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| Hakodate Birding |
Late July in JapanAfter a few weeks with little or no birding I went to Yakumo this afternoon. Quite warm though in contrast to the UK our summer here has been pretty cool so far. Lots of nice birds about. The Eastern Curlew (below) was, judging by the huge bill, an adult female. There were several species of wader around. 10 or so Dunlin all in summer plumage as was a lone Red Necked Stint. A distant Greenshank had me confused for a while and contemplating Marsh Sandpiper or (very optimistically) Spotted Greenshank before it flew off calling. The other waders were Little Ringed Plover (with young) and Common Dandpiper. Also present were 40 or more Grey Heron, a single Black Headed Gull, 7 or 8 Greater Scaup, a pair of Osprey, Stonechat, common Hirundines and a White Throated Needletail. The latter bird is one of the 2 species of Swift here in Hokkaido. The other one (the White Rumped Swift) was very numerous near Hakodate on the way. A brief stop at Kamiso produced 5 Goosander, 3 Black Headed Gull and a Common Kingfisher. July has been a pretty quiet month. I finally got the Ruddy Kingfisher at Onuma on July 5th (a very brief glimpse). More or less daily walks in my afternoon break along the river near my flat gave me a couple of nice birds. An Oriental Honey Buzzard flew over on July 17th and I saw a juvenile Night Heron on the 20th. The Oriental Reed Warblers stopped singing a few days ago and the first young Grey Wagtails making their way downsteam appeared at around the same time. Otherwise the usual common species have been going around doing their business as per normal. A small drab Duck last week could have been anything but was probably just a Common Teal. It didn't stick around in view more than a few seconds and I had no binoculars anyway.............. The World Cup seems like a distant memory now. QF and out on penalties. Very predictable. We usually don't play quite as badly or listlessly as we did the whole tournament though. Blame it on the WAGS. 20:01 - 26/7/2006 - post comment
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