There were 3 juvenile Sanderlings near Yakumo a couple of days ago…
Category: Yakumo
Waiting
I was waiting for a Water Rail to appear. It didn’t. But there were plenty of Kingfishers….
Stints contd…
Stint reflections
A quiet Sunday on the beach
A bit quiet yesterday near Yakumo: but at least there were a couple of tame stints…
Some very young ones…
Lots of juvenile Stonechats in the grass at this time of year…
Away from the water’s edge
The Sanderling took a break from running…
Some unobtrusive ones
Some Red-necked Stints poke around in the flotsam and jetsam and you don’t notice them until you almost stand on them…
A lone one
A lone Sanderling on the beach near Yakumo…
This one still sporting some summer colours…
Emperor Goose
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…
Last shots from a hot day
Pretty hot yesterday…
In addition to the Bar-tailed Godwits and Great Knot there were also several Terek Sandpiper and Mongolian Plover, 3 or 4 Red-necked Stint and a lone Green Sandpiper (the latter not on the beach).
A Great Knot
This species is never numerous…