Another winter weekend in Yakumo #2

Yesterday saw me in Yakumo yet again and I had a great day photographing the eagles.

I started off on the bridge on Route 5 and I had some more nice BIF opportunities, some even had backgrounds other than sky.

The advantage of the bridge is that the birds are at a better angle (and not way up in the sky)............

Here are some young White Tailed Eagles.........

There were several Stellers Sea Eagles sitting in the distant trees, I waited for them to fly past and one by one they did.

Nice weather as you can see......

The eagles were dispersed right the way up the valley and many of them were feeding, often in places impossible to get close to, this is a typical scene.

Sometimes they would fly up into the trees a bit nearer and finish their meal...........

And then it cleaned its bill................

This one was at the end of the day as it got dark and the weather closed in..........

Here is a video I made of the same bird



So a great day in all, I feel so lucky to be bale to see these fantastic birds every winter.

I got an e-mail today saying there were SIX Rough Legged Buzzards east of Hakodate (and more Pine Buntings). Unfortunately I'm busy until Sunday (plus the weather is supposed to get really nasty in a day or 2).......let's hope they (both species) stick around.

This season the FA Cup isn't on the Japanese sports channels I subscribe to so I found an online feed of the Man City/Utd game, pretty enjoyable except every 2 or 3 minutes the picture would freeze for a few seconds, luckily I didn't miss any goals. No way was that a red card.

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Another Winter weekend in Yakumo

A Glaucous Winged Gull in Oshanambe this afternoon. I was looking for Long Tailed Ducks and Pine Buntings but despite checking several locations could find neither. Black Necked Grebe, Red Throated and Black Throated Divers were offshore and there were lots of Scaup, Goldeneye and Black Scoter in the ports.

Glaucous Winged Gulls are common winter visitors.

Here is one with the resident Slaty Backed Gulls........

2 days ago a Japanese friend very kindly took me to Yakumo. She wanted to see the eagles and see them we did.

Mariko was excited to see the eagles, indeed an adult  Stellers Sea Eagle flew right over our heads as we waited on the bridge.

I even managed a non BIF one........

This Goosander was from the bridge in Yakumo  today.

I had a pretty good day at Yakumo today, I have lots of photos to sort through. I'll update it tomorrow or the day after, here's a little taster........



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End of the holidays.......

So today was the end of the New Year break and I was up in Yakumo one last time. The usual suspects were present.........

The bridge was a freezing place today, a bitingly cold wind blowing in from Siberia. Not as many eagles about today, they seem to have dispersed as the salmon run out (this apparently being a bad year for the salmon run).

As you can see, the Stellers are a common sight to people living in Yakumo.

White Tailed Eagles appear to be slightly more numerous.........

This is a Common Buzzard, the ones over here in East Asia tend to look very pale.

Still some Great Egrets around.........

Though cold the weather wasn't too bad at Yakumo. We decided to head north to Oshamanbe to look for Long Tailed Duck and Pine Bunting but by the time we got there (only 20 minutes away) there was a raging blizzard and we couldn't even get out of the car (or see the road). We gave up and headed back to Yakumo and the sunshine. On the way we checked a place for Short Eared Owl, nothing doing there but there were several eagles including this Stellers perching just by the place we parked our car.

Other stuff around included the usual common ducks and gulls, Japanese Wagtail, Brown Dipper, Black Necked Grebe etc. We stopped at the Snow Bunting beach but after some serious floundering in snowdrifts I gave up. Let them have the beach..........it's theirs.

Back at Onuma the Ural Owl was still in its hole and a Black Woodpecker showed briefly. I was at Onuma yesterday too, here is a pic of the aforementioned Owl which I've seen the last 4 times I've been to Onuma I think........

At Kamiiso yesterday there were only 10 or so Black Necked Grebes left in the port.

Other stuff here included Merlin, White Tailed Eagle, 7 species of Gull and the usual common wildfowl.

So back to the grindstone tomorrow (not that I'm particularly busy until next week anyway), I think I'll get up and watch the Liverpool v Man City game, 3 points here would put us back into contention for a Champions League spot. Mind you we do have to beat the current leaders away from home, perhaps a draw would be good enough.

Here's a wintry view to finish with. The 100-400L does landscape........

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2012 begins........

A quiet lazy start to 2012 saw us in Kamiiso first up. I couldn't find the Shorelark, maybe it's gone. There were a few birds in the port though, not as many Black Necked Grebes as last time.

This Black Scoter caught something tasty looking..........

Not much else around so we headed to Onuma, the Ural Owl was showing nicely if a little sleepily.

The Nuthatches now have a snowy background instead of an autumnal one........

Not a vintage New Years Day for photos. It was a dark grey day as you can see. On the way back home in the late afternoon we stopped to check out a large flock of Rooks in Ono. Growing up in England it's difficult to get excited about Rooks but over here they are a little rare. I've never really tried to photograph crows before, I had no idea it was so hard. Black birds on a dark day are not a great idea and this species os unbelievably shy here too. This was the best I could manage and it isn't very good. Soft and blurry but at least it was striking a nice pose.

In the flock there were 3 Daurian Jackdaw, another bird I find difficult to photograph. I never see them on the ground, always against grey skies and I only ever shoot them through the car window on busy roads on freezing cold days.

This is the fifth anniversary of this blog, I started on January 1st 2007. I also went to Onuma that day...........

Before that I had another blog on surfirds which ran all the way through 2006.

5 years, the time has flashed by........

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