Winter continues...............

I was hoping the Waxwings would arrive this week. They usually arrive in the 3rd week of January. If they're not careful the Dusky Thrushes and Hawfinches will have finished off all the berries.

There are absolutely loads of Dusky Thrush around at the moment. And they're behaving exactly like Waxwings, eating berries and perching on TV antennas.

Waxwings don't usually do this though.........

Last winter I saw a Fieldfare with the Dusky Thrush influx. Fieldfares are as rare here as Dusky Thrushes are in Europe. Duskys are generally the only Thrush species I see here outside of the breeding/migration seasons.

There were so many of them around today I was hoping to see something rare tagging along, perhaps one of the other race of Dusky Thrush (Naumanns Thrush is it called?) but no joy.

This Hawfinch was relatively confiding. The berry laden trees are on busy streets which makes taking pics difficult. Pedestrians scare the birds off, drivers gawk at the foreigner with the big camera and the birds fly to and fro across the busy road.........

Not much else of note, here's a female Daurian Redstart. Usually we only get males in winter, I wonder what she was doing in town?

It's been another cold snowy icy week and more of the same has been forecast.

Wow, Liverpool's season just gets worse and worse. Now their 3 best attacking players are crocked, they've bought an injury prone over the hill Argentinian and are talking about buying another foreigner I've never heard of who'll be another flop like all the other foreigners I'd never heard of. I'll be happy with 7th place at this rate.

England are toiling in the cricket, dunno if they'll claw their way out of this one (no Onions to save them this time either). If they do manage to draw the game (it looks like rain may be a factor) then they'll win the series 1-0 despite being totally outplayed in the 3 other games. Which would be pretty funny.

Hope the Waxwings make an appearance soon.........

On this day (January 14th)....................

January 14th 2009.


Black Necked Grebe at Shikabe. A flock of this species spends each winter in the small fishing harbour at Shikabe. They eat some horrible looking worms that live on the harbour floor. This is a common winter visitor to the region and can be seen offshore at many locations as well as closer at hand in several of the local ports.


This port can be productive for birds with various species of waterbird. Raptors also occur nearby but it's a bleak bleak place in the wintertime.............

On this day (January 13th)....................

January 13th 2008.


 Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker at Onuma. This is the race found in Hokkaido (ijimae) which is paler than birds further south and west. The male has a red spot on its hindcrown which this female bird lacks.


This is the joint commonest of the 5 local Woodpecker species, the Great Spotted is also very common and widespread. They aren't shy and allow a close approach but seem to spend most of the time higher up in the trees meaning somewhat limited photo opps.

Happy BIFday #2

An adult Stellers Sea Eagle at Yakumo yesterday.

The Stellers seem a touch more wary than the White Taileds and didn't come as close.

There were quite a few other birders/photographers around, in fact I've never seen so many at Yakumo. It was a Sunday I guess (and Monday is a national holiday too). Often in winter I'm the only person in the whole valley with a camera pointing at the eagles.

Someone had even made a snow 'hide' in a place where the river is next to the road and there are lots of dead salmon for them to feed on. I'd love to go and use it but if I asked my wife to drive me there at dawn and sit in the freezing cold she'd punch me in the face, I'm sure of it.

The blizzards returned later on.

All in all a very successful day, eagle-wise at least.

Other stuff in the valley included Whooper Swan, Goldeneye, Goosander, Brown Dipper, Japanese Wagtail, Crested Kingfisher, Jay and the usual Nuthatches/Tits/Woodpeckers. We also saw several Goshawks and lots of Buzzards. Some of these must be Rough Leggeds, that's one of my targets tis winter: I've never seen one anywhere. Ever.

Here's a video of an eagle not doing very much.

I digiscoped this, something I don't often do these days. Check out Kev's blog for someone who really knows what they're doing with this method. I use pretty old not awfully good gear. Kev asked me about a Japanese adapter for his set-up, the various accessories cost more than my scope and eyepiece did!!!!

Happy BIFday #1

A very productive day up at Yakumo with lots and lots of BIF (birds in flight) shots. This post has pics of one of the 2 eagle species: the White Tailed Eagle.

It's been over 2 weeks since we were last at Yakumo and the eagles are a lot tamer now. Well perhaps tame isn't the right word, less shy would be a better term.

They were spread up and down the river. The river level seemed lower and there were lots of dead salmon for them to feast on. This one was feeding in a tree when I surprised it and it dropped its lunch........

