Meet the Locals #1

DAURIAN REDSTART (Phoenicurus auroreus)

This is one the common local birds in Hakodate and is probably not so well known outside east Asia. It breeds across temperate Asia but is only a winter visitor to Japan. I generally see the first individuals in mid October and they hang around until early April with a few passing through after that. We get the eastern auroreus subspecies (the other one winters in India).

In winter there are usually several in the bushes along the river near my apartment. They are almost all males, I don't know why there are so few females. I guess they winter further south as they are common in autumn and spring.

The males set up temporary territories and aggressively defend them, not only against other Daurian Redstarts but also against similar insectivorous species like Red Flanked Bluetail which pass through in late autumn and early spring.

As you can see the male is a beautiful bird.

This is a female.......................

They are a very active and quite vocal with a persistent hard medium pitched call that reveal their presence as they flit around in the undergrowth.

I have to say I have a soft spot for redstarts. Alas I never saw many redstarts of either species in the UK. I saw a few Common Redstarts, once on spring passage in Penwortham and several times in Scotland or the Lake District. I recall seeing lots of Black Redstarts when I lived in Bavaria and 2 or 3 different species in the Himalayas on my visits to Nepal.

These are all old pictures by the way, they were all taken 3 years ago in Jan/Feb 2010.

It's been a bad bad week weather wise hence some recycled photos...........................

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2012 Best Of

Well what a funny old year that was. A ridiculous amount of snow from January right through to the end of March followed by the hottest summer in Hokkaido for over 100 years.........................

Anyway here is a random selection of 30 or so of my favourite shots from the last 12 months.

 The eagles showed well at Yakumo in early January but then 2 things happened. The snow came. Lots and lots of it. This made getting around tricky. Then the eagles all seemed to disappear.....................by February there were none at all. Strange. Must have been a poor salmon run I guess.

The Ural Owl at Onuma showed well too.

Sadly this dead  tree with the nice Owl hole has fallen down.................let's hope the Owl wasn't in when it happened.

There was a big invasion of Rough Legged Buzzards into south Hokkaido last winter, this had long been a bogey species for me but I saw them in 3 different locations. This very tame one was just outsisde Hakodate.

See how cold this egret looks..............

The cold winter meant very few small birds around. No waxwings, no winter finches. Nothing really except for the common residents.

Not many birds in the ports either, grebes were very scarce................

This injured Red Throated Diver was in Kamiiso.

I finally got acceptable shots of these 2 species, Black Scoter and Smew.................

And another target had been a male Black Woodpecker.....................

Here are 2 very different images of Red Foxes.

Spring and summer were a little quiet, we did a big camping trip around Hokkaido but I seemed to miss out on good photo opps. Nearer home there were a lot of Narcissus Flycatchers in the local park..............

Otherwise it was just common stuff..............

Ospreys seemed commoner than ever this summer....................

A pretty quiet wader season (both spring and autumn), only common species but there were some nice tame individuals on the local beaches.............

Only 4 new additions to my Japan list and even less to my Hakodate list, a bit of a letdown after a very good 2011 on both counts. Still a few fairly common species missing from both so I'm sure I'll knock some of them off next year.

Thank you for reading this blog and please come back in 2013..............

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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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