigeon) and there were also several Glaucous Winged Gull in the gull flocks on the beach.

The Scaup were mainly female or immature birds........

The Brent Geese haven't arrived in Hakodate yet but the Harlequin Ducks have. And I still can't get a decent shot of one.

We took a trip out to Onuma in the afternoon before the rain got really heavy, not much here either. The tame Nuthatches and Tits that have provided staple photo opps over the last 3 winters haven't come to the ad hoc forest feeding log yet. There were about 8 individuals covering 3 different species, were are they? Did they find somewhere better? Has the autumn been so mild there's still loads of food in the forest for them to find? Have they died this summer and the new generation hasn't 'learned' about the free sunflower seeds available? Who knows?

The only thing of interest was this Fox and even that wasn't as tame as usual........

Here are a couple of shots taken with my compact to finish off with............

This is the port where the Scaup were and here is the usual Onuma view......

Slow week but some crappy pics of a semi-rarity

The 7D continues to be an excellent BIF camera, this was one of 2 great Egrets on the local river and all 3 shots were from the same rapid burst.

Really crappy weather this week, grey rainy days. Like Preston in autumn in fact.

The Egrets were one of 3 heron species on the river and these shots were taken on particularly overcast days.

More trees have been cut down by the river, I have no idea why. Like I say I'm sure it's just the City Hall spending tax ¥en. I really really hope it doesn't mean they're going to 'improve' the river. As anyone who has spent time in Japan will attest the locals just love concrete (or at least those locals who are in charge of government budgets do).

The bulk of the trees and bushes near my flat that sheltered many many migrants over the last few years are now gone forever. In some (as yet) unmolested bushes further downstream I  noticed this unusual looking small bird. Its black tail and white outer tail markings showed it was something a little different.........

Lousy pictures but they show a female Red-breasted Flycatcher, a lifer for me and #192 (I think) on my Hakodate list. Both it and this Red Flanked Bluetail were being mercilessly bullied by the male Daurian Redstart that sets up territory here in the winter.

The first Hawfinch of the winter have returned. In Goryokaku Park exactly the same birds were present as last week. 3 Coot plus the male Pochard and young Temincks Cormorant.

The 2 Little Grebe had been joined by a third individual. This is a species I'm struggling to take a decent photo of, they are so shy, Here is a not really very good one to be going on with.

All the sport on TV is on really late tonight. England's meaningless reserve team against Brazil is on about 2am (or 2.30am?), The rugby is on after midnight too and the Ireland v France play-off, the one really tasty game this weekend,  is on at about 4am or something. I have to get up early to teach a friend's class tomorrow so it looks like I'll miss them all..........

Winter quickly retreats..............

A male Pochard in the local park. A rather quiet week, and after the freezing cold of a few days ago it's been very warm. So much for winter kicking in............

The Pochard wasn't the only waterbird in the park..............

The tame Temincks Cormorant was still around, as were 3 Coot and 2 Little Grebe.

I've had it confirmed that the Cormorants I've been seeing at Onuma the last few summers are a different species from the one above (they are Great Cormorants, the same as in the UK) so my Hokkaido list went up by 1.............

Here's a minor ID quandry that could raise my Hakodate list by 1. This is a duck from last week, is it a female Falcated Duck? It was about the same size as the Coots and looks too brown for a Pintail. Any opinions welcomed........

To complete the duck theme here are a couple of startled looking Goldeneye on the local river........

City Hall have deemed it necessary to chop down lots of trees by the river near my flat. Why? They were in an an inaccessible place (you need a ladder to get down there) and couldn't possibly be doing any harm. I suspect there is a tree-cutting department at City Hall that was using up some of its budget. Naturally they didn't bother picking up any of the litter round and about. Tyres, rice-cookers, discarded underwear, beer cans in their dozens and plastic bottles in their hundreds. Now we jut have trash and tree stumps where there used to be trees full of birds. Nice one Hakodate.

