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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Apprehended

So ends another week of crappy weather, the snow is now slush (which refreezes at night) and daytime temps are well above zero (no long underwear necessary this week).

This lone Bohemian Waxwing was in the park near my flat yesterday afternoon. It came to ground pretty close but the light was just awful (in fact it was raining)..

On other local blogs there quite a few pictures of Bohemian Waxwing a couple of weeks ago but they never appeared in my part of town. I guess this is a straggler................I had a longish walk this afternoon but couldn't find this individual or any other waxwings anywhere.

Whilst I was photographing the Waxwing an odd looking young chap came over and asked what I was doing. I pointed out the waxwing in the tree. He then got out his Police ID and started questioning me! My name, where I lived, why I was in Japan etc. He took my ID and called in the station to do a check. He said that 'warui hito' ('bad people') sometimes came to this park to take drugs.................this was news to me, I've never seen any Japanese person taking drugs in this or any other park in my 13+ years here.

Luckily my Japanese isn't strong enough to attempt a little sarcastic banter ("yeah sorry officer I left my drugs at home today"). I was the only person in the park and it was knee deep in melting snow and I had a camera with a big expensive lens.................how did he come to the conclusion I was up to no good?

Weirdly he then started asking me how I liked Japan and if it was colder in England................

The Bullfinches relocated to another street, one a bit more difficult to take photos on as it is fairly busy with big banks of meting snow under the trees. These photos were taken a couple of days ago in a brief window of sunnyish weather.

Not much else about. Goosander, a couple of Goldcrests in the pine trees, a flyover Peregrine, a few Dusky Thrush and Daurian Redstart...................

Freezing temps and snow forecast to return tomorrow with blizzards on Sunday..................looks like another quiet weekend.

Linked to WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY


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Splattered

We spent most of the day at Onuma. The lake is still 99%  frozen and there was the usual flock of Whooper Swans and Mallards on the one tiny ice free patch. The lone drake Pintail was still there...............it must have stayed the whole winter.

I tried taking some swan pics but they were all crap. There were also a few Smew well out of camera range and a White Tailed Eagle flew over in the afternoon.......

The Nuthatches were as photogenic as ever.

In case you stumbled across this blog and are thinking wow how did he get so close here's your answer.

A couple of Varied Tits put in an appearance but they were not so tame.

Also around were Great, Coal, Long Tailed and Marsh Tits plus Great Spotted and Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers.

I took a side trip to Sawara. The port had Black Scoter, Goldeneye, Scaup, Harlequin Duck and Black Necked Grebe but nothing was tame and everything stayed out in the middle.

White Tailed Eagle and Peregrine were around but no chances of a photo so we went to a huge seafood processing factory to photograph the gulls and kites.

We only lasted a couple of minutes. What a f**king dump. Hordes of kites, crows and gulls knee deep in rotting fishy offal.

They all took off as I approached and I got covered in birds**t. They totally splattered my down jacket, camera and even my face.

The Nuthatches and Tits are much more civilized.

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