Another year done

We got up very early this morning and headed up to Yakumo, I was hoping for a repeat of last week's eagle action........................but despite the good weather the eagles just weren't co-operating.

I got a few BIFs, inevitably. But truth be told I have a lot of photos pretty much identical to this one.

They just sat in the trees mostly.

The river is full of dead salmon and there are still quite a lot of live ones. I guess the eagles will be well fed this winter and can afford to be wary..................

I hope I can get some shots of them actually doing something next time..............

Also around were a few small birds including a flock of Long Tailed Tit....................

Some of them even starting flopping around in the snow..................

The weather was awful over Christmas and nasty weather is forecast for the remainder of the year so this will probably be my last post of 2012. So thanks for reading my blog, all 50 or so of my regular readers and I hope you all have a good 2013.......................
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Another Christmas in Hokkaido #3

A male Black Woodpecker at Onuma a couple of days ago. It was just before the sun went down, it is always dark or getting dark when I see them..........

The Ural Owl was in the same place..........

The lake is frozen now....only a few tiny patches of open water remain for the wintering wildfpwl......

Whooper Swan and Mallard mainly but there was the lone Pintail........

The tame tits and nuthatches were around too.

Christmas Day was cold and nasty and today (the 26th) is even worse.........I hope the weather relents by the weekend and I can get out and about.

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Another Christmas in Hokkaido #2

A female Black Scoter in the harbour at Sawara yesterday. The road was a bit icy and slippery in the morning so we decided against another visit to Yakumo. I say 'we' but my wife had the wheel and made the decision. I persuaded here to go to Sawara as i wanted to try and relocate the White Winged Scoter from last week.

I couldn't find it but there were lots of Black Scoter.

They were catching some kind of shellfish.

I only ever saw Common Scoter as black specks way offshore in the UK, it's nice to see them up so close.

There were lots of Scaup in the harbour and also several Black Necked Grebe.

2 female Harlequin Duck came close but there were no males to be seen anywhere.......

So it's Christmas Day. Just an ordinary day here to be honest......I don't even feel the urge to get drunk in the daytime..........

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Another Christmas in Hokkaido

A Ural Owl in one of the regular roosting holes in Onuma. Nice of it to strike a pose too..........usually it just sits still like this.

Also around at Onuma were Black Woodpecker plus a flock of hundreds of Hawfinches being relentlessly harassed by a pair of Sparrowhawks.......

We spent a large part of the day looking for a Common Crane up at Yakumo, unfortunately we couldn't locate it. The only bird in the area (except crows) was a Buff Bellied Pipit.

Inland the eagles were very active, I missed some potential great shots because of my general cackhandedness and the weather was very very erratic with blizzards one minute and blue skies the next. I really wanted some shots of them in the river eating salmon but they were always too far away or they flew off as soon as they noticed me. This was the best I could manage.

I took the same shots of the same bird in the same tree 2 weeks ago.........

A female Harlequin Duck was well upstraem and there were also various common small birds around including Bullfinch.

BIFs are a good fallback.

The forecast for Christmas Day is heavy blizzards and minus 13 on Boxing Day..........I may not even make it out of the house.............

I could go and see The Hobbit but after having found out it will be over 3 parts I might wait for the DVD. 3 movies with a total running time of 9 hours? I reckon I could probably read the book in that time.


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Quiet week in December

A Nuthatch at Onuma earlier in the week. It is one of the tame ones.

If I'm posting Nuthatch pics then you know it's been a slow week.

Here's a Grey Heron taking a dump over Hakodate.

At Onuma there were White Tailed Eagle,Smew, Whooper Swan, Hawfinch, Grey Headed Woodpecker and a lone Pintail among the Mallards. It was very dark as you can see.

Ar Sawara there were lots of birds in the harbours including a large group of Black Scoter. The light was terrible though.

There were also more eagles here was well as Harlequin Duck, Black Necked Grebe and a lone female White Winged Scoter...................too far away for anything but a crappy heavily cropped record shot (and my first photo of one on this blog).

The usual Gull species were sheltering in the ports from the nasty weather. Here is a miserable looking Glaucous Winged Gull.

In Hakodate in the last week I've seen the usual common winter stuff including Common Buzzard, Great Egret and Brown Dipper.

I seem to have been getting loads of spam comments recently so I'm sorry to say I switched word verification back on........................it's a real pain in the a** I know but I was getting a little tired of deleting comments from people with names like Faizal Mahmood telling me how to earn money online.

Very cold now and a big big dump of snow in Hakodate the last couple of days, I'm hoping to get up to Yakumo over the weekend as the eagle activity starts to enter its 4 or 5 week peak around Christmas time.


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