Steady on Taiga

A heavily cropped shot of a Taiga Flycatcher near my apartment this morning. I'd first seen it yesterday, it was very difficult to photograph and this was the best I could manage. 2 years ago I saw the closely related Red Breasted Flycatcher just downstream from this place. I think this is a Taiga Flycatcher though, the call was a rapid buzzing trill, which seems to match the descriptions in my fieldguides anyway.

Other migrants around included Rustic Bunting, a lone female Narcissus Flycatcher, Japanese Bush Warbler and the first Daurian Redstart (a male) of the autumn.

Ducks are building up: Teal, Tufted Duck, Mallard and Wigeon were around today and yesterday there were 5 Scaup in Goryokaku Park. A bit of a surprise, normally they usually arrive later and I've never seen them inland before.......

I've been going back and manually resizing old photos to fit my new resized blog template. One thing that struck me was that, in the last 4 years, in mid October almost all my photos were of Night Herons. This year there don't seem to be many at all, I saw a few several weeks ago but since then.........nothing. Where are they? Are this years' birds better at hiding? Was it a poor breeding season? Do they know something we don't and have already fled south in anticipation of an ultra cold winter? Who knows.......

There were 3 species of Heron on the river today. Grey Heron of course. Plus a Little Egret...........a bird I've yet to get a decent photo of.

All BIF shots..........

They were sharing the stretch of river with 2 Great Egret.

Thank god the Premier League is back tomorrow, England's international footy and rugby teams were hard to watch last weekend. I'm listening to the ODI against India now on BBC's websites. Only available to the UK eh? Someone at the beeb forgot to switch the international feed off. Shhhhhhhh................don't tell anyone.

Just about over my cold, it prevented any trips to Mt Hakodate for the peak migration, lots of Mugimaki Flycatcher and accipter species apparently......

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

October 11th 2009.



A Black Legged Kittiwake at Yakumo 2 years ago. There were big flocks of them making landfall in the area during October /November 2009 and some of the flocks contained the rare Red Legged Kittiwake (not seen by me alas).

A very quiet month so far this year..............nothing around my apartment and I caught a nasty cold and couldn't get out much at the weekend (apparently lots of migrants on Mt Hakodate on Sunday, I was at home sneezing so hard I now have backache).

On a brief foray out I did see a Kittiwake at Shikabe on Sunday as well as an Oriental Honey Buzzard but no photos worth posting............hence this old one. Last week I was at Shikabe as well, on both occasions the Japanese Green Pigeons were present but not posing for photos. Nowt much at Onuma either, some migrating White-eye, thrushes and the common resident species...........I got my last mozzie bite of 2011 (I hope) there on Sunday.

A few ducks around, my wife saw 5 Scaup on the moat in Goryokaku Park (I've never seen them there) and Teal and Tufted Duck numbers are slowly building. No Night Herons, or maybe they are still hiding.

I redesigned the blog, it's wider and the pics are bigger. I had to go back manually and change the last 2 years' posts (so that the photos weren't tiny thumbnails floating in sea of blackness), such a boring task it felt like I was at work or something. I gave up around May 2009.............

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On this day (October 5th)..........

October 5th 2008


This is my most popular photo on flickr, a Red Fox giving me the stare at Onuma 3 years ago today.................

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A walk to the beach

I had a day off today and this morning the weather was still warm and clear, I decided to walk down the river to the beach instead of taking the train to Kamiiso to catch the last few waders. Actually I thought that there probably wouldn't be any waders around but I was surprised to find this Mongolian Plover on a stretch of beach where I have never seen any shorebirds before. What did I miss today in Kamiiso I wonder?

Not as many migrants as I'd been hoping, here's a Siberian Stonechat from today.

Not much else around the last couple of days. Arctic Warbler, Mallard, Teal, Grey Heron and Kingfisher on the river and several Black Crowned Night Heron, here's a typical view of one from yesterday.

I've been trying to change the look of this blog a little, I want to make it wider and to make the photos larger. If I do that however the pictures and text from previous posts will be too small or out of alignment. Hmmmmm.......maybe I'll just leave it as it is for now.

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Autumnal

A flock of Pacific Golden Plover in the ricefields at Ono yesterday. I was looking for Sharp Tailed Sandpiper, several had been seen with the Plover flock.

There was one small wader in with them but as you can see it was just a Dunlin.

There were several Common Snipe around too but the bird of the day was Yellow Wagtail, a scarce bird in Japan. There were 2 of them but they were very shy and I couldn't get any photo. I saw a few other brief glimpses of other waders but nothing conclusive except for 1 Common Sandpiper..

The Plovers were nice to see though and as you can tell we're finally getting some decent weather, the last 3 days have been warm, sunny and very clear.

Not much in town the last few days. No migrants near my apartment, just a Kingfisher and a flyover Night Heron.

