On this day (February 17th)

February 17th 2008.

A Long Tailed Tit near my apartment 4 years ago today. That winter there was a regular flock of this species foraging in the trees and bushes next to the river. Since that time I've seen the grand total of one LT Tit in the same area.

You have to say it's cute. Admit it.

Nothing doing this week photo-wise, nothing at all. The heavy snow finally relented from Monday but it is still lying in big piles everywhere meaning it's difficult to walk around, it's still pretty cold. There have been a few birds present: a distant adult White Tailed Eagle was a nice balcony bird on the 15th,  there have been a couple of Peregrines around, a lone flyover Great Egret, Sparrowhawk, a couple of Red Breasted Merganser well upstream near my apartment and large flocks of Dusky Thrush. Still no Waxwing though, maybe this winter will be waxwingless.

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Still snowing............

It has been snowing ALL week, Hakodate has its heaviest snowfall since 1985 and birding has been reduced to zero. The above Rough Legged Buzzard was taken over a week ago and I haven't taken a single bird picture since last weekend.

We tried to go back to the Buzzard location today but the driving blizzards prevented us from even leaving town so we headed back to the monkey hot spring.

I tried processing these in monochrome.

The end of December/start of January produced lots of BIF shots in Yakumo, here are some previously rejected ones that I didn't upload at the time.

My god it was sunny that day. And not snowing.

Blue sky!

I watched the Liverpool/Man U game last night. I don't often get hot and bothered by the footy anymore except for this fixture.................

I'm in a bit of a dilemma. New lens or new computer? My computer is 4 years old and whilst still OK for most things it has been annoyingly slow processing photos recently especially in Lightroom. I want to do all my processing in Lightroom but my 4 year old processer just can't render the images quickly, it takes 5 or 6 seconds to render one 7D RAW file. For individual files it's just about bearable but it's impossible to review and cull images quickly.

I had hoped to get a new lens this spring, I want something better than the 100-400L. Trouble is the next step up is SO expensive. Actually it is so expensive it is all but impossible. I really want a 500 f4 but the new one (which still hasn't been released) is beyond my humble means as is every Canon supertele suitable for birders. I thought about that new Sigma 120-300 f2.8 OS (which is affordable) but..................if I buy a Sigma I'll still be yearning for a better Canon lens some time down the line and to be honest I'm not convinced the Sigma will be a big enough step up from what I have now in terms of IQ and performance. Secondhand Canon? Still expensive and I'm not sure I'd be able to pay in installments (the only way I'll be able to pay).

Hope it stops snowing soon...........otherwise I'll be stuck in front of a slow computer cursing the fact lenses are so expensive and I'll never be able to afford one.

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Waxwings..........from last winter.

Last winter in Hakodate saw lots of Waxwings of both species. I haven't seen a single one so far this year and the last week's weather has been so bad I've hardly been out of the house so forgive the archive photos.........



A Japanese Waxwing in the park near my flat last winter, the above photo was taken in December 2010 as was this one in the same small park..........



I visited England shortly after taking the above shots and even saw Bohemian Waxwing in Preston............when I got back to Japan in early January there were still loads of Japanese Waxwing everywhere like this lone individual in a small tree in the middle of town.





By late January most of the Japanese Waxwings had gone and were replaced by Bohemians..............these were on a suburban street in the north of town





They remained until the middle of March, a small flock took up residence in a secluded park next to my apartment.

They are always erratic, some winters they are abundant, other winters not so common and occasional winters completely absent. Last year there were still Japanese Waxwing passing through Hakodate in mid to late May...........

Now I've posted these old photos loads of waxwings will probably start arriving..........

So Fabio upped and left, don't know if that is a good or bad thing. I'm sure we won't do anything at Euro 2012 anyway no matter who is in charge but I quite fancy 'Arry as a temporary appointment, we can't play any worse than the last World Cup anyway.

Hope it stops snowing soon, there really is a lot of it outside and it hasn't really stopped all week.

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Assorted Pondlife

A quiet end to the week, more snow and grey skies.........

