Room with a view

From my hotel window in Tomakomai, Japan's equivalent of somewhere like Hull. Taken with my cellphone.

Flycatchers in the park...........

A male Narcissus Flycatcher and a male Blue and White Flycatcher in Goryokaku Park today.

There were at least 2 male Narcissus and 1 or 2 females too. The males looked of both species slightly raggedy, I guess they were born last year and are finally moulting into adult plumage.

They were very active but not really shy. The park was very busy and was looking very nice with the blossoms gently falling from the trees. The atmosphere was slightly spoiled by a drunk oyaji trying to talk to me (whilst I was taking photos of the flycatchers), I said I was busy and he burped and urinated against a tree. Classy.

As you can see they are a quite beautiful looking little bird, even when eating a spider.........

There were also a couple of Blue and White Flycatchers, male and female. This male still had some brown on its wings.........

And this one is, I think, an Asian Brown Flycatcher.

Lots of Eastern Crowned Warblers in the trees too. The Russet Sparrows were present on the river yesterday but seem to have upped and left as of today. The only birds of interest on the river were a fly past Kingfisher and a lone singing Oriental Reed Warbler.

Yesterday was a bit of a frustrating one. I got up early to try and take pictures of the Red Cheeked Starlings in the big cherry blossom tree. Last year there were 2 or 3 pairs there but this year only one pair seem to have taken up residence there and they didn't stick around for photos so much. This is the female.

I wanted to take a video (I even lugged my tripod along), this was all I could manage though.....

You can hear Japanese White-eye in the background, there were loads of them around yesterday.

I decided to go to Kamiiso, I was convinced there would be lots of waders on the beach. I walked 3 or 4 miles and all I got was one solitary Whimbrel flying off into the distance. A few Scaup were offshore as well as a pair of summer plumaged Great Crested Grebe and hundreds of Black Headed Gulls (also in summer plumage, they are the only hooded gull in Hokkaido and look fairly exotic). I missed an Osprey diving into the river and catching a fish by a few seconds..................like I say it was a tiring frustrating day.

In the harbour there were a few Common Sandpiper and 3 Grey Tailed Tattler.

I've been watching the Red Riding trilogy, a tad depressing but I'm enjoying it.

I'll miss the FA Cup final (I'll be in Tomakomai for a pelagic trip, weather permitting). I can remember when this was the big game of the season and the whole day was an experience sitting down in front of the TV. Now it is almost an irrelevance, I can't even recall who won it last year. Chelsea, I think? Who did they beat? God knows.

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On this day (May 11th)..............

May 11th 2008.

A male Narcissus Flycatcher at Onuma. This is a very common summer visitor and one of the most beautiful birds in Japan, it is also very active and tricky to get a good picture of. In the 3 years since I've been trying to get a killer shot of one  this one still remains my fave.........

There are loads of them buzzing around in the forest at Onuma but from about the 3rd week of May the foliage thickens and the forest becomes darker making it more difficult to photograph them. Early May is therefore the prime time but I haven't had chance to get over to Onuma for a while so may miss out again in 2011, still, there's always next year...........

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Leaf Warblers in the leaves............

I took a couple of brief looks at the bushes next to the local river and they were full of warblers..........

Rather like in the UK there are 3 breeding species of phylloscopus warblers in Hokkaido. Eastern Crowned, Sakhalin Leaf and Arctic Warblers. The above one is an Eastern Crowned Warbler and this one is a Sakhalin Leaf Warbler.

Eastern Crowned (let's call them ECW) are very common indeed and are greener with a diagnostic head pattern, they also have a paridae like song that is one of the most familiar sounds of the summer forest.

There must have been a dozen or more ECWs flitting around in 2 or 3 small trees, very difficult to track with a slowish lens plus it was pretty dark in some of the places too..............

There were only 2 or 3 Sakhalin Leaf Warblers. These are browner and have a loud metallic call (and a weird Clangers-like song). They only breed in north Japan and Sakhalin (a large Siberian island to the north of Hokkaido), there is a very similar mainland east Asian species (Pale Legged Leaf Warbler) from which it was recently split.

The third phylloscopus species, the Arctic Warbler,  doesn't usually arrive until the 3rd or 4th week of May and seems to be less common than the others. I don't see so many in spring, possibly they pass through unnoticed as the foliage thickens. They leave later than the others though, I see lots of them in late September to mid October (the ECW/SLWs pass through in August when the foliage is at its thickest and anyway I'm on the beach looking for waders at that time). They have a very distinctive buzzing call and trilling song, I sometimes hear them in the forest at Mat Hakodate in early June.

Like the UK there are 10 or so rarer phylloscopus vagrants, many of which are rarities in the UK too (Dusky, Raddes, Yellow Browed etc). I hope to stumble across some of these although I find these kind of warblers very tricky to ID. I can manage the 3 common ones because of their calls but when one individual (probably in autumn so with worn adult plumage or an immature) is silently flitting around behind the leaves................I don't know about that TBH.

Willow Warblers, Wood Warblers and Chiffchaffs are sought after rarities here by the way.......

I saw another male Blue and White Flycatcher today as well as Japanese White-eye, Dusky Thrush, other unidentified thrushes, Hawfinch and a flyover Great Egret. Yesterday I also saw Peregrine ans the last of the winter Teal. The flock of Russet Sparrow remains (20 or so birds) but they are very shy and fly off if I even look in their general direction. Before this week I had only ever seen them once in Hakodate, I wonder if this flock will stay and breed in the small park near my flat.........

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More birds in the blossoms...........

A male Red Cheeked Starling in the cherry blossoms this morning..............

A beautiful spring morning in Hakodate, lots of activity in the cherry blossoms.

These Tree Sparrows certainly weren't shy. There were lots of Russet Sparrows around too and a flock of 10 or so Siskin...........

And the inevitable Japanese White-eye. It was a little windy in the afternoon, it was difficult to track them up in the swaying branches..........

So Man Utd will get #19 then, no exciting end to the season after all (well not at the top anyway).

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A grey Sunday

The grey skies returned today, we had a brief foray out to Kamiiso. I wanted to check for waders, all I could find was a group of 4 Ruddy Turnstone.

A pair of Osprey were fishing over the harbour, if the sky had been blue and the sun had been shining I could have gotten some nice shots, alas the sky was battleship grey.

One of them got a fish, I missed the dive as it happened on the other side of the seawall, I did see it fly past with its catch though.

Not much else around, a few Scaup on the sea, a few Pochard and Tufted Duck in the harbour. We went a little inland, a lone Crossbill flew over, a Japanese Thrush was singing a top a tall tree, a few Hawfinch here and there and a flock of Japanese White-eye were feeding in the cherry blossoms. Again, blue sky and good light would have been nice.

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