Back in circulation

Some Sanderling up at Oshamanbe this afternoon. The wader season is underway, this was one of 6 species around today. My gout is receding (I'm still limping though) so I was back out with the camera........

It has been so hot recently, hovering around the low 30's and humid as hell. Others living elsewhere in Japan may scoff at this news but let me tell you in Hokkaido we generally don't have aircon. Except in the car...............

There were 5 Sanderling on the beach, I think they were adults. The light was a tad harsh...........

I got sunburned on the beach and soaked too as I wasn't paying attention to the surf.............

On a nearby beach there were 5 Red Necked Stint, these were still showing a lot of summer plumage...................

A single Grey Tailed Tattler was sharing the beach with the Stints........

At Yakumo there was a single Curlew (Eastern I think, the hill seems a bit short, I didn't see the rump) and a couple of what I think were Marsh Sandpiper, here are a couple of BIF record shots.

A couple of summer plumaged Grey Plover were also around.

Last week there was a Black Faced Spoonbill ( a very rare bird) at Yakumo. I looked for it for a couple of hours but to no avail. There were lots of Great Egret, Grays Grasshopper Warbler were still singing, Sand Martin were flocking ahead of migration, Black Browed Reed Warbler families were everywhere...............but no Spoonbill..............

I was kept entertained by the Ospreys, shame they didn't come close enough for a decent shot.......

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Hope this hot spell ends soon, it is rare when we can't get to sleep at night because of the heat...........

The footy season kicks off next week (the Premier League that is) but I'll be away Saturday I think, after the World Cup my appetite for football has lessened somewhat. J Sports (the TV channel that usually show it) are still negotiating the contract anyway so they may not even show the first round of matches (this happened 2 or 3 years ago)....................I'll be home for the Liverpool/Arsenal game though which I'm sure can be watched on multiple internet feeds of varying qualities. The England v Pakistan cricket feeds have been of pretty poor quality so I'm currently listening to TMS with a cold beer in my hand, one of life's little pleasures.......

  

So I was bored...........

I was bored yesterday so I made some of these flight sequence collages of the local eagles from last winter..........................

I use AV mode (Aperture Priority) and because the exposure isn't locked pictures from the same burst have slightly different exposures, I've tried to correct it but you can probably notice the sky colour isn't exactly consistent.

The 7D is a great BIF camera, I will try this in M mode next year and try and lock the exposure so all the shots in one burst have the same colour background............

Amazing all the stuff Photoshop can do, all I really use it for is sharpening, shadows and highlights and cloning/healing away twigs and stuff.

Today was packed with many minor frustrations; transferring money to a bank account that I later found out had been decativated, burning a DVD-DL disk and trying to install something on an old computer that I later discovered doesn't recognise DVD-DLs, trying to connect an external DVD writer to said computer and funding one of the pins in the adapter is broken rendering it useless, going to a camera shop on impulse to buy a lens only to find said lens wasn't in stock..............aaaarghhhhhhhhh.

But having said all that it isn't so often you get to grip a nice firm  homo sausage in one's sweaty palm.

The funniest name of any processed seafood snack in the world I'd venture.

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Fallow days

I'm recycling some more Red Necked Stint shots from last autumn (2009), these ones have never seen the light of day (or rather never been posted on the internet).

Not much else happening at the moment.

From around the 3rd week of August until the middle of September they are very common and can be seen even on very small unpromising beaches.

They love feeding (drinking?) from upturned shells, you have to admit it's cute.

In the meantime it's still rather hot and they are still nowhere near finishing that goddamn new house next door (they wake me up every morning at 7.45am).

I watched 'A Cock and Bull Story' (the whole thing on youtube no less, a bit of an odd one), Predators (crap but entertaining) and 'RocknRolla' (also crap but enjoyable). I have all episodes of 'The Thick of It' to work my way through next (a show that completely bypassed me out here on the edge of the world).

I watched a jerky poor quality feed of England's victory against Pakistan. Looks like Liverpool will be owned by a rich Chinaman and staffed by premier league journeymen with (effectively) a caretaker manager. They'll finish higher than last season though.............

The waders will arrive when the footy season kicks off. Until then for both it's just memories of last season..........

Nowt much locally, on the river I saw a few Grey Wagtail and the usual common summer stuff: Red Cheeked Starling, Bullheaded Shrike, Oriental Reed Warbler etc.............nothing posing for the camera.

Hopefully I'll have something new to post soon..........

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Changes afoot

Changes are afoot. In my foot that is. The gout appears to be in retreat although it's still a bit sore and twingy. Hopefully I'll be up and about by the weekend.

The above Red Necked Stints were from last autumn, in a week or 2 the first passage waders of the autumn will hopefully be appearing on the local beaches and I'll be in good enough condition to walk out to meet them..........

