A weekend away in May

Some Red Necked Pharalope seen on the Tomakomai pelagic trip yesterday.

A Pacific Diver in sumer plumage, we saw several of these including one fairly close to the boat, close enough for us to hear its eerie call above the sound of the wind and waves.

It was a good say for alcids. Two of those we saw were lifers...........the bird of the day for most on the boat was this Long Billed Murrelet, here's a very heavily cropped record shot.

Most of the photos are pretty heavily cropped actually. There were also lots of Brunnichs Guillemots, some in full summer plumage, some not. This was another new bird for me.

Quite a few Ancient Murrelets were around too but the commonest alcid of the day was Rhinoceros Auklet.

My 'target' bird (at least for photos) was Red Necked Pharalope, there were some around but not the vast flocks I had been hoping for.

It was very difficult (for me at least) to photograph them from the boat. The sea was a little choppy and the movement up and down of the boat and waves combined with a narrow filed of view between the people sat in front of me made it really hard ro get a lock on the birds. I'm not really familiar with photography from a ship and I am also very unsteady on my feet on a small boat................

Still it was great to see such a beautiful bird up close.........

BIF shots were slightly easier.

They seem to have found something tasty near this buoy..........

It was a long day (7 hours on a fairly small boat) but an enjoyable one. No Albatross, Skuas or Terns but we did see a few Short Tailed Shearwater. One of the people on the boat was Mark Brazil, a well- known Hokkaido based birder and author of several books about birds in Japan and east Asia, it was nice chatting to someone who really knows their stuff.

We had driven up to Tomakomai the day before, on the way we saw several roadside Lathams Snipe in Oshamanbe.

I tried to take a video..............

On the beach there were some waders. Ruddy Turnstone, lots of Grey Tailed Tattlers, Common Sandpiper and some Red Necked Stint, the latter were coming into summer plumage.

I was very surprised to see 3 Yellow Wagtail with the stints. Again, heavy cropping going on here..............

Yellow Wagtails are pretty scarce in Japan, one subspecies breeds in north Hokkaido. This one is a different subspecies to that  however, it has a blue head as you can see (the Hokkaido one doesn't).

Other birds seen on the way included Pacific Swift, Osprey and some of Tomakomai's famous Magpies.

This ia another scarce bird in Japan and is normally only seen in the south (it is abundant in Korea however). 20 or so years ago they appeared in Tomakomai, a bit of a mystery there......

I pottered around in Utonai-ko on Saturday afternoon. Eastern Crowned Warbler, Siberian Rubythroat, Brown Thrush, Little Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper, Lathams Snipe, Oriental Cuckoo, Wigeon, Pintail, Whooper Swan, Mute Swan, White Tailed Eagle, Eastern Marsh Harrier, Long Tailed Rosefinch, Reed Bunting, Great Spotted and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, Nuthatch, Marsh Tit and Russet Sparrow were around but nothing posed for the camera.........

Thanks again for Tomoyuki Namba for arranging the boat trip, I hope to join them again 2 or 3 times this year.........

Thanks also to my wife for doing a lot of driving.

There were some issues on blogger last week, I couldn't log in or do anything for a while and it appears some comments have disappeared too (if you left any comments last Thursday/Friday they seem to have vanished).

Thanks for clicking this link.

Room with a view

From my hotel window in Tomakomai, Japan's equivalent of somewhere like Hull. Taken with my cellphone.

Flycatchers in the park...........

A male Narcissus Flycatcher and a male Blue and White Flycatcher in Goryokaku Park today.

There were at least 2 male Narcissus and 1 or 2 females too. The males looked of both species slightly raggedy, I guess they were born last year and are finally moulting into adult plumage.

They were very active but not really shy. The park was very busy and was looking very nice with the blossoms gently falling from the trees. The atmosphere was slightly spoiled by a drunk oyaji trying to talk to me (whilst I was taking photos of the flycatchers), I said I was busy and he burped and urinated against a tree. Classy.

As you can see they are a quite beautiful looking little bird, even when eating a spider.........

There were also a couple of Blue and White Flycatchers, male and female. This male still had some brown on its wings.........

And this one is, I think, an Asian Brown Flycatcher.

Lots of Eastern Crowned Warblers in the trees too. The Russet Sparrows were present on the river yesterday but seem to have upped and left as of today. The only birds of interest on the river were a fly past Kingfisher and a lone singing Oriental Reed Warbler.

