A morning surprise

I had my best wildlife experience for a long long time today. Not the Common Kingfisher above............

We got up early to try and find some Brown Bears. Several had been seen on a mountain road to the north of town and we headed up there just after sunrise. It was a wet dark day and at first it seemed like we had wasted our time. No birds even: just a couple of distant Crested Kingfisher.

We were on a narrow side road in the middle of nowhere and were getting ready to go back to the main road when I noticed a huge adult Brown Bear standing about 5 meters away! My wife missed it as she was looking straight ahead and it took her a few seconds to work out what was going on (I was swearing and making even less sense than normal). By the time we had reversed it had sadly disappeared. No chance for a photo of course (it was very dark) even if it had stuck around: no way would I have gotten out of the car either.

A bit quiet birdwise. In addition to the Kingfishers we got single Red-necked Stint and Common Greenshank, 2 Eastern Curlew, 2 White-winged Scoter, Great-crested Grebe, various common ducks including Pintail, Teal. Shoveler and Pochard, Osprey, Goshawk, 3 species of wagtail and Great Egret.

Afternoon mover

An immature Black-crowned Night Heron on the local river yesterday afternoon...............

A quiet Thursday............

The weather has been really nice this week.....................

50 almost up

Holy s**t: I turn 50 tomorrow.

More sunny days

I just had 3 days off and though the weather was very good I didn't come away with many pics...........

A sunny Saturday

A beautiful late summer/early autumn day saw us north of town............

First autumnal signs............

Some Black-crowned Night Herons near my apartment this afternoon............

2018 Best Of #2

There was a large invasion of Waxwings into Hakodate in early 2018..............

2018 best of #1

Some shots from last winter.....................

Blackouts, quakes, typhoons and thunderstorms.

A Crested Kingfisher near Hakodate earlier in the week.

There was a crazy 24 hour period midweek, First a typhoon passed over Hakodate (it woke me up at 2am). The next day saw the mother of all thunderstorms in the afternoon and at 3am the next night I was woken again by a rather large scary earthquake that knocked out electricity over the whole of Hokkaido.

We were pretty lucky. No damage or danger near Hakodate and our apartment strangely got its power back a long time before most of the rest of town (we were only without electricity for about 16 hours). The fatal landslides were actually in the same town that I took all those wader shots last week..............

No car this weekend and more rain forecast. Hope there are no more disasters at least.

Before the disaster(s)

Some more photos of the tame Whimbrel from last Sunday, which seems like an awfully long time ago now.............

A walk on the beach..........

Last Sunday saw a brief break between 2 typhoons with some clear sunny weather...............

Waders in the rain.............

Some more waders from near Tomakomai last week...........

Long-toed Stint creeping around..........

Our quest for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper was unsuccessful but there were some compensations...........

Broad-billed Sandpiper

Whilst camping we heard of a Spoon-billed Sandpiper reported near Tomakomai so we went to look for it............

2018 late Summer trip #3

 The second day of our short trip was windy but sunny...................

2018 late Summer trip #2

Although we stayed in Oshamanbe waders were pretty thin on the ground compared to Yakumo...............

2018 late Summer trip #1

We just got back from a 3 night camping trip. The weather was awful: strong winds coming in off the sea, heavy rain...................

We stayed 3 nights in Oshamanbe and our focus was on waders. We managed to see quite a lot over the 4 days despite the weather.

On this day (August 30th).....................

August 39th 2015.

A White-winged Black Tern near Yakumo 3 years ago today. Terns of any kind are rare in Hokkaido and this one especially so................

On this day (August 28th)...................

August 28th 2011.

A Long-toed Stint near Hakodate 7 years ago today. This tame juvenile bird stuck around for several days and didn't mind being photographed at all............