The White-billed Diver was still around but way offshore. Unlike its relative…
I was hoping for some Stejneger Scoter and/or Long-tailed Duck shots but the former were a long way off and I could only find one of the latter. And that didn’t come close either.
A dark, grey snowy Sunday with some common winter birds to match…
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…
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.
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….
The ports were a bit quiet but at one of them a Black-throated Diver popped up nearby…
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……….
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 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 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.
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 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.