Yet another rainy week in Hokkaido

Many Japanese people tell me the rainy season doesn't reach Hokkaido. Yet every year when the rainy season pushes up through Honshu it also pi**es down with rain here in south Hokkaido. Grey skies, coolish humid weather and lots and lots of rain.

The Stonechats were still in exactly the same place. If the light had been any good I could have gotten some killer shots.





We ended up at Onuma, lots of common stuff in the forest but it was dark and full of mosquitoes. This Kingfisher was the best shot I could come up with. At 400mm and 1/60 second it isn't great.



Not much to report from Hakodate, the nasty weather has curtailed any photo opps. The Red Cheeked Starlings and Oriental Reed Warblers are still busy on the river.....







And this baby Great Tit was kind of cute.......



I've been watching a lot of violent cockney movies this week. 'Rise of the Footsoldier', 'The Business', 'The Football Factory' and 'Nil by Mouth'. I'm naturally a little jaded after hearing the 'C' word approx 1500 times but it brought back memories of my time in Hackney in the early 90's. One time I went to a pub next to Victoria Park and joked to my friend the barman was like a cockney criminal cliche (I did it out of earshot of said barman naturally). Turned out he was an escaped con and former gangland kingpin who was shot at point blank range a few weeks later.

I've also been watching recent Harry Enfield clips on youtube and have to say I often burst out laughing. I miss this kind of stuff from back home, thank god for the internet. That character selling junk to pretentious housewives in Notting Hill is a work of genius. Their Bil Gates/Steve Jobs characters are also pretty funny, especially the 'i-hump' sketch (hey I'm backing up my hard disk onto an external hard drive as I type this so I suppose I have a small part of nerd in my character too).

I've more or less decided to give up on my other blog. Again. Quite simply the software isn't very good (again) and it's a pain to navigate. And nobody ever reads it anyway. So I'll probably update this one more than once a week from now on......

So England won last night, I watched it on my computer. I'm sure they'll win on Wednesday and with Ukraine/Croatia drawing It's looking pretty good. Yet on the various footy forums there are loads of people complaining about England being crap and their fans being deluded. Yes I know we're crap but at least we're probably going to the World Cup and this time last year that looked unlikely. And I'm glad I'm not a fan of Portugal, Sweden, the Czech Republic or several other 'big' countries who look very much in danger of missing out.......

The less said about the cricket the better though.........

Another rainy week in Hokkaido

It was pi**ing down with rain all day today, the weather has been pretty poor again all week. We went out for a drive this afternoon and the Stonechats were still there and I could take a few snaps through the open car window at least.......





I discovered my teleconverter doesn't work so well in poor light, there was a Night Heron walking across the padis that I photographed but the results were very soft and the AF couldn't lock onto the bird and and IS seemed a bit jumpy too.........

Nothing much about really. Here's a very wet Swallow.



Last week the first Spot Billed Ducklings appeared on the river near my flat......



The mortality rate of these ducklings is usually very high. Cats, Rats, Crows all take them I suppose and they seem especially vulnerable when the river swells after heavy rains...........like today.

And there are about 8 or 9 singing Oriental Reed Warblers on the same river. Difficult to get a good shot of, they are very shy despite being a big noisy species......



So the footy season ends with a bit of a whimper. The FA Cup flashed by last night (I was pretty drunk), the Champions League was surprisingly one sided and the end of the Premier League wasn't exactly dramatic either.......lets just hope England can get through next week without any cock-ups.

I wish I could think of something interesting to write but I can't.

At the end of May we usually go away for a 4 or 5 night trip to east or north Hokkaido but because of my wife's new job that isn't possible this year. You can see some bird photos from those trips here.

The big news from the UK seems to be a frumpy middle aged Scottish woman not winning some talent show. I get homesick every now and then but on the other hand I don't have to watch crap like that (or have to talk about it or be forced to listen to others talking about it at work). Now that the footy season is over and my SKY footy package switched off until August my TV won't even be switched on for the next 10 weeks (though I'll watch some downloaded stuff on my computer of course, still got most of Season 4 of Blakes 7 to watch yet..............).

Bloody cute.

One of 4 baby Ural Owls this afternoon at Onuma. You have to admit it's pretty cute........

This picture is not so cute unless you think bloodied decapitated mice are cute.



These Owl shots were taken with my new toy attached to the camera, a Kenko 1.4 Teleconverter. I have to tape the pins to ensure autofocus but it worked most of the time.

I had sore arms and a sore neck after an hour staring up into the trees. The forest at Onuma was fairly overgrown and there were lots of bugs but thank god there weren't any mosquitoes. There were lots of Narcissus Flycatcher, Several Short Tailed Bush Warbler and Black Woodpecker but the Owls got our undivided attention.

The weather has been awful whenever I've had any free time this last week but this afternoon the sun came out. There were several species of wader around at Kamiso and Ono. These Eastern Curlew were at Kamiso and were a local first.



In the ricefields at Ono I saw a big flock of waders in the distance but couldn't locate them afterward. We did find several Wood Sandpiper but none close enough for a photo. The first Cuckoos of the summer were singing, Oriental Reed Warblers and Chestnut Eared Buntings were everywhere, a couple of Black Browed Reed Warblers were skulking in the long grass but not singing yet and my wife saw an 'odd looking' bird that I think may have been a Ruddy Crake....... a bird I've yet to see myself.

Stars of the ricefields were the Siberian Stonechats.









And here's the sun setting over the ricefields.......



More Owl and Stonechat pics will appear on my other blog in a day or two when I sort through them......

So the footy season is drawing to an end. I'll be watching the relegation battle in about an hour or so and I'm so glad I'm not from the northeast. The Champions League, FA Cup and England's trip to the middle of Asia will keep me occupied for the next couple of weeks but then it'll be whatever Ashes action I can find on sopcast or TVU, or BBC's TMS at least I suppose. Can't believe it's 4 years since the last one.

Not much happening in this neck of the woods. The noise coming from lots of minor construction projects in my neighbourhood are keeping me as grumpy as ever. I'm enjoying the first season of the TV show 'Sons of Anarchy', reading some books on human evolution, working a lot............and cursing rainy weather that coincides with my days off. Sunday is the only day we can go out in the car these days so we are at the mercy of the elements. Hopefully next Sunday will be nice and sunny unless God decides to punish me for my past sins and sends more rain.