Assorted Pondlife

A quiet end to the week, more snow and grey skies.........

This morning we were at Onuma. The ice-free pond held 3 Smew, 1 Great Egret and 2 Night Heron. The snow from the nearby car park has been dumped next to the pond meaning it is impossible to get close to the birds...........not such a problem for a bog one like the Great Egret.

But more of a problem for the Smew and Night Heron..........

As you can see it was snowing heavily at times, here's a video where the birds don't move much but the snow does............



Not much else around plus today was Onuma's winter festival so to avoid the crowds we headed up to Yakumo. Last February I had a couple of great days here taking dramatic photos of the many eagles and other raptors. Today was............................nowhere near as good. I was hoping last week's poor eagle showing at Yakumo had been a one off but unfortunately today was the same. Not many eagles at all, about 3 or 4 Stellers (all too far off for photos) and a dozen or so White Tailed Eagles of various ages.

I don't know where they've all gone, I guess they ate all the salmon and have dispersed around the coasts looking for food.

Not much else here, a distant Goshawk and several more Great Egret bring the most noteworthy.

Last Friday after the Rough Legged Buzzard we ended up at the botanical gardens in Yunokawa. This place has an outside hot spring full of monkeys (Japanese Macaque I think). They are all in an enclosure and are obviously not wild, in fact basically it's a small monkey only zoo. There are some genuinely wild ones who sit around in hot springs in the snow but they are down in Honshu somewhere.

So with all that in mind they are still very good photographic subjects.

The steam from the hot spring and the high ISO I was using in the gloomy kight produced a nice grainy effect............

Whilst it all looks very tranquil it is a fairly stinky place and up close the monkeys don't look very healthy at all, must be all that junk food the tourists lob at them.

Can England win the 3rd test and salvage a little pride? They had Pakistan at 21 for 5 on the first morning's play, how could they look like certainties to lose from that position? They'd better bat out of their skins tomorrow. England- the world's #1 team. Except in Asia. Or when they have to play against decent spinners.

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A very tame Rough Legged Buzzard

The long staying Rough Legged Buzzard east of Hakodate this afternoon.

I got really lucky with this individual this afternoon, we'd ended up at this location after a long fruitless morning in Onuma and along the coast via Esan. When we arrived it was sitting in its favourite patch of trees.

Whilst I was watching it I noticed lots of small birds in the bushes and trees: Rustic Bunting, Siskin, Coal Tit and Hawfinch. Eventually it flapped off..........

Now at that point I was more than happy with these shots, easily the best I'd managed of this species. My wife wanted to take a nap in the car so I hung around for a while and it flapped back into sight and sat up on some wires..........

It was very tame and ignored me standing underneath it (Common Buzzards on the other hand fly off as soon as you wind down the window of your car). Then, as luck would have it, it hopped of its perch and started hovering low down about 10 meters away!

I had to zoom out to make sure it fitted in the frame. It also hovered in front of the only patch of blue sky in view, with the sun breaking through the grey clouds behind me.

Some days in this hobby we are lucky. Today was one of those days.

It had started off pretty poorly however. Onuma was really cold and there has been lots of snow these last few days. The pair of Smew has been joined by another male and there was an adult Night Heron on the same pond but it was impossible to approach them as several tons of snow have been dumped there. The tree where we feed the tame Nuthatches and Tits was also buried under snow, this was taken on the top of our car!

Not much else at Onuma, just the common species. Ditto the drive round the coast to Esan. Several Common Buzzard but no Rough Leggeds (except for the one in the photos of course), no Pine Bunting.

After the Rough Legged Buzzard we headed to a park in east Hakodate which was birdless except for this Ringed Necked Pheasant next to the road.......

So chaos in the cricket again, what a crazy series it has been, 16 wickets down on the first day!

Liverpool won, let's hope they can keep it up........

So it's still bitterly cold here, my feet were f*****g freezing again today. I quit smoking a few years back but all those cigarettes from my youth may have affected my circulation (maybe, I have no evidence to back that up with) and I suffer a little in the winter even with 2 pairs of socks and insulated boots.

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Snowy

Well there's been a lot of snow in Hakodate this last week. I haven't been out much but today the snow relented and the sun came out...........

There have been 2 Great Egrets on the river this week. This is one of them......

And this is another. I think.

It's difficult to see white birds on a bright day against snow, there was another egret right next to this one that I didn't even notice until it flew up.

Other birds this week in Hakodate have included Brown Dipper, Kingfisher, Sparrowhawk, Grey Heron, Daurian Redstart.........the usual winter stuff but still no Waxwings.

Lots of Dusky Thrush though, these were very thin on the ground until the last week or so, hundreds of them about today though it is a shy wary species that I don't often bother trying to photograph as it's so common. 3 years ago I found a Fieldfare in the Dusky Thrush flocks, no such luck today.

The Rough Legged Buzzards are still around east of Hakodate apparently, I may get a chance to see them again tomorrow or Sunday, some other local birders have been getting some nice shots of them..........

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On this day (February 2nd).........

February 2nd 2009.

Ural Owl at Onuma 3 years ago today.

I haven't seen any Owl in this particular hole for the last 2 winters, a shame as it was very photogenic.

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On this day (January 31st)............

January 31st 2010.

A Mountain Hawk Eagle at Yakumo.

One of my dreams is to publish a book of exotic bird species crapping. This one would be in it for sure.

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Still f*****g freezing

Still really cold here, minus 14 when we headed out this morning. The kearashi (mist rising from the sea on the coldest winter days) was visible near Hakodate at sunrise.

I headed up to Yakumo with a friend to have another go at the eagles but it was a disappointing day. Some hunters were upstream and although they weren't shooting the eagles the noise of the gunshots scared all the eagles away. There weren't many at the rivermouth either, here the river was frozen solid. Here is the only eagle that came close...........and it wasn't so close either.

I was reduced to looking for Black Kites, oh the shame.

We headed down to Sawara. My friend wanted some new birds to photograph (he is new to the hobby) so I found him some Gulls, he'd never seen Glaucous or Glaucous Winged.

This was in a nasty stinky seafood processing plant. The staff throw out fish heads and fish tails to the masses of gulls, crows and kites.

It was difficult pointing out the different guls in the chaos of birds, fish heads and bird shit.
"Look, at the back, the grey one with its mouth open......that's a washikamome (Glaucous Winged Gull)!!!!"

Here's one among the fish heads. Nice.

This young Glaucous Gull looked small and dainty, maybe from one of the smaller subspecies?

We then went on to a nearby harbour. This place is also covered with bird shit but has some nicer birds...........like these Black Scoter. The top one dived and caught some kind of shellfish.

Also around here were White Tailed Eagle, Scaup, Goldeneye, Harlequin Duck and Black Necked Grebe.

We then went to Onuma and got luckier with the Smew. The afternoon seems to be the best time to photograph them, no mist on the pond and better light.

I tried to get the pair of them in the same shot........

The young Night Heron was here too........

The day finished with the tame Nuthatches...........

Not much in town last week. White Tailed Eagle, Whooper Swan and Great Egret at Kamiiso 2 days ago but no photos. The weather was so nasty that the train was delayed about 15 minutes. That is major news in Japan let me tell you. In Hakodate last week there were 3 species of Heron and 6 species of duck on the river but no Waxwings yet............at least the Dusky Thrush numbers are increasing.

I watched in horror as England collapsed against Pakistan yesterday, guess we're only #1 if you don't count any games played in Asia then. I popped out to the shop when we were 12 without loss and when I came back 4 wickets were down! Embarrassing.

At least Liverpool beat Man Utd.

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