Tomakomai Pelagic

A Black Footed Albatross off Tomakomai yesterday, one of around 20 or so offshore...........

I joined Tomoyuki and friends for a 4 hour pelagic trip. It was a warm overcast day but the sea was fairly calm (a good job as the boat was pretty small) and the birding was great, I got 6 new birds for my Japanese list and 5 of those were lifers.

Bird of the day (for me at least) was the Black Footed Albatross.

Some were quite tame and approached the boat looking for scraps........

Looks at that huge bill...........

I fired off lots of shots but I kind of forgot to get any close ups (some of these shots were under 200mm).............

Still there's always next time..............

My first ever Albatross species.........

  

I tried some action shots but these weren't so successful, I need to pay more attention to my technique/settings here........

The Albatosses were very confiding but most of the seabirds weren't so approachable. WE also saw a more distant Laysan Albatross but it was on the way back and we didn't have time to stop and take a good look.

Tomoyuki and friends were very good with IDs. The most common birds were Sooty and Streaked Shearwaters. the latter were easy to identify.

Wheres the former looked very like Short Tailed Shearwater, not sure if I'd be able to tell the difference to be honest.

There were big flocks of Sootys but none of my pics from yesterday are worth posting, as I said, next time next time......

It was difficult to photograph birds from a small boat, I'm a total landlubber and I was aware that I could slip and be tipped off any time and found it tricky to move around. Most of today's shots (except the Albatross ones) were pretty poor, not helped by the fact I'd decided to put a protective filter on my lens. My last trip on a boat had resulted in my lens front element getting soaked with sea spray and unuseable until I could get home and clean it properly. There was no spray this time and I took it off towards the end and the IQ improved noticeably.

Plus the fact I need to experiment and practise a bit more with some of the 7D's AF capabilties........

The species of the day for most on the trip was this. A crappy record shot of a Fork Tailed Storm Petrel.

There was even a flock of them around.............

There were also lots of Red Necked Pharalope, these have a knack of always flying just out of photo range............

A few Skua were also seen, Arctic and Pomarine..........here's a record shot of an Arctic resting on some flotsam.

Other birds included Rhinoceros Auklet, Common Tern, Great Crested Grebe and a flock of Japanese Green Pigeon flying around the harbour. On the drive up we got a surprisingly large number of Grays Grasshopper Warbler calling from various roadside locales and Tomakomai's famous resident Magpies.

We saw some Dolphins and for a few minutes what we thought was a pair of Minke Whales. On closer inspection it turned out to be a tree.........

Thanks to Tomoyuki for organising the trip, it was great and I hope to go back at least one more time this year. And thanks to my wife for getting up at 2am to drive us up there..........

We were lucky with the weather on the day of the boat trip, for 3 days before there was a typhoon with very heavy rain and the rain returned today too. On driving back we had a real south Hokkaido rarity: a traffic jam. Heading back south wasn't so bad but the northbound lane was tailed back for many miles. This weekend is one of Japan's three big holiday periods and we usually avoid travel at those times.

Thanks for clicking this link.........

Liverpool's first game of the season tonight. 2010 has been a footballing nightmare so far, will this be when things begin to look up?

Albatross

Some Black Footed Albatross shot from my cellphone today.

On this day (August 10th....................

August 10th 2006.

A fearless young Ruddy Kingfisher at Onuma, it has fledged only a couple of weeks earlier. I was very lucky to get this shot, most of the regular gaggle of photographers with huge lenses missed the opportunity. This was in the forest and I was mercilessly bitten by the mosquitoes which were unbelievably thirsty.

Digiscoped images are usually best if a) the bird is close and b) it doesn't move. This individual ticked both boxes.

Another 'I wish I'd had a decent camera with me' moments, I've never been as near to one since.

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.......

Thanks for clicking this link.

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.

Thanks for clicking this link.

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..........

Thanks for clicking this link.

     

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.