I went to Mt Hakodate on Friday to try and find the Black Woodpecker I'd heard a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't find it although there were a few interesting things in the forest such as Long Tailed Rosefinch and and Red Flanked Bluetail. Today we went up to Yakumo intending to photograph the eagles but they haven't arrived yet, too warm perhaps? There were a couple of White Tailed Eagles though (and we saw one later at Onuma too) and I guess we were a tad early. Our next visit up there will be in a couple of weeks when hopefully they'll have arrived and will be feasting on some of the many recently deceased Salmon we saw in the river today.........

At the river mouth there were hundreds of Kittiwakes.

I met some students from Hokkaido University (a couple of them have blogs linked on the right) and had a chat as we watched the Kittiwakes going about their business.

I went machine gun crazy with the fast continuous shooting on the 7D and before I knew it I'd nearly filled up my 16GB memory card (!).....................and most of the shots weren't even any good, white birds against a grey sky..................I will be more restrained next time.

Liverpool? Meh.

I watched 'Terminator Salvation' and 'In the Loop' last week. I don't need to see the former again but the latter was pretty funny at least...........

The first breath of winter

We just got back from a 4 day trip to east/central Hokkaido. On the way back winter kicked in with quite a lot of snow and freezing temperatures. Thank god we'd changed to our winter tyres the day before we left........

We spent the first night in Kushiro, my wife wanted to see an exhibition there by Michael Kenna

Lots of moody black and white photos, not really my scene but fairly interesting. We stayed in a dirt cheap ultra impersonal business hotel that was the smallest room I've ever slept in. We didn't stop much on the way (it's a long long drive from Hakodate) but from a distance I did see my first Stellers Sea Eagles of the winter just east of Urakawa.

Not very good shots I know but a bit odd to see autumn colours in the background instead of snow on lifeless trees.............

The day we had set aside for birding saw awful rainy weather. We went to the famous Akan Crane centre. We'd been here earlier in the year and seen hundreds and hundreds of Cranes up close against brilliant white snow and blue skies. This time there were a few bored looking Cranes poking around in a muddy field too far away for a decent photo. We paid ¥400 each to enter but the only Crane photos I got were roadside pics as we drove around in the rain.................

Not much else birdwise. Lots of Whooper Swan everywhere, a few Goshawks here and there, lots of Jay and Dusky Thrush in the forests, the first Scaup and Black Scoter of the winter.............

We stayed a night in Akan-ko. I made a pig out of myself at the hotel buffet yet again. I have no control or self-discipline when it comes to such matters. I sink a few beers in the hotel room beforehand, go down to dinner and I think to myself oh my god I'd better eat as much as I can in case the food runs out soon.

We headed back home via our fave hotel in Minami-Furano. It is in the mountains and here the snow began to fall. And it was cold at the top of one of the passes...............

My wife got that new Canon 100 F2.8L IS Macro lens last week. It seems like a great lens except the focus shifts. You get up close, focus, get the AF confirmation and then the frame drifts out of focus. This happened on all 3 of our EOS cameras and it occurred regardless of AF/MF, if IS was on or not and handheld or on a tripod. I'm not sure why this was happening but my wife was fuming as she was trying to take snowflake pics up close. A macro lens that has the focus drifting up close is not so useful especially one that cost over $1000. Back to Canon for to be checked I think...........

At normal distances it is fine though........except for some strange reason when my wife took this it made my face look fat. I wonder if Canon can check out that obvious flaw in their new lens?

Let's not talk about Liverpool shall we?

Discovery of the week #1: the theme from 'Enter the Dragon' is the perfect music to accompany drives on mountain roads with lots of tunnels.

Discovery of the week #2: Bacon/Okaka onigiri from Seicomart Hot Chef is currently the best riceball on sale in Japan.

Discovery of the week #3. The word 'super' in the Super Hotel chain is not an adjective.