
Until just under 2 years ago I had never seen Cackling Goose or Snow Goose in Japan.
Now I just can’t stop seeing them all over the place…………


Even if the weather was lousy and poor for photography it was still great watching the Snow Geese which were very active……………..
There were several hundred of them: this species breeds on Wrangel Island and that is where most (or all) these birds originate from. The Obihiro area in Hokkaido is a well-known staging post for them. Some will fly south to Honshu and some to Korea for the winter……………
We were in Tokachi last week looking for geese. I wanted to photograph Snow Geese. They were easy enough to find but the weather on the first day we arrived was awful: driving torrential rain, high winds and very dark. Terrible conditions for photograhy especially with my old APS-C sensor. Most of these BIF shots were taken from the car window.
I checked one of the local beaches this afternoon to see if there were any interesting gulls, or perhaps a tern. Nothing doing there but I was very surprised to find this adult Snow Goose among the Slaty-backed and Black-tailed Gulls.
A scarce and local passage visitor to Hokkaido (usually in the east): I saw a small flock in Onuma last year and this was only the second time I’d seen this species in Japan.