Not a vintage Golden Week for birds. Despite fine weather and lots of time off and traveelling around SW Hokkaido I didn’t see anything particularly rare or unusual. Yakumo still had plenty of wildfowl on the 4th/6th including Garganey, Falcated Duck and White-fronted Geese and both species of Scoter were offshore at Oshamanbe. Other summer visitors to arrrive included Oriental Reed Warbler, Brown-headed Thrush and Oriental Cuckoo. On passage there were lots of Dusky Thrush and a nice male Rustic Bunting (at Yakumo) but not much else.
The above Intermediate Egret was at Yakumo. All 3 species of commoner egret weer evident across the region at the weekend: this is the scarcest of the 3.