This morning we were at Onuma. The ice-free pond held 3 Smew, 1 Great Egret and 2 Night Heron. The snow from the nearby car park has been dumped next to the pond meaning it is impossible to get close to the birds...........not such a problem for a bog one like the Great Egret.

But more of a problem for the Smew and Night Heron..........

As you can see it was snowing heavily at times, here's a video where the birds don't move much but the snow does............



Not much else around plus today was Onuma's winter festival so to avoid the crowds we headed up to Yakumo. Last February I had a couple of great days here taking dramatic photos of the many eagles and other raptors. Today was............................nowhere near as good. I was hoping last week's poor eagle showing at Yakumo had been a one off but unfortunately today was the same. Not many eagles at all, about 3 or 4 Stellers (all too far off for photos) and a dozen or so White Tailed Eagles of various ages.

I don't know where they've all gone, I guess they ate all the salmon and have dispersed around the coasts looking for food.

Not much else here, a distant Goshawk and several more Great Egret bring the most noteworthy.

Last Friday after the Rough Legged Buzzard we ended up at the botanical gardens in Yunokawa. This place has an outside hot spring full of monkeys (Japanese Macaque I think). They are all in an enclosure and are obviously not wild, in fact basically it's a small monkey only zoo. There are some genuinely wild ones who sit around in hot springs in the snow but they are down in Honshu somewhere.

So with all that in mind they are still very good photographic subjects.

The steam from the hot spring and the high ISO I was using in the gloomy kight produced a nice grainy effect............

Whilst it all looks very tranquil it is a fairly stinky place and up close the monkeys don't look very healthy at all, must be all that junk food the tourists lob at them.

Can England win the 3rd test and salvage a little pride? They had Pakistan at 21 for 5 on the first morning's play, how could they look like certainties to lose from that position? They'd better bat out of their skins tomorrow. England- the world's #1 team. Except in Asia. Or when they have to play against decent spinners.

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A very tame Rough Legged Buzzard

The long staying Rough Legged Buzzard east of Hakodate this afternoon.

I got really lucky with this individual this afternoon, we'd ended up at this location after a long fruitless morning in Onuma and along the coast via Esan. When we arrived it was sitting in its favourite patch of trees.

Whilst I was watching it I noticed lots of small birds in the bushes and trees: Rustic Bunting, Siskin, Coal Tit and Hawfinch. Eventually it flapped off..........

Now at that point I was more than happy with these shots, easily the best I'd managed of this species. My wife wanted to take a nap in the car so I hung around for a while and it flapped back into sight and sat up on some wires..........

It was very tame and ignored me standing underneath it (Common Buzzards on the other hand fly off as soon as you wind down the window of your car). Then, as luck would have it, it hopped of its perch and started hovering low down about 10 meters away!

I had to zoom out to make sure it fitted in the frame. It also hovered in front of the only patch of blue sky in view, with the sun breaking through the grey clouds behind me.

Some days in this hobby we are lucky. Today was one of those days.

It had started off pretty poorly however. Onuma was really cold and there has been lots of snow these last few days. The pair of Smew has been joined by another male and there was an adult Night Heron on the same pond but it was impossible to approach them as several tons of snow have been dumped there. The tree where we feed the tame Nuthatches and Tits was also buried under snow, this was taken on the top of our car!

Not much else at Onuma, just the common species. Ditto the drive round the coast to Esan. Several Common Buzzard but no Rough Leggeds (except for the one in the photos of course), no Pine Bunting.

After the Rough Legged Buzzard we headed to a park in east Hakodate which was birdless except for this Ringed Necked Pheasant next to the road.......

So chaos in the cricket again, what a crazy series it has been, 16 wickets down on the first day!

Liverpool won, let's hope they can keep it up........

So it's still bitterly cold here, my feet were f*****g freezing again today. I quit smoking a few years back but all those cigarettes from my youth may have affected my circulation (maybe, I have no evidence to back that up with) and I suffer a little in the winter even with 2 pairs of socks and insulated boots.

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