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| Hakodate Birding |
Christmas Day in Hokkaido A nice wintry scene from Onuma this afternoon. If you think Christmas in the west is a shallow, artificial souless experience you should come to Japan. They have all the annoying things here (crappy carols and oldie Christmas hits in shops, cheesy decorations everywhere etc) but none of the good things (good TV shows, time off work, gifts etc). They religiously go to Kentucky Fried Chicken on the 25th. Honestly.  1 of 3 Whitefronts at Kamiso this morning. Some pretty good stuff around despite most of the river being frozen. Whooper Swans, several species of Duck, 2 Great White Egret and over 20 Grey Heron, Coot (rare up here), Slavonian, Black Necked and Red Necked Grebes on the sea and some unidentifiable Divers way out. A female Peregrine swooped down low over the river and grabbed a Teal for Xmas lunch.  We had our own xmas lunch over at Onuma. This is one of the extremely tame Whooper Swans that overwinter at Onuma. Also around were all the common woodland stuff from last week (not as co-operative photo-wise today), 2 White Tailed Eagle, Little Grebe and Goldeneye. This Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker was not tame at all and was almost directly above the Scope and the sun was at a difficult angle too.  Not much around in Hakodate these last few days, Hawfinch, Dusky Thrush, Daurian Redstart were among the typical winter birds. I'll try and get a decent Stellers Sea Eagle pic at Yakumo as my last meaningful birding task this year. 21:17 - 25/12/2006 - post comment
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