After a while it took flight and came down on a scrap of arable land tucked away in a group of houses.
Things are getting slow on the wader front, Greenshank do winter here so seeing them wasn't a surprise. There were no Grey-tailed Tattlers and just a single Terek Sandpiper even though both had been very common a short time ago. Red-necked Stints have disappeared too but winter waders such as Dunlin, Sanderling and Oystercatcher are building in numbers.
There were big numbers of gulls on distant sandbars off-shore but unfortunately only a few more accessible birds loafing on the beach north of Tsu. Vega numbers are building rapidly now but there were only three Taimyr still present.
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The following bird is another juvenile Slaty-backed though I thought it was going to be a Taimyr when I first saw it and it's a great example of how variable they can be. The smaller size, initially less Slaty-backed head shape and much blacker looking primaries had me fooled at first. Looking more closely the Slaty-backed head shape became more apparent, the primaries may have been blacker than expected but the blade was very broad and the underside distinctly pale. Slaty-backed it is then...
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp-IBU8QHJ5Kj4dTLyHHqqBh2HPKskxEqpSZbZZlUbIJljTAlq5b9z-j3utX2cpsHJUnwOn9ACYKwtNx9hl4HF2nCk7qPP5C2RPCP5jfylwNsfyaLq7XZwGhuq38sAPFO-Ea6aPD-APc3o/s640/Y98A2949.jpg)
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Other birds of interest were the first Goldeneye and Red-breasted Mergansers of winter but Common Shelduck doesn't seem to have arrived yet. The first Black Brant has also turned up though I didn't see it. There were several Dusky Thrush even though there were only a couple further north in the mountains earlier in the week and the following day there were even quite a few at work just south of Kyoto city.
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