Lots of Ospreys around.
This one must have got bored of fish and caught a squid instead.
One of the Ospreys even found time to mob and unexpected flyover White-tailed Eagle.
A change to the menu
Category: Raptors
An actual rarity
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…
Golden Week 2022 #5
A crappy record shot but only my 3rd ever sighting of Temminck’s Stint (and my first in breeding plumage). There were 2 of them at Yakumo. Other passage waders around the last couple of days included Wood Sandpiper, Red-necked Stint, Pacific Golden Plover and Whimbrel.
At the same place as the stints were a fishing osprey and a calling Wryneck…
Flashing by
A Peregrine at Yakumo yesterday…
Gammy leg
A painful limp has kept me out of action for the last 2 weeks but I hobbled around the rivermouth at Kikonai long enough to snap this Osprey.
Lots of Black-throated Divers offshore, a couple of Slavonian Grebes but otherwise a bit quiet.
Eagle replacement
Just as the eagles leave the Ospreys arrive…
This one dived for a fish nearby but it was too big and it dropped it. Too far off for a pic sadly.
An arrival and a passer-through
Quite a few Ospreys around now.
Only a few swans passing through:
I got my first Mandarin Duck of the year and other seasonal arrivals included Bull-headed Shrike, lots of Skylarks and Oriental Turtle Doves, groups of Eastern Buzzard on their way north, flocks of noisy Common Gull…
Surely the last?
These 2 White-tailed Eagles from this morning will surely be the last I see in south Hokkaido until November…
Back home
I just can’t escape geese: this lone straggling White-front was in parkland atop a cape!
The Ospreys have returned…not great pics it has to be said.
And near my apartment all the snow has gone…
Other birds around on Monday in the Esan area were Glaucous-winged Gull, Harlequin Duck, lots of Brent Goose and a lone White-tailed Eagle.
Late Winter Trip 2022 Day 5 #13
Not a great pic but surely my last Steller’s until next winter. And it was Ol’ One-eye.
And just to show it wasn’t all geese, eagles and deer:
Late Winter Trip 2022 Day 5 #4
There were several immature White-tailed Eagles in the same area…
Late Winter Trip 2022 Day 5 #3
A White-tailed Eagle with a slab of pilfered fish…
