Arasaki cranes

There were no rare cranes at Arasaki this year, it's over 20 years since I saw Demoiselle Crane there and I've never seen Siberian or Red-crowned at Arasaki. It hardly matters because Arasaki is more about the spectacle than the individuals. That said, trying to capture the magic of the early morning crane flights, the sight, the sound, the ever-changing backdrop, in photographs is possibly even more difficult than trying to convey the depth and splendour of a mountain range. So in the end it comes back to trying to catch a special individual image.


This year I promised myself I wouldn't spend any time trying to photograph the cranes and, apart from a few shots of Sandhill Cranes I stopped to look at, any crane shots were purely incidental to some other bird I was watching at the time.

White-naped Crane; the most elegant and photogenic of the Arasaki regulars.

Hooded; by far the most numerous of the crane species.

There is a marked difference between the lightest and darkest Hooded Cranes. Immatures are always dark, adults vary from immature blackish-grey to Common Crane-grey. These two provide a good example of light and dark.

The less common light grey and usual dark grey Hooded, at a distance the lighter birds can raise hope of Common or Sandhill. Birds like this might raise the question whether they are hybrids with Common Crane but there seem to be too many of them and they don't show other features that would indicate hybrid origin.

I'm not in a position to know what is and is not a hybrid Hooded x Common Crane but the following images I've taken in the past show birds I believe are hybrids.

To me this is an obvious hybrid, it's distinctly larger than Hooded and has clear intermediate plumage features.

Two shots of a bird which looks closer to Common.

Another closer-to-Common bird. But can they also look closer to Hooded like the pale grey Hooded above? As I said there seem to be too many pale Hooded Cranes whereas the number of these more obvious hybrids are more in keeping with the number of Common Cranes occurring at Arasaki.

Perhaps because I wasn't actually looking for them, I only saw single Common Cranes on two occasions on this trip. The first was a flight view only as it was heading away so I couldn't categorically rule out a hybrid. Below are images of the second bird.



Common Crane.

Part of the early morning gathering. Three Sandhill Cranes were conveniently at the roadside edge of the flock.

The following morning four Sandhills were right by the road through the net fence as I was driving by and I had to wait for them to walk away far enough to get a shot over the top of the net.

My best ever shots of Sandhill.

cranes, spoonbills and a 'funny" Grey Heron

Black-faced Spoonbills are reasonably common on estuaries, ponds and ditches around the coast. I've seen flocks of over 20 birds in the past but this time I only saw a total of seven on the whole trip, though I confess I wasn't especially looking for them. These two were at Arasaki.



In Kansai both Black-faced and Eurasian Spoonbills are scarce but the latter is seen at least as often as Black-faced. However in Kyushu the vast majority of spoonbills are expected to be Black-faced so I was pleasantly surprised to find a confiding Eurasian in a roadside drainage channel at Arasaki on my first evening. The second evening it had been joined by two more and the following day the number had grown to an amazing eight; more than my Black-faced total!

Continuing with the long-legged theme I came across this interesting Grey Heron with a surprisingly brownish head and neck. Unfortunately I was blocking the single track road and had to move to allow a car to pass and by the time I circled the field the bird had gone so I don't know how extensive the odd colouration might be nor suggest a reason for it.

Still sticking with long legs I can't resist a few more crane shots, they're just such amazing birds.

Hooded...

Common...

White-naped...

and Sandhill.

Arasaki January 6th

The 6th was my first full day in the area and a priority for anyone coming here has to be the cranes. Obviously that's how my day began, watching thousands of cranes on Higashi Kantaku, but because I'd heard the Scaly-sided Mergansers were back on the upper reaches of the Sendai River a lot of the day was spent in a fruitless search for them.


I first saw Scaly-sided back in 1988 - and I walked 50km that day to do it - but I haven't seen another since. It's not that I haven't tried, believe me I have. Let's just say if you want to see Scaly-sided, don't come birding with me. And lookout for my forthcoming publication "Viewpoints Along Hard To Access Rivers In Japan", it's sure to be a best seller... aren't tricky species supposed to get easier once you've finally connected with one?


Back to Arasaki where at least the cranes are hard to miss.


It's sometimes said that less is more and this is my attempt to prove it... a nice solitary Hooded Crane. Solitary Hooded Cranes are a great rarity here.

I don't know who said that though, so down to business...

...cranes as far as the eye can see. Add to these the flock in front of the crane centre plus all the birds that don't make this their first port of call and we're talking serious crane numbers.


Below is the second (and closer) of the two Common Cranes I saw that morning but looking at the images now I'm wondering if it isn't a Hooded hybrid. The other Common Cranes I saw didn't have the suspicious darker grey patches on the back and the head markings don't look as clear-cut as "real" Common Cranes. I'll have to look into it when I get back. Nice bird though.

Our Hoodies also come in a fetching range of greys...

From a distance I thought the pale bird in these shots was going to be my first Sandhill of the trip. Most birds seem to vary from mid- to blackish-grey but this was by far the palest bird I saw and by the final day of the trip was still an outlier.


Speaking of Sandhill...

...five was the most I ever saw together.


While Hooded come in a convenient frame filling size and Sandhill are positively dinky, White-naped is heading in the other direction. They're absolutely huge, well, as long as there aren't any Siberian White around.

And just to show it's not all larger-than-life glitz and glamour I'll end this with a couple of Little Ringed Plover shots before starting my (I'm guessing) 14 hour drive back to Kyoto.