We had a night on a campsite last night…
After being serenaded by Jungle Nightjars all night (including a brief glimpse in the twilight) we were up at sunrise and there were lots of birds: a flyover White-tailed Eagle and Osprey, Japanese Green Pigeon, Brown Dipper, Grey Wagtail, several species of thrush…
…and several species of woodpecker…
Breeding season in full swing as you can see.
A very very quiet time at the moment: for various reasons I haven’t been out much and even when I do there aren’t many birds around. 2022 has been a bit of a slow year across the board.
Here are a few common local birds from the last few days.
I had a quick walk around the block this afternoon: not much around. A few Eastern Great and Varied Tits, 20 or so Dusky Thrush and this lone Pygmy.
I’ve been walking around the neighbourhood this week looking for Waxwings with no success. But I did see this juvenile/first-winter Goshawk nab a pigeon.
Annoyingly my R5 froze as it flew off (this happens occasionally: very frustrating for such an expensive camera). Maybe it made no difference as the AF on my ancient 100-400L M1 is very sluggish on the R5.
F***ing twigs.
Also around were Eastern Buzzard, Winter Wren, 10 or so Dusky Thrush, a male Goosander and this Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker in the local park.
Still really mild. We were out east today: a few interesting things around but not great for photography. The above Peregrine posed nicely and there were also several White-tailed Eagle around, a lone Mountain Hawk-Eagle and 000’s of Black-legged Kittiwakes offshore.
Here’s a common local species: you can see it’s a male by the red flash on its head.
Pretty quiet in town recently but this male Grey-headed Woodpecker was in one of the local parks this afternoon.
In addition to the Siberian Blue Robin and various thrush species there were also several Narcissus Flycatcher, lots of Asian Brown Flycatcher and a lone Wryneck. Plus lots of common staples of a Hokkaido park………………
We were in Yakumo the last couple of days. Crested Kingfisher, Japanese Waxwing, Brown Dipper, Japanese Wagtail, Great Egret and the above woodpecker and below swan were some of the species around……………
A female Black Woodpecker at Onuma yesterday……………….
Not the easiest bird to photograph as it often was too close and almost always hiding behind twigs.
It was a dark drizzly start to the day but there were lots of birds in the park………….
These are 2 species I don’t photograph so often. The sparrow tends to spend most of its time in the treetops and the woodpecker always seems to fly off before I’m ready.
A Great Spotted Woodpecker in the local park earlier this week.
Not much abut in town: Red-flanked Bluetail, a few Dusky Thrush, some Asian House Martin.
Well I say there’s not much about but some people saw 2 Oriental White Storks a few days ago somewhere in town. It was even in the local newspaper. I haven’t had the chance to look for them and no doubt they’ve gone now.
Small birds have been very few and far between this winter. Just the resident species like this Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker on the cape at Esan.
