A dark, grey snowy Sunday with some common winter birds to match…
Black, white and grey
Tag: Black-throated Diver
A couple of port birds
Not many birds in the port at Oshamambe, only a few Scaup and Goldeneye and a small flock of Wigeon. And this Black-throated Diver, which I’ve seen several times this winter.
Gull numbers also seemed to be picking up slightly…
A dark snowy late Sunday afternoon
The same (?) diver a couple of hours later as it was getting dark: R5 and DXO saved the shot…
The port was very quiet: just a few Scaup, a single Goldeneye, hardly any gulls even. The flock of Dunlin was poking around at least.
A dark snowy Sunday
We were up north for the weekend and on Sunday it was very dark and snowy with nasty driving conditions.
Not much in the ports but 2 of them held Black-throated Divers.
And away from Yakumo there a few generalist eagles….
A quick view of a Diver
The ports were a bit quiet but at one of them a Black-throated Diver popped up nearby…
Lots of these
We headed west today hoping to find some interesting birds blown in by the strong west wind. We couldn’t find anything but there were lots of divers on the sea. Red-throated, Black-throated and Pacific………..and all but this individual were too far off for any photos……….
A grey Friday out west
Very dark yesterday so crap for photos but a few interesting birds around: various grebes including a couple of hundred Great Cresteds, several Black-throated Diver, a lone White-tailed Eagle, lots of Brent Geese and huge numbers of Common Gull.
And my first Osprey of the year too.
The way back
The weather turned a bit rainy the last day of our trip and we only made a couple of stops on the way back. Various winter birds were in the ports in Oshamanbe…………
A windy Tuesday in mid-April
A very windy day today after a lot of rain yesterday.
Not many birds around, the above Diver was still on the river to the west of town and there were lots of Common Gull at the river mouths and in the ports too.
Still on the river
The Black-throated Diver I saw 2 days ago was still on the same river to the west of town and it swam past in nice evening light. Strange to see one away from the sea/ports…………
A very quiet start to spring
A very slow last 2 weeks. Not Covid19 related. I had a dodgy knee, a wisdom tooth extracted and the weather has not been great either. All my birding luck from the first 3 months of 2020 appears to have run out: very few interesting birds around in south Hokkaido at the moment.
The above Black-throated Diver was near town today. Yesterday at Yakumo a single Ruff was the most interesting bird and today out west there was nothing noteworthy anywhere. The Crossbills have all vanished too.
Various summer visitors have shown though……..Siberian Stonechat, Asian House Martin and Japanese Bush Warbler among them.
A Loon
A Black-throated Diver/Arctic Loon was one in one of the ports near Oshamanbe………
Not great photos but these are one of my fave types of birds to watch/photograph.
