Yet another tame wader

A Bar Tailed Godwit at Oshamanbe on Sunday afternoon. It wasn't as tame as the Great Knot below but it's a much bigger bird.........

Again, not much cropping going on as it was easy to get close...........one of the advantages of the fact the beaches are very narrow here and there are no tidal mudflats to speak of either.

Having said that the Spoonbilled Sandpiper near Sapporo was on the only decent sized areas  of mudflat in Hokkaido.

Not much ese around. At Yakumo there was 1 Greenshank, 1 Black Tailed Godwit, 1 Terek Sandpiper and several Common Sandpiper, Great Egret, Osprey and Kingfisher.

It was a bit windy and I was surprised to see a dark shearwater just offshore at Oshamanbe, I guess it was a Sooty Shearwater. The only other waders were the inevitable Red Necked Stints.

I've only seen common species this wader season but that's OK, waders are one of my favourite groups of birds ever since I saw my first local flock on the Ribble at Penwortham thirty years ago.

I went to Kamiiso yesterday. Still hot and humid but at least there was a breeze............

Not many birds though. Not a single Osprey and only 3 species of wader on the section of beach I checked.....

And they were almost all Red Necked Stint, 40 or so of them scattered along the beach.

Several Common Sandpiper and these 2 very wary Terek Sandpiper completed the meagre wader count........

So it's still around 30 and humid outside..........c'mon autumn, hurry up.


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A different pair

We took a quick look on the beach ar Nanaehama yesterday morning. It was overcast and a little breezy: the tail end of a typhoon and the whole day was a lot more more bearable than the last few weeks.

There were 2 Great Knot on the same part of the beach as 10 or so days ago, a different pair I think, one of them had a slightly deformed bill.

They were extremely tame and just jogged down the beach feeding in the surf.

These photos are not cropped (or only very slightly).

As you can see it was a little dark.........

Not much else around except lots of Red Necked Stints here and at Kamiiso. A Spoon Billed Sandpiper was near Sapporo yesterday, I'll head over to Kamiiso this afternoon..........it's about 1 day south as the small wader flies, you never know eh?

Liverpool looked utterly toothless last night............and Gerard looks just about ready to call it a day I think. Sad but maybe true.
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Hot, Hotter, Hottest

Some Red Necked Stints on the beach at Kamiiso today. Not much else around: several Common Sandpiper, lots of Night Heron viewed on a different river through the train window, a lone Osprey for a brief few minutes.

A very hot August then, apparently the hottest in Hakodate for over 100 years.


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2012 wader season continues

A young Osprey at Kamiiso yesterday.

I was on wader duty, another hot humid test of endurance. Only common species around but this Osprey was one of 2 youngsters practising fishing..........

I fired off an action sequence, shame it didn't emerge with a fish.........

There were lots of Red Necked Stints, 20 or 30 at least.

The only other waders around were several Common Sandpiper and this Grey Tailed Tattler.

This and the stints are the default waders in Japan.

Not much else around. The first Black Headed Gulls of the autumn, a flyover Peregrine..........

Did I mention it's still f***ing boiling hot?


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And the heat continues........

A Whimbrel on the beach at Oshamanbe this afternoon.

Very hot and humid still, I'm getting all kinds of nasty little rashes and itches.

At least the wader season is well underway now. At Yakumo there were 4 Whimbrel, 3 Greenshank, 3 Terek Sandpiper, 1 Long Toed Stint, several Common Sandpiper, 1 Grey Tailed Tattler and 7 Black Tailed Godwit. A small flock of 10 or so small waders I saw very briefly were probably more Long Toed Stints. Other stuff included lots of all 3 common hirundines, 2 Great Egret, 1 Northern Hobby, 4 Osprey, various small birds passing through and a lone Kingfisher.

Up at Oshamanbe there weren't so many waders. I Red Necked Stint, 1 Eastern Curlew and this very tame Whimbrel.

On Friday I did the beach at Kamiiso but the only waders were a flock of 10 Terek Sandpiper and about a dozen or so Red Necked Stints..........nothing posed for the camera and then it started raining (a temporary respite from the heat at least).


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