A blizzard hit south Hokkaido in the afternoon but we had a window of reasonable weather beforehand...........

The 7D is very handy for these type of shots. They aren't heavily cropped, they were pretty close. Sometimes too close.

All the above shots are of adults, here are some younger birds.............

They weren't always on the wing............

More pics tomorrow, this time the Stellers Sea Eagles.

Can't believe the Premier League schedule has been ravaged by the weather. With one thing and another I haven't watched that much footy this season and I was looking forward to watching some this weekend. I caught the Arsenal v Everton game last night which was pretty good but there's nothing at all on tonight. Some cricket would be nice but that ain't on til next week sometime, I'm somewhat surprised England have made it through to the final test 1-0 up..........

I watched 'The Invention of Lying' last week which had a few laugh out loud moments, as did the remake of 'Day of the Triffids' although I'm not sure if it was unintentional or not. Eddie Izzard's escape from the plane crash and subsequent rise to power in post-apocalyptic London was hilarious, I'm sure he was deliberately hamming it up for laughs. At least I hope he was.

On this day (January 9th)....................

January 9th 2008.

A Long Tailed Tit on the outskirts of Hakodate. This is the ultra cute white headed race (japonicus)  found in Hokkaido. Other races, presumably from continental Asia, occur occasionally in Hakodate but lack the pure white head.

This is a difficult species to photograph. They simply refuse to stay still and even if you manage to get one in focus it is usually obscured by a branch. Not this time however, I got lucky at last.

I even entered this one in a photo contest in a local camera store (the theme was 'winter'). I got one of the consolation runner up prizes, a piece of electronic tat which I have forgotten about completely now it's somewhere in the house, some kind of scrubbing device I think.

A quiet old week

A quiet week in snowy Hakodate, here are a few of the common species around. A Black Kite carrying some spinal column type carrion thingy, a heavily cropped male Daurian Redstart and a Dusky Thrush playing in the snow.....

Rustic Bunting, Yellow Throated Bunting, lots of Hawfinch and that's about it. The heavy snow doesn't appear to have brought any wanderers to Hakodate, at least not to my neighbourhood. Hopefully underfoot conditions will improve next week so I can go out and find something interesting.

Graham Onions: what a star.

On this day (January 7th)....................

January 7th 2009.






The winter of 2008/9 was not a good winter for the local wintering eagles at Yakumo. A very poor autumn salmon run meant a shortage of food, this adult White Tailed Eagle did at least manage to find a rotting salmon to eat but it was harried mercilessly by the attending crows.


This was snapped from a bridge, most of these scenes (I guess)  are usually on inaccessible parts of the river or places where it isn't safe to sop the car. The eagle must have been really hungry to feed so close to the road. Several dead eagles were found in the area apparently starved to death, in the same month I remember seeing a dead adult Stellers Sea Eagle floating in the sea at Sawara.

On this day (January 6th)....................

January 6th 2008.


 A female Yellow Throated Bunting on the outskirts of Hakodate. In Mark Brazil's latest book this species appears to have a new name: 'Elegant Bunting'. That sounds a bit better but for now I'll use the old name.........


These are winter visitors, usually in small groups. They like poking around under bushes on the edge of ricefields or parks. The males are much brighter but never come close enough to my camera.


This photo was taken down a dirt track in Kamiso, I had to flounder through heavy snow to get there. 2 years ago this spot was great for birds but despite going back there the last 2 winters I haven't seen much at all. The dirt track in question seems to be a favourite spot for locals to dump consumer durables and old tyres.

Weather keeping me indoors and grumpy..........

5 days into 2010 and I've barely been outside, heavy snow, grey grey skies, slushy/icy/snowbound roads and sidewalks...............so I'm stuck at home getting grumpier by the day. The above Jay was at Onuma a coupe of days ago when the snow relented for a few hours. This one below was taken with a flash, something I almost never have to do for bird pics.

Not much else at Onuma except the common residents.

Lots of Glaucous Gull at Kamiso, a White Tailed Eagle in Ono and a minor invasion of Hawfinch into Hakodate provided some points of  interest in the gloom.

Lots of red berries everywhere, hopefully the Waxwings will be here in a couple of weeks.

The snow scuppered my annual first week of January trip up to Yakumo which always seems to produce

nice photo opps for the eagles. They'll be around for another 7 or 8 weeks of course, fingers crossed the weekend will see an improvement in the weather.