Happy New Year to you all. A new year and a new way for me to blog. This site will be for weekly updates only, every weekend probably and only the best bird shots as well as my feeble minded musings about the week gone by and a few non wildlife snaps. For more frequent bird related updates (with less of my waffle) please go to my NEW BLOG.
The above Stellers Sea Eagle and Red Fox below are some of the delights that will await you........
This is my 8th christmas in Japan. It wasn't white, in fact it was raining on the 25th although there was heavy snow last night. On Christmas Eve morning we had a couple of hours of sunshine allowing some nice shots of the usual suspects at Onuma. Nuthatches were stars of the show today.
The Varied and Marsh Tits were also present.
In case you're wondering how easy it is to get close to these species, here's the answer.
The Whooper Swan flock was bunching together as the amount of open water at Onuma shrinks and the ice grows.
Lots of Siskin in the forest but no Owl. We drove east to Shikabe and saw some interesting stuff like White Tailed Eagle plus Red Necked and Slavonian Grebes offshore. A few days earlier at Onuma saw dreadful weather and no bird shots of note so here are a couple of the local mammals.
Not much to report in Hakodate. Flocks of Hawfinch and Dusky Thrush in the park, Brown Dipper and Kingfisher on the river, the usual wildfowl and Gull species over at Kamiso. Here's a chilly looking male Daurian Redstart in the local park a few days ago.
I have a few more classes to teach today and tomorrow before an 8 day break over the New Year. Lots of footie on tonight, can Liverpool stay top going into 2009?
A very low key Xmas. I won't bother ranting about the plastic Japanese Christmas (I did so the previous 2 years if you're desperate for something to read and want to look back in the archives). It's sunny outside now but I have to work. I hope next week has a sunny day or two so we can go up to Yakumo to photograph the eagles.
Season's Greetings to my regular 40 or 50 readers, hope you're well wherever you are.
2 out of a group of 21 Brent Goose in Hakodate yesterday. The weather has been lousy this week, it's mild but wet. Raining instead of snowing. The usual common winter birds have been around, to name some of the more interesting: Hawfinch, Brown Dipper, Kingfisher, Pelagic Cormorant, Wigeon, Harlequin Duck, Blue Rock Thrush etc.
In the middle picture you'll notice one of them is shorter legged and necked. Is that a female? I don't really know.
From only 4 a couple of weeks ago the flock has now risen to 21. Many harbours and inlets have their own little groups. They are a little wary but you can get pretty close. Most of these shots were only slightly cropped.
Metering is a bit of a problem especially on a grey day when they're on the water.
Metering was a big issue with 2 Great Egrets that have been on the local river this last month or so. Damn white. And these things are very wary indeed.
The local crows were given them a hard time. Awful picture I know.
The Thayers Gull is still getting more ragged every week. One of 5 Gull species on the river, at least it was a in a different pose from usual. You can see it has very short legs.
It's raining again. I wish I could say I've been spending the time stuck indoors productively. Is watching old Water Margin episodes on youtube productive?
What a great TV show this was. Made in Japan although I've yet to meet a single Japanese person who ever saw it. It used to be on BBC2 on Friday evenings at 6pm.
Just to get you in the mood here are the opening and closing credits.....