Yesterday was a bit of a frustrating one. I got up early to try and take pictures of the Red Cheeked Starlings in the big cherry blossom tree. Last year there were 2 or 3 pairs there but this year only one pair seem to have taken up residence there and they didn't stick around for photos so much. This is the female.

I wanted to take a video (I even lugged my tripod along), this was all I could manage though.....

You can hear Japanese White-eye in the background, there were loads of them around yesterday.

I decided to go to Kamiiso, I was convinced there would be lots of waders on the beach. I walked 3 or 4 miles and all I got was one solitary Whimbrel flying off into the distance. A few Scaup were offshore as well as a pair of summer plumaged Great Crested Grebe and hundreds of Black Headed Gulls (also in summer plumage, they are the only hooded gull in Hokkaido and look fairly exotic). I missed an Osprey diving into the river and catching a fish by a few seconds..................like I say it was a tiring frustrating day.

In the harbour there were a few Common Sandpiper and 3 Grey Tailed Tattler.

I've been watching the Red Riding trilogy, a tad depressing but I'm enjoying it.

I'll miss the FA Cup final (I'll be in Tomakomai for a pelagic trip, weather permitting). I can remember when this was the big game of the season and the whole day was an experience sitting down in front of the TV. Now it is almost an irrelevance, I can't even recall who won it last year. Chelsea, I think? Who did they beat? God knows.

Thanks for clicking this link.

On this day (May 11th)..............

May 11th 2008.

A male Narcissus Flycatcher at Onuma. This is a very common summer visitor and one of the most beautiful birds in Japan, it is also very active and tricky to get a good picture of. In the 3 years since I've been trying to get a killer shot of one  this one still remains my fave.........

There are loads of them buzzing around in the forest at Onuma but from about the 3rd week of May the foliage thickens and the forest becomes darker making it more difficult to photograph them. Early May is therefore the prime time but I haven't had chance to get over to Onuma for a while so may miss out again in 2011, still, there's always next year...........

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

Leaf Warblers in the leaves............

I took a couple of brief looks at the bushes next to the local river and they were full of warblers..........

Rather like in the UK there are 3 breeding species of phylloscopus warblers in Hokkaido. Eastern Crowned, Sakhalin Leaf and Arctic Warblers. The above one is an Eastern Crowned Warbler and this one is a Sakhalin Leaf Warbler.

Eastern Crowned (let's call them ECW) are very common indeed and are greener with a diagnostic head pattern, they also have a paridae like song that is one of the most familiar sounds of the summer forest.

There must have been a dozen or more ECWs flitting around in 2 or 3 small trees, very difficult to track with a slowish lens plus it was pretty dark in some of the places too..............

There were only 2 or 3 Sakhalin Leaf Warblers. These are browner and have a loud metallic call (and a weird Clangers-like song). They only breed in north Japan and Sakhalin (a large Siberian island to the north of Hokkaido), there is a very similar mainland east Asian species (Pale Legged Leaf Warbler) from which it was recently split.

The third phylloscopus species, the Arctic Warbler,  doesn't usually arrive until the 3rd or 4th week of May and seems to be less common than the others. I don't see so many in spring, possibly they pass through unnoticed as the foliage thickens. They leave later than the others though, I see lots of them in late September to mid October (the ECW/SLWs pass through in August when the foliage is at its thickest and anyway I'm on the beach looking for waders at that time). They have a very distinctive buzzing call and trilling song, I sometimes hear them in the forest at Mat Hakodate in early June.

Like the UK there are 10 or so rarer phylloscopus vagrants, many of which are rarities in the UK too (Dusky, Raddes, Yellow Browed etc). I hope to stumble across some of these although I find these kind of warblers very tricky to ID. I can manage the 3 common ones because of their calls but when one individual (probably in autumn so with worn adult plumage or an immature) is silently flitting around behind the leaves................I don't know about that TBH.

Willow Warblers, Wood Warblers and Chiffchaffs are sought after rarities here by the way.......

I saw another male Blue and White Flycatcher today as well as Japanese White-eye, Dusky Thrush, other unidentified thrushes, Hawfinch and a flyover Great Egret. Yesterday I also saw Peregrine ans the last of the winter Teal. The flock of Russet Sparrow remains (20 or so birds) but they are very shy and fly off if I even look in their general direction. Before this week I had only ever seen them once in Hakodate, I wonder if this flock will stay and breed in the small park near my flat.........

Thanks for clicking this link......