Sunshine in the harbour

Yesterday saw me hanging around the harbour in Kamiiso most of the day. The weather was mild and the light was very good for taking photos of the various common winter birds in the harbour.

My main target was Black Necked Grebe, there were about a dozen of them. They were in the small port chasing small fish.........

A couple of the grebes didn't look so healthy, they seemed yo have some nasty growths/tumours around their beaks and eyes, I won't put you off your food by uploading those photos.

They whizzed around the port making their whistling calls..........

And the water was so calm I got some nice reflections.........

Sorry, a little repetitive I know. Here's the most interesting grebe shot of the day........

Other stuff in and near the harbour included Great Crested Grebe, Black Scoter, Goldeneye, Red Breasted Merganser and lots of Scaup.

The pair of Harlequin Duck were still present, I finally get close to these in nice light but all I get is a female and immature male................life just isn't fair sometimes...........

There were several Glaucous Gull around, they tend to be much shyer than the resident Slatybacks, this BIF of a young one was the best I could manage today.........

On one of the 2 nearby rivers there were loads of salmon still spawning and lots of Black Headed Gulls feasting on the roe. Other stuff on the rivers included Wigeon, Pintail, Goosander, over 20 (!) Great Egret, Grey Heron, Coot and Pochard...........

The rain came back last night, it keeps getting cold then getting mild and wet again. C'mon winter, get your act together.

The Euro 2012 draw looks interesting, we've got one host nation, one bogey team and France. Could have been worse, could have been better. If we just get out of the group I'll be happy.

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A morning in Onuma

We spent the morning in Onuma today and as you can see we finally got some nice light for taking pictures. It was rather cold and there was snow in the air at first but the sun relented and came out for the first time in what feels like ages...........

There wasn't much around bird-wise so we hung out with the tame Nuthatches and Tits.

This group has been around for several years now, we think 1 Nuthatch and 1 Varied Tit of the original group remain (the tamest 2 individuals who readily come to the hand) with several of their relatives/youngsters tagging along and slowly becoming bolder.

Forgive my indulgence of posting so many photos of these birds but I do enjoy feeding them in the winter.........

The Varied Tit is my personal fave. There used to be 2 tame individuals but one of them today was very shy, presumably he/she is a new face in town..........

The dominant species is the Nuthatch, it chases all the others away. There are 2 tame ones of this species and 1 or 2 who hang around the edges........

Believe it or not I took these 3 pictures with my wife's 100mm macro lens..........and they are all only very slightly cropped.

The Marsh/Willow Tits come close but not to the hand. This is a Marsh Tit. I think.

The Great Tits are very shy and the Coal Tits live in a different part of the forest entirely.........

Only common winter stuff around today. Jay, Whooper Swan, Rook, Smew, Goldeneye, Coot, Buzzard, Sparrowhawk. White Tailed Eagle, Grey Heron and lots of Great Egret.........

Back in Kamiiso there were 15 or so Black Necked Grebes in the harbour........

Also in the harbour were 2 Great Crested Grebe, 2 Harlequin Duck, several Scaup and a Red Breasted Merganser. On one of the nearby rivers the salmon are still spawning and the Black Headed Gulls are enjoying a feeding frenzy, here's one I took last weekend with a salmon egg in its bill......

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Gone. Forever.

These photos, spread over the last 3 or 4 years, they all have something in common.





They were all taken in the trees and bushes along the riverside near my apartment.





Those trees are sadly now no longer there, Hakodate City has seen fit to chop almost all of them down. Why? I can't see any valid reason except perhaps to use up some of this year's budget. Ironically Hakodate is heavily in debt to the extent that even a Greek finance minister would hang his head in shame. What a waste of time. What a waste of money.





The riverside looks terrible now, the workers who destroyed the trees and bushes were evidently told to ignore the festering mounds of garbage everywhere. Tyres, videos, rice cookers, TVs, guitars, bicycles, beer cans, rubber boots..........

The birds in these photos won't have many places to feed, shelter or rest in from now on. Not round here at least.





It's all so utterly pointless. No wonder many Japanese cities are so ugly to look at and so heavily in debt. They pay folk to destroy what little pockets of nature cling on.





It won't impact much on the bird population of Hokkaido, the birds will hopefully find somewhere else but it looks like the core of my local patch from the last 10 years has been spoiled beyond hope.





There are a few trees left, I pray they don't come back next year to finish them off too.

End of rant and I apologise for that.

The last week was dull and grey, not much birding. There was a flock of Rustic Bunting and Hawfinch in Goryokaku Park (I wonder if the trees there are safe?) as well as Sparrowhawk, Coot and Dusky Thrush. On the river were Brown Dipper, Kingfisher, Bullheaded Shrike, Grey Heron and a few smaller birds like Daurian Redstart looking confused and wondering where all the trees had gone. A Great Spotted Woodpecker was pecking around the stumps........

At Kamiiso last week there were hundreds of Black Headed Gulls feasting on salmon roe, several Black Necked Grebe in the harbour, various ducks including Goldeneye, Harlequin and Smew, a flyover Peregrine and 7 species of Gull on the beach. Too dark for photos though........

Liverpool should have won again.

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On this day (November 27th)..........

November 27th 2009.



A Red Breasted Flycatcher in the bushes alongside the river near my apartment. Or is it a Taiga Flycatcher? These recently split species look very similar, at least to me. One reader of this blog suggested it was the former and long time after the event I put an ID request on birdforum and the general consensus seemed to be that it was indeed a Red Breasted.

A pretty crappy heavily cropped and noisy photo it's true but I was glad to at least get a record shot of what is either a scarce or extremely scarce bird in Hokkaido.........whichever one it is!

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Footprints in the snow........

A Red Fox at Onuma, this morning, as you can see we had our first real snow of the winter.

The weather improved and we headed up to Yakumo. There were more eagles around than our last visit and there were some in the river eating salmon, in exactly the same place as 2 years ago today.

It was impossible to get a clear shot, the best I could manage were some not so great BIFs.

I got my first Stellers Sea Eagle shots of the winter.......

Here's a typical view of one high up in the trees next to the icy road......

Whilst I was waiting in vain for some more eagles to fly over my wife gave me a shout, she'd found some tracks in the field next to the road......these are 2 of her photos.

It was from a Brown Bear and the tracks looked pretty fresh too, it must have walked across the field ealier in the morning. I noticed lots of crows quarreling over various blood stains on the snow next to the river, could a bear have caught and skinned some salmon? The eagles tend to scavenge mangy old rotten salmon carcasses, not living ones..........

Also around upstream were Japanese Wagtail, Pochard, Goosander, Goldeneye, Brown Dipper, Varied Tit, White Backed and Grey Headed Woodpecker, Common Buzzard and lots of Jay.

At the river mouth were the usual common gulls and wildfowl, Dunlin, Whooper Swan etc. There were several Black Legged Kittiwake in amongst the commoner Gull species.....

We got back to Hakodate just as it was getting dark, there was a big flock of Rooks (with a few Daurian Jackdaw) in the snowy ricefields in Ono.......

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