Meet the Locals #3

(Lousy weather in town the last few days so forgive another dip into the archives.........)

RED CHEEKED STARLING (Sturnus philippensis)

A male Red Cheeked Starling , also known as Chestnut Cheeked Starling and Violet Backed Starling.

This is the more interesting of the 2 breeding starling species here in Japan. It isn't well known outside the region, in fact it only breeds in north Honshu, Hokkaido and Sakhalin (The Russian island to the north of Hokkaido) where it is a summer visitor. It winters is southeast Asia. There are no subspecies or races.

As you can see the male is a stunning bird and is very photogenic, especially during the cherry blossom season.









The female is rather plain compared to the male but not without her charms.






They arrive in Hakodate in the last week of April and are in fact a very common urban bird, there is a colony in Goryokaku Park and several smaller ones along the river. They are pretty much everywhere in summer in a variety of habitats including the forest at Onuma and Mt Hakodate. All these shots were taken within a 10 minute walk of my apartment, they are probably the most conspicuous bird of early summer.





The young leave the nest in late June and there is always a frenzy of activity in the local bushes. The adults are busy bringing them all kinds of bugs...........



.

And fruits too..................



The youngsters just sit around looking comical waiting to be fed...............





And then after late June they completely go off my radar. Once the young have fledged they all flock together in skittish family groups of 20 or so and suddenly become very wary and are lost in the summer foliage. My main view of them after early July is small tight flocks flying to roosting sites just before sunset.

They leave in late September to spend a winter in the sun..................









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On this day (March 19th)..............

March 19th 2010.

A Red Throated Diver up nice and close in the harbour at Kamiiso 3 years ago today. These occasionally visit harbours when they are sick or injured but this one seemed to look OK......................

Linked to Wild Bird Wednesday.

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The first hints of spring.............

Part of a flock of Dunlin at Oshamanbe today.

It wasn't so cold today and there are patches of ground appearing with no snow. Spring is coming. I guess this was our first 'summer' visitor.

One of several Skylarks seen today. A very very common bird in Hokkaido but generally absent in winter, these must have been returnees from further south in Japan.

The day began in Yakumo. There were still a few eagles around. 1 immature Stellers and 2 White Taileds, there were also several White Taileds at other locations on the way. A lone Lapwing was a local scarcity but the snow at the river mouth was still a little too deep to allow a full exploration so we headed up to Oshamanbe. I was hoping the Long Tailed Ducks would still be around. They were, 6 of them, but they stayed out of range the whole time. This was the best I could muster.

Other stuff in and near the port included Black Necked and Great Crested Grebe, Scaup, Teal, Goldeneye and lots of Black Scoter.

In the corner was a small flock of 40 or so Dunlin.

These are not so common in south Hokkaido but are pretty much the only sandpiper species around in winter.

There were lots of Glaucous Gulls around today..................

The only Glaucous Gull I saw in the UK was a big brute in Fleetwood back in the 1980's. The ones in NE Asia don't seem especially big or aggressive. The alpha gull is definitely the Glaucous Winged Gull..............

We ended up in Onuma, I spent asn hour or more at the end of the day hoping the nosiy Black Woodpeckers would come close but they didn't. The Nuthatches did of course...............

It's going to rain tomorrow and the temperature will stay above freezing even at night.................bye bye winter.

Bye bye Liverpool's chances of sneaking into the top 4 (though it was always a long shot).

Bye bye any chance of a title race after Man City's pathetic performance yesterday.


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Different week same old Bull*****s

I spent the last couple of days looking for crossbills but couldn't find any anywhere. In fact just about the only birds around were the Bullfinches again.A bit repetitive, my only photos recently seem to be either Bullfinches or Nuthatches.............

There were only 4 of them, there were 6 or 7 last week. They have decimated the cherry blossom trees.

The snow is now the consistency of sorbet. Hopefully it will be mostly gone by the end of next week.................

These photos are from yesterday, the first time I'd seen blue skies in quite a while.

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Twitching past and present

I've spent the last week twitching.

I don't mean chasing rare birds which other people have already found. As you can see there are only common species in this post, all from Onuma last Sunday.

I mean I am twitching. Or rather my left eye is. Myokymia I think is the technical term. Due to tired eyes I suppose........too much time in front of the screen plus my glasses are over 8 years old now................

It isn't so noticeable at least, I'll get round to getting an eye test and some new glasses soon.

A couple of past twitching stories........

In 1990 I had just started work at Hackney Council and in typical loony left mismanagement I wasn't getting paid so I had to go to the town hall to get paid in cash. There was a huge line of angry civil servants haranguing just one pay clerk who was at the end of his tether and as stressed as anyone I'd ever seen. His name was Bob and he had a twitch..................I heard he quit shortly after after a breakdown. I wasn't mean to him at least.

In around 1994 me an my friend Jon were having a quiet pint in the Hope and Anchor on Upper Street in Islington. On the next table was another group of people also having a drink. One of them had the craziest twitch I'd ever seen.................it involved him shouting out something in German, twitching the whole side of his face and then one arm shooting up in the air (like Jack Douglas in the carry-on films). He spilled a little of his drink every time he did it. His friends completely ignored it. After the third or fourth twitch we stopped suppressing laughter and started to feel sorry for him..................

So not much around, another week of crappy weather. Some Smew at Onuma, a White tailed Eagle at Kamiiso and a few common harbour birds in the port, a Peregrine in Hakodate a couple of days ago.

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