July is always a quiet month in south Hokkaido and for various reasons July 2021 has been even quieter than usual.
It’s been really really hot too. Last Sunday it was foggy in the morning which provided temporary relief. Not great for photos but juvenile Ospreys were practicing fishing and the first of the ‘autumn’ waders were passing through.
2020 has been a bit quiet for waders although my laziness means I probably missed a few interesting ones.
Red-necked Stints are still ubiquitous and are as common as ever. There were about 10 on the beach at Yakumo as well as 2 Sanderling and several Mongolian and Kentish Plovers.
Another quiet week just gone by.
At Yakumo today there were a couple of interesting waders: a Teminck’s Stint and a Green Sandpiper. I don’t have any decent shots of either and they were both so jumpy I couldn’t get any today either.
On the beach there were a few Sanderlings and the ubiquitous Red-necked Stints.
Not a great day for photos yesterday but a few waders around at Yakumo: a dozen or so Red-necked Stint, 2 Terek Sandpiper and single Whimbrel and Grey Plover.
The stints are the default small passage wader in Japan and are very common in this season.
I had a spare afternoon and checked out one of the local beaches. No car today so I had to take the train and lighter shorter lens.
Not much around: just a handful of Red-necked Stint, by far the commonest autumn shorebird in these parts.
Last week near my apartment there were a couple of Black-crowned Night Herons in the riverside vegetation and a few Asian Brown Flycatcher flitting around in the trees……………
There were several Red-necked Stints around today. this is the default small passage wader of Northeast Asia but in SW Hokkaido it is much commoner in autumn than spring. Sadly I don’t get to see them much in their breeding finery so it was nice to photograph this one up at Oshamanbe this morning………….
There were 28 species of wader present last week in Mai Po.
3 of them were lifers for me: Greater Sand Plover, Nordmann’s Greenshank and Asian Dowitcher. The latter 2 are of course pretty rare and were my 2 target species for the trip. I could only get decent views of them through a scope and neither species came close enough to photograph.
Most of the common species of east Asian shorebirds were present. The above photo shows mainly Black-tailed Godwit and Curlew Sandpiper with a few Marsh Sandpiper and Common Redshank mixed in.
Curlew Sandpiper were especially common. I’ve only ever seen 3 lone individuals in Hokkaido but in Mai Po they were abundant. Some were in summer plumage as you can see.
It would have been even better if it had been sunnier and I’d had my big lens but the whole spectacle would have been worth witnessing even without a camera.