The crossbills are still in town but mostly high up…except when they come down for a drink.
There are several flocks in town and they are all very restless and mobile. I tried some BIF shots and found something interesting on the wholly crappy pics…look at the odd one out.
The best bird of the trip was the Lesser Scaup, my first lifer since last summer.
Apart from the wildfowl and eagles we also saw 2 male Hen Harriers, a flock of Bohemian Waxwing, Oriental Magpie and Ring-necked Pheasant.
The Lesser Scaup was still around the next day…
Some more shots of the Lesser Scaup…
The Lesser Scaup occasionally showed signs of life…
My only lifer of the trip was this male Lesser Scaup. I would never have noticed unless another birdwatcher (the only one I saw on the whole trip) told me there was one mixed in with the Greater Scaups and Pochards in one of the ports. Whoever you are, thank you!
At first it was resting but you can clearly see the different head shape and colour to the ubiquitous Greater Scaup.
Not a great pic but this bird caused quite a stir when it pitched up in Yakumo last month. A friend of ours found it out but didn’t know what it was so he sent me a photo. I got there a couple of days later and took some not-very-good pics.
This species is very rare in this part of the world, especially this far south and in summer. Not to mention it’s on the wrong side of the Pacific. In the UK it would have been instantly (and probably rightly) dismissed as an escape. But here…well maybe not. There are no big collections of exotic wildfowl in Japan and to be honest it is just as likely (or even more so ) to be a wild bird. Maybe it has wandered over to this side of the Pacific and wintered somewhere else in northeast Asia and then turned up in Yakumo. Who knows?
Anyway it stuck around for a couple of weeks with an equally lost-looking Greater White-fronted Goose and then seemingly disappeared again. Maybe we’ll never know its true origin. But I’m going to tick it…
We did the Ochiishi boat trip. It was pretty foggy but we saw plenty of birds. This Brunnich’s Guillemot posed nicely close to the boat.
The commonest alcids were Rhinoceros Auklets and Spectacled Guillemots and we also saw Ancient Murrelet, Northern Fulmar, Red-necked Pharalope and Sooty (or Short-tailed?) Shearwater.
I was hoping to get a shot of a Tufted Puffin. I’d seen one on this trip before but couldn’t get a photo. We didn’t see any this time but we did manage to see this Horned Puffin. Crappest of crappy pics but a lifer…
A crappy heavily cropped pic but a lifer: a Richard’s Pipit today. A rare passage visitor to Hokkaido and a very nice find. Shame I couldn’t get close as it was so jumpy.
I got up late and was out in the harsh midday sun so terrible light for photos. Apart from the above pipit not much else around anyway…
Saunders’s Gull is rare in Hokkaido, this was only the 5th time I’ve seen one (and the 3rd at Yakumo). 4 of them have been in the same fortnight over the years (the last week of April or the first week of May). And 4 of them have been immature birds like this one…
It was tiny and very easy to pick out due to it tern-like flight.
Most of the seaducks have left the ports and are either offshore or gone back north. There were a few Black Scoters close inshore and a few Stejneger’s always just out of camera range.
Most interesting duck was the above American Wigeon (in terrible light) and a flock of Falcated Duck (also out of camera range).
I didn’t really get any good BIFs of the RLKs……………
In the car they were too close and it was difficult to track them with so little space to move plus when I got out it was too windy to hold the camera straight.
