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| Hakodate Birding |
December in Hokkaido This is (as far as I know) the only birdwatching hide within 5 hours drive of Hakodate. It's at Sawara, about 45 minutes by car. It overlooks coastal flatlands that arereputed to be good for Rough Legged Buzzard, Snow Bunting and most famously Gyrfalcon. This was actually on Sunday. It was a blizzard outside with horizontal snow and the only bird I saw was 1 Oriental Greenfinch and huge numbers of Gulls, Crows and Kites in the distance. They congregate around a seafood processing factory in scenes highly Hitchcockian. Later at Onuma we had more superb views of a different Ural Owl (it flew off before I could get a pic) but couldn't find a Flying Squirrel. Hakodate has been surprisingly mild weather-wise this week. No car again so all birding has been done on foot. Among the more interesting species have been Goshawk, Bohemian Waxwing, Black Necked Grebe, Red Throated Diver and various common woodland species at the foot of Hakodate-yama (flocks including 5 species of paridae as well as Nuthatch and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker). I met 2 of the people who have blogs linked to the right. Sato-san showed us the Owl last week (the link is "colorbox") and Mo-san took us through the forest on the unsuccessful Flying Squirrel excursion (his link is "yamasemichi"). Both take much better pics than me. The Third Test starts tommorrow. After my Adelaide comment I'm saying nothing. 01:15 - 14/12/2006 - comments {1} - post commentUral Owl and Harlequin Duck A Ural Owl peering out of a tree at Onuma this afternoon. The weather has turned really cold and there's a lot of snow around. The Owl was only 30 or so yards off the road. It didn't look bothered by me (or the other 3 birders taking pics) or by the subzero temperatures. Not much else at Onuma. Japanese Wagtail, Nuthatch, Dusky Thrush and lots of commoner Ducks on the water including hundreds of Goosander. The lake will be 99% frozen over in a week or 2 and most of the Ducks will have flown south (a few stay-there is one ice-free area they'll share with the Whooper Swans which weren't around today).  At Kamiso in the morning there were 6 species of Gull, 3 Whitefronted Geese, a Common Buzzard, Sparrowhawk and a Peregrine, a few Ducks (most seem to have moved south already) and 9 very cold looking Grey Heron. Scaup, Goldeneye and a few Black Necked Grebes were on the sea. On the other side of the bay I tried to take some pics of the Harlequin Ducks. These are surprisingly hard (for me) to take good photos of. The camera just can't seem to focus. I don't know why. They look stunning thru the Scope. This male was the best and the photo is completely unphotoshopped. Sharpening makes it look worse if anything. It was extremely cold, windy and exposed here which made patience an impossibility.  Looks like a draw in Adelaide. Liverpool scored and won away too. 22:09 - 4/12/2006 - comments {1} - post commentMore Eagles in Hokkaido. And a Thayers Gull? A White Tailed Eagle at Yakumo this lunchtime. The Eagles of both species were more numerous than a couple of weeks ago. Lots of adult Stellers but none were being especially photogenic. The river is full of Salmon carcasses. Not too much else around at Yakumo. It was pretty cold but no snow on the ground (although there were lots of flurries). Upstream a few commoner species were around-Brown Dipper, Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker etc. We only had a quick look at the rivermouth. LOTS of Gulls of 7 species with quite a few Glaucous and Glaucous-winged. The commoner Ducks were here too.  The only Stellers pic worth putting on the blog is this one. This was a long way away and it was snowing/sleeting at the time. It is a typical view though. With the white/yellow they're particularly easy to see.  Most of my birding recently has been done on foot along the river near my appartment. This is how I remember I did most of my birding before the days of motorized digiscoping. On foot with a crappy pair of 10x25s in my pocket. But I saw lots of good birds last week. An adult White Tailed Eagle flew over on the 24th and on the 26th I saw this bird.  A non digiscoped zoomed up pic of (I think) an adult Thayers Gull. I've seen this bird (I guess it's the same individual) for the last 3 winters and I just thought it was an odd Herring Gull. Very thin bill, 'cute' eye, black wingtips at rest but hardly any black in flight, about halfway in size between Common and Herring Gulls. I'm still not 100% sure but after checking online ID resources I've provisionally counted this as a Thayers (it is a separate species I believe). Birding was easier when all these were just Herring Gulls.  