At Yakumo there were more Kingfisher, Common Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Common Sandpiper, Osprey, Goosander, Teal, Pintail, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, 2 Great Crested Grebe, Great Egret and lots of Black Headed Gull, here's BIF of one I took whilst waiting in vain for something more interesting to come nearer.

So autumn is here, nights are getting cooler and soon the leaves will be turning.........

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OMG Sunshine

Well well well, we finally got some sunshine this morning and early afternoon (followed by a really heavy thunderstorm though).

We were at Shikabe and I was trying to get some Japanese Green Pigeon shots. BIF shots are tough for such fast flying birds and the 100-400 perhaps isn't the best BIF lens anyway (and of course I'm no expert either). When they fly against the sea it was often impossible to AF but luckily there was a patch of blue sky with the light behind me.

One problem with setting the camera up for BIF shots is when you're suddenly confronted with a bird doing something else your settings are all wrong, I can change them in slightly more than a split second but often that's not enough.

The white background was the surf, there was a big swell after yet another typhoon. The birds had to deal with big waves.......

Next year I'll approach this more seriously and sit near the rocks hidden and camouflaged. Today it was mainly BIF shots...........

Not much else around here, a few Common Sandpiper and Grey Tailed Tattler on the rocks, nothing else.

The day started early in Kamiiso with the last waders of the season (probably).

A Bar Tailed Godwit and a Grey Plover. Other waders included 1 Dunlin, 4 Red Necked Stint and several Common Sandpiper. Lots of Black Headed Gulls around now as well as the first Pintail and Teal of the autumn. There were 3 Heron species; Grey Heron, Black Crowned Night Heron and Little Egret. Actually 1 of the egrets had me thinking of Swinhoes again (bill seemed shorter and yellowish) but it probably wasn't. Here's a lousy heavy crop of 2 egrets, the one on the left seems to have a shorter lighter bill and shorter legs...........or is it just my imagination?

When I went back in the evening there were 3 egrets and they all were clear Little Egrets.

I put an ID request on birdforum anyway, you never know.......

In the ricefields there were lts of Stonechats and hirundines moving south as well as a small flyover flock of Pacific Golden Plover. I was looking for waders here, I flushed a couple of Common Snipe (I could ID them by the white edge to their wings), yet another new bird for my Hakodate list.

Not much in town last week, the weather was terrible most of the time. I did see a few migrants however.

A female Blue and White Flycatcher I think.

The commonest migrant was Asian Brown Flycatcher, they were everywhere. Other stuff included Arctic Warbler, Siberian Stonechat, Grey Wagtail as well as several unidentified thrush type things. Large flocks of Grey Starlings are around as well as the last few Red Cheeked Strarling, here's a male near my apartment.

So it's autumn now, time to get used to wearing socks and jackets again.

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Grey Skies and grey seas

3 species from the latest Tomakomai pelagic trip. Sooty Shearwater, Streaked Shearwater and Common Tern (the east Asian subspecies).

As you can see it was very dark, a really grey wet day which wasn't so good for photographs. I struggle getting the birds in focus on a moving boat anyway and the terrible light made it even worse.

This Sooty Shearwater was nice to see up close and provided the day's nicest photos.

Streaked Shearwaters were very common.........

And there were also several flocks of Common Tern.

The terns were being harried by several Arctic Skua but they were too fast for me to capture any shots. Bird of the day was an Aleutian Tern which appeared momentarily in the gloom. Other folk saw some Japanese Murrelet but I missed them. There were also Red Necked Pharalope, a distant Laysan Albatross and a few migrating passerines on their way south (warblers and flycatchers mainly).

Back onshore Tomakomai's Magpies were everywhere (even seen from our hotel window). A Little Stint (rare over here) was reported from the harbour where the boat had departed from but we couldn't locate it, only Red Necked Stints (hell they look identical anyway). We spent a pleasant afternoon at Mukawa with some of the birders from Hokkaido University. Wood Sandpiper, Long Toed Stint, Spotted Redshank and Common Snipe were around (the latter being new to my Japanese list).

On Saturday morning I'd tried the ricefields in Ono looking for waders but the rain defeated me. I did disturb a couple of Snipe which may well have Common Snipe but it was nice for better birders than me to confirm the ID.

On the way back home we stopped briefly at Yakumo. the first Wigeon of the autumn, a lone drake, was calling from the middle of the river and I disturbed a Japanese Green Pigeon on the beach but there wasn't much else except for a lot of crows.......

I think that's a Giant Sea Turtle? At first I thought it was a cow(!), the pecked out eyes I'd mistaken for nostrils.........

Anyway, yuk.

I hooked up the wife's laptop to the internet at the hotel and watched the Tottenham v Liverpool game. I went to bed after the second red card/3rd Spurs goal. Oh dear.

September 2011...............wow what awful awful weather.........

By the way Blogger seems to be having some problems with the images, if you click on the images they may appear in a 'light box' style, this is beyond my control. On older posts it may be impossible to click on the photos to enlarge them. Hopefully this bug will be sorted out soon.

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