Ospreys and Night Herons

One of 3 Ospreys hunting at the river mouth at Kamiiso on Friday.

I was looking for more waders but the only ones I found flew off before I could even ID them let alone take a picture. The beach where the Stints usually are has been cleaned up meaning there is no detritus for them to hide in anymore.......

I think the Ospreys were this year's young, judging by their hunting technique anyway. Many times they plunged into the sea and got nothing except wet feathers. I hope their parents are still around to feed them or else they'll go hungry.

Here's one with a view of Hakodate in the background.

It was hot and sunny again and I got sunburnt..............

My best Osprey shots to date.

Also around were lots of Night Heron.

There must have been over 50 of them and I witnessed most of them arrive, they'll probably hang around for a few weeks before they head south.

Not much else around, the first Mallard of the autumn, a lone Little Egret, a few small migrants flitting around in the bushes (probably Japanese Bush Warbler).........

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A hot day on the beach......

Part of a group of 4 Red Necked Stints on the beach at Kamiiso this afternoon.

It was a hot hot day yesterday and the sun was usually behind the birds making them look very pale.........

When they stand around in the flotsam they are very well camouflaged.........

The holiday period has just ended and the beach was pretty empty allowing me to stalk the Stints in peace...........

One of the birds was still showing the last remnants of its summer plumage.

 

I tried to get some shots of running waders but almost all were out of focus............these were the best of a bad bunch.

The wader season is one of my favourite events of the birding calendar. 28 years ago at the end of August I made my first trip up the Ribble and got Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Curlew, Green Sandpiper and I've always been fascinated by them.

 

The only other wader species around was Common Sandpiper. There were several immature Night Herons around as well as this one which looked a bit different..........

A heavy crop and a crappy record shot of an immature Striated Heron, a local tick (#196) although I have seen them just outside town before.

Not much else about, an Osprey kept me entertained but yet again didn't come close enough for a decent shot.

On the river near my flat Eastern Crowned Warblers have started passing through again and as the vegetation thins slightly I noticed the first Night Heron since June.........

I watched the Liverpool game, not a bad result I suppose but I used some fairly choice language when Reina dropped the ball in the back of the net.

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The construction work next to our apartment building still hasn't finished. That's 12 weeks now. They were cutting tiles the last couple of days (why they have to do this on site I just don't know) and also cutting and digging up the car park, the noise is just endless.....................at least I can escape to a beach and gently harass shorebirds to forget about it for a while every now and then.

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

August 19th 2009.

Great Knot at Kamiso. This very tame bird was the only the second time I'd seen this species. The first time has been almost exactly 3 years previously on exactly the same stretch of beach.............

Tomakomai Pelagic

A Black Footed Albatross off Tomakomai yesterday, one of around 20 or so offshore...........

I joined Tomoyuki and friends for a 4 hour pelagic trip. It was a warm overcast day but the sea was fairly calm (a good job as the boat was pretty small) and the birding was great, I got 6 new birds for my Japanese list and 5 of those were lifers.

Bird of the day (for me at least) was the Black Footed Albatross.

Some were quite tame and approached the boat looking for scraps........

Looks at that huge bill...........

I fired off lots of shots but I kind of forgot to get any close ups (some of these shots were under 200mm).............

Still there's always next time..............

My first ever Albatross species.........

  

I tried some action shots but these weren't so successful, I need to pay more attention to my technique/settings here........

The Albatosses were very confiding but most of the seabirds weren't so approachable. WE also saw a more distant Laysan Albatross but it was on the way back and we didn't have time to stop and take a good look.

Tomoyuki and friends were very good with IDs. The most common birds were Sooty and Streaked Shearwaters. the latter were easy to identify.

Wheres the former looked very like Short Tailed Shearwater, not sure if I'd be able to tell the difference to be honest.

There were big flocks of Sootys but none of my pics from yesterday are worth posting, as I said, next time next time......

It was difficult to photograph birds from a small boat, I'm a total landlubber and I was aware that I could slip and be tipped off any time and found it tricky to move around. Most of today's shots (except the Albatross ones) were pretty poor, not helped by the fact I'd decided to put a protective filter on my lens. My last trip on a boat had resulted in my lens front element getting soaked with sea spray and unuseable until I could get home and clean it properly. There was no spray this time and I took it off towards the end and the IQ improved noticeably.

Plus the fact I need to experiment and practise a bit more with some of the 7D's AF capabilties........

The species of the day for most on the trip was this. A crappy record shot of a Fork Tailed Storm Petrel.

There was even a flock of them around.............

There were also lots of Red Necked Pharalope, these have a knack of always flying just out of photo range............

A few Skua were also seen, Arctic and Pomarine..........here's a record shot of an Arctic resting on some flotsam.

Other birds included Rhinoceros Auklet, Common Tern, Great Crested Grebe and a flock of Japanese Green Pigeon flying around the harbour. On the drive up we got a surprisingly large number of Grays Grasshopper Warbler calling from various roadside locales and Tomakomai's famous resident Magpies.

We saw some Dolphins and for a few minutes what we thought was a pair of Minke Whales. On closer inspection it turned out to be a tree.........

Thanks to Tomoyuki for organising the trip, it was great and I hope to go back at least one more time this year. And thanks to my wife for getting up at 2am to drive us up there..........

We were lucky with the weather on the day of the boat trip, for 3 days before there was a typhoon with very heavy rain and the rain returned today too. On driving back we had a real south Hokkaido rarity: a traffic jam. Heading back south wasn't so bad but the northbound lane was tailed back for many miles. This weekend is one of Japan's three big holiday periods and we usually avoid travel at those times.

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Liverpool's first game of the season tonight. 2010 has been a footballing nightmare so far, will this be when things begin to look up?