Crappy pic but it just doesn't look like a Herring Gull. Oh and maybe the normal 'Herring' Gulls here are actually Vega Gulls depending on who you believe. Also on the river in the last few days have been a drake Gadwall plus 5 other species of Duck, Varied Tit, Common Kingfisher, Hawfinch and Blue Rock Thrush. Bad week for England sporting teams (it's been a bad year all around). At least Liverpool are climbing the table. I paid $25 for the privilege of listening to the Ashes series via ABC radio. Not only did I have to listen to England getting thrashed I had to do it whilst listening to gloating and snickering Australian broadcaters. C'mon Flintoff. 18:21 - 29/11/2006 - comments {1} - post commentJust waiting for Winter to start A pic of Onuma this afternoon. A lazy hungover kind of Sunday (in my 20's/early 30's EVERY Sunday was like this). Very mild too. It'll get cold in a week or 2 (we changed our tyres to winter tyres yesterday) and then the snow and ice will be present until the middle or end of March. Not much of interest at Onuma-just the usual common woodland species including this Marsh Tit and Nuthatch.   The birds were pretty tame. These pics were taken by my wife with a normal compact camera (not attached to a Scope or anything) and cropped and sharpened on my computer. Not bad actually. I'm more kindly disposed to the previously derided Nikon P4 now. In Kamiso more of the same autumn stuff as per recently plus Pelagic Cormorant, Black Scoter, Smew and Black Necked Grebe. Small numbers of Dusky Thrush and Daurian Redstart passing through Hakodate this week are a sure sign winter is on the way. Lots of interesting sport on TV last night but it was all on at the same time! And tonight-nothing. If anyone wants a brand new KOWA 50mm ED Scope for xmas I know just the thing for you. Go to e-bay and find the aforementioned item and make a sensible offer to the charming seller. Go on. 19:14 - 19/11/2006 - comments {0} - post commentStellers Sea Eagles An adult Stellers Sea Eagle at Yakumo this morning. There were about 10 or so Stellers and a dozen or so White Tailed Eagles on hillsides of the Yurappu River. Annual visitors, they'll peak at about 60-70 individuals (with slightly more White Taileds) when winter starts to bite. Often they perch obligingly quite close to a Car Park near the river but not today-this bird was a couple of hundred yards away. This is the usual view of the Eagles. They're after the Salmon, which are abundant in the river.  3 Stellers and 1 White Tailed. Other stuff upstream included Brown Dipper, Japanese Wagtail, Goosander, Marsh Tit and Eurasian Jay. Downstream at the rivermouth not so many winter birds were in evidence-a few Goldeneye, Scaup, lots of Pintail and these Great White Egrets (there were 13 in all). This species seems to be regular around here in late autumn/early winter. Where do they come from? I'm not sure they breed in Hokkaido. Eastern Russia perhaps?  Snow on the hills and most of the vegetation is as dead as Liverpool's title challenge. 16:57 - 15/11/2006 - comments {0} - post commentBlack Woodpecker, snow and mulled wine A cheeky pic of a Coal Tit near Onuma this afternoon. Pretty cold and there was snow on the mountain tops this morning after FIVE days of rain. A second Whitefonted Goose was at Kamiso as well as lots of Wigeon (but no American Wigeon this year). We drove out to Onuma and I finally got the Black Woodpecker. Only seen (in flight) for 5 seconds but still one of the birds of the year. A male. Otherwise the birds were almost identical to earlier in the week. It's snowing outside now in fact and we're making mulled wine. I never really got into the stuff until I moved to Munich (Gluwein it's called there-where's the umlaut on my Japanese keyboard?). I need a strong drink before the Arsenal/Liverpool game anyway. Annoyance of the day was my shutter release cable. Without going into boring details the threads no longer catch so it's useless. Only one small part is to blame (I lost this one small part earlier in the year and had to replace the whole thing and now this). I ordered a slightly different model this time. Upshot is I've now spent as much as I did on my last Camera just on this annoying but essential accessory. Oh and I no longer use my new Camera for digiscoping because it's crap. Lots of small birds striking attractive poses but I had to rely on my 3 second timer. 22:04 - 12/11/2006 - comments {0} - post comment
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