Red Throated Diver and some old friends..........

We headed over to Kamiso this morning to check the harbour again. Yesterday had been very very windy and the Red Throated Diver must have taken refuge in the relative calm of the harbour. I could even take this video. handheld out of the car. This is the original with terrible sound (it was very windy and I think my hand was touching the camera's internal microphone).

And here it is with the sound replaced by some sound effects.........

It looked absolutely knackered. And some of its beak appears to be missing, look at he lower mandible..........

There were hardly any fisherman on the harbour side, we got some great shots of the Black Necked Grebes which I'll post in a day or two. I filled up a 16GB card again, including the shots from earlier in the week I have about 1500 photos on my hard drive to sort through. And I already deleted all the obviously bad ones..............

There were 2 Red Necked Grebes today as well as the various duck species which today also included a few very wary Wigeon. My wife was sick of the harbour so we headed over to Onuma to feed the Nuthatches and Tits.

Our clapped out old banger of a car was making all kinds of worrying noises and we decided to head home.............it may be a while before we see the Nuthatches again..........

I  now have to sort through all those Black Necked Grebe photos. I swear I spend more time processing photos than taking them, sometimes it almost feels like 'work'. If only I could get paid for this!

Some more harbour birds........

I went back to the harbour at Kamiso, the birds were basically the same but it was even darker, most of today's shots were at ISO 800.

There were slightly fewer birds. There were lots of people fishing from the side of the harbour: 3 Grebes got snagged in the fishing lines and managed to pull a fishing rod into the water, they swam off with the rod following them, sadly I don't rate their chances of survival very highly.

Like I say, very dark meaning lots of underexposed shots that came out noisy in postprocessing.

Some shots would have been great if the light had been better.

There were about 30 of them today............

Yesterday I saw thousands and thousands of Red Breasted Merganser offshore. A few ventured into Kamiso harbour again.........

This is a female.

And this creepy looking one is a young male moulting into adult plumage.

There were 2 Great Crested Grebes on the sea. I saw a Little Grebe on the river yesterday so that means all 5 species of Grebe are in Hakodate at the moment. The Red Necked was still around today.

The sun came out just before I left............

There were several Glaucous Gull around, one of 7 Gull species in and around the harbour.

Here's a bird I've never photographed before: a Red Throated Diver. This was the other side of the sea wall.

I really want to get those Grebes in good light................

Liverpool lost again, I've stopped caring.

On this day (March 12th)....................

March 12th 2008.


Female Black Woodpecker at Onuma.


One of the local specialties, they can be seen at many locales in south Hokkaido.


This is a regularly seen species in early spring at Onuma, this female was especially tame as she flitted around the forest checking out nestholes. The male was also around but for some reason is always much more wary............

More harbourside birds.............

3 of the species in the harbour at Kamiso this morning. Red Necked Grebe, Black Necked Grebe and Red Breasted Merganser.

It was dark and snowing but the harbour was full of birds. They were chasing fish around and the flocks followed the food. The Red Necked Grebe came very close...........

Shame it was still in winter plumage but it's still by far the best photo opp I've had for this species.

There was also a lone Slavonian Grebe (too far off for a decent photo and that was in winter colours too) and about 50-60 Black Necked Grebes, many of which were changing into their summer best.

The harbour at Kamiso is much bigger than at Shikabe and a lot of the time the birds were out in the middle and a little far off........

The reason for the concentration of birds appeared to be the fact there were lots of small fish in the harbour........

The Grebes didn't have it all their own way, I saw a Slaty Backed Gull eating a very fresh looking Black Necked Grebe corpse.

The next commonest species in the harbour was Red Breasted Merganser.

And of course there were some Scaup.

Other stuff included Goldenye, a surprise flyover Osprey (very early, I've never seen them in March before) and this male Shoveler.

Another species I haven't photographed so much and one I'd forgotten how beautiful it was.

This Glaucous Gull was eating the Grebe.......

We'd only gone to the harbour by accident, we had intended to spend the day at Onuma.

The weather was really nasty there, this Nuthatch was the only thing to photograph. The Owl wasn't at home and visibility was so poor we couldn't check to see if there were any eagles on the ice.

This adult White Tailed Eagle was in Kamsio however.........

So no way Liverpool will finish 4th this season, I've given up on that. If we did finish 4th it would mean Benitez would stay and I don't think that is a good thing.

I watched 'The Descent Part 2' which was laughably bad (I rather liked the first one) and am halfway through 'The Hangover' which seems pretty funny so far.

So after a very quiet last few weeks the birding has picked up, hopefully we'll get a good spring. I'll try he harbour again at Kamiso, maybe a couple of visits over the next week or so and hopefully with some sunshine...........