I have been really bored stuck in the house for the last 17 or so days. It's hot and humid outside (and inside too: no aircon up here in Hokkaido in regular apartments), the hammering/sawing/drilling continues outside my window...............sorry I'm repeating myself so I'll stop.

I made this short 'movie', a compilation of videos from the first half of 2010 with my 7D.

Some more birdscaping

A baby Moorhen at Onuma last summer, uncropped to show off its habitat.


I still have gout problems and am housebound, it's stinking hot and the construction noise is about 10 or so metres away..................no going out for walks in the day and no cold beer in the evening makes me a right grumpy basta*d I can tell you.


I dug out some more 'birdscape' photo from the previous 2 summers. All the photos are uncropped, like I said in my last post they suffer a little composition-wise as the birds tend to be dead centre (I wasn't anticipating birdscape type pics when i took them).


The Moorhen above was from July 2009, here is are some Little Ringed Plovers, the adult is from 2008 and the chick (it is there if you look closely) from 2009.








And here's a Night Heron poking its head up in a padi field last year.





Early last August the Red Necked Stints reappeared on the beaches, these are adults and were much shyer than the juveniles which pass through later and are much more approachable.





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Hopefully I'll be up and about soon. At least my gout has struck at the worst time of year birding-wise...........


Joe Cole eh? Interesting................

Limping and Birdscaping

A Black Browed Reed Warbler just outside Hakodate this morning and some kind of pink lotus at Onuma (I've taken so many of the usual yellow/white ones over the years, nice to see one of a different colour).

My right foot is still painful as hell with the gout so I could only limp and hobble around a bit, not much in the way of birds anyway. I can't really walk anywhere, thanks to my wife for driving me around today.........

Inspired by another blog I looked at some of my old photos from last year. These are apparently called 'birdscapes' ie showing birds in their natural habitat. The more cynical among us may say they are the photos we get when the bird flies off before we can get a decent shot (or the photo isn't sharp enough to crop) but I have to say I quite like them...........

This male Stonechat and Black Browed Reed Warbler were in the ricefields just outside Hakodate last year 2009. Both shots are uncropped, in fact very little processing has been done at all.





One problem with these type of shots is that the bird is inevitably in the centre (I always use the centre point AF point). Of course if I'm going to crop the picture this isn't such a problem. I must have locked focus and then recomposed that Stonechat pic (I think I was trying to get all that reed stem in), this is something I will try and do as a matter of course for these distant shots................

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Down and (g)out

I've been stuck at home the last few days immobilized by gout. This affliction runs in the family and it gets me about once every 18 months or so.


What didn't help was the fact that last week I ate or drank basically every single food/beverage item that gout sufferers should avoid. To excess too I might add. My wife has no sympathy. 


I could have posted a pic of my red swollen big toe but decided to recycle some Black Crowned Night Heron pics instead. The 3 shots above are of an adult this time last year (2009), it was very active in early July, presumably the young were clamouring for food.


I saw an adult flying around the river this year in June but haven't seen any signs since. No young birds, nothing. Often in previous years they stppd around in the open. Here are some shots of youngsters from late June/early July 2008 (these taken with a 70-300). You can see how much trash the local wildlife have to put up with.











Before I came to Japan I had only ever seen 1 Night Heron, an adult in Redscar back in 1987. When I arrived in central Japan in 1999 I noticed some strange heron like birds flying around at night and squawking loudly, I now these were Night Herons.


I hope they bred again this year, I'll check again next week when I can walk more than 10 yards without wincing in pain.


I've seen plenty in the ricefields this summer but like I say they haven't been active on the local river so much. Maybe they're breeding further upstream than normal? The place where I saw them the previous 2 Julys has a very aggressive pair of Large Billed Crows nesting nearby and they don't take kindly to people lingering and will swoop around your head like that scene in the Omen Part 2.


In autumn along the river they are easier to see as the vegetation slowly dies off, they usually hang around until the first snow comes and then they head south.


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Some good news for a change..........

So July has been pretty nasty. England's awful World Cup, non-stop construction noise, wet overcast weather and a flare up of gout in my big toe has left my nerves shredded.

But today I checked the letterbox and there was something from a big Japanese camera chain.  Junk mail? No! The above photo (a Spectacled Guilemot from January 2009 in one of the local harbours) has won first prize in a national photo contest. I sent it off to the amateur section and it won one of the 3 categories (nature I think but I actually can't recall which one exactly).

I had entered the photo several months ago and had totally forgotten about it. The prize money is a rather tasty ¥100,000 (a little over US$1000). It'll start my savings towards either a Canon 300 F2.8 or 500 F4 next year..................

Sometimes life throws us a few nice things. Not often I know.

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