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.

Early morning cranes and Rooks

Early on January 8 I positioned myself under the flight path of the cranes moving from Higashi Kantaku to the crane centre. The light was poor, heavy clouds and rain hadn't been so much as a recurring theme during the trip as a fact of life, I hadn't seen the sun since its two-hour appearance through the fog four days earlier.


The cranes didn't disappoint though. Hundreds of them, thousands, streamed by to the left and right, filling the air with their bugling; could anything ever sound more wild than the sound of cranes, from near and far and every point of the compass. Yet even this maelstrom of sound couldn't drown out the swoosh of wings passing directly overhead.

It wasn't only cranes numbering in the thousands, flocks of Rooks were widespread and frequent throughout the area. You might notice birds strung along the wires behind the white buildings in the final shot of the cranes.



In Kansai and perhaps elsewhere in Japan you'd be pushed to find anyone who had a good word for crows; they're heartily disliked. Most people are unaware of the different species and I can imagine anyone from Kansai being horrified by the Hitchcock-like gatherings of Rooks around Arasaki.

The wires around this village were laden with Rooks; the odds aren't good for the residents.

My only Daurian Jackdaw of the trip. Chris Cook had about 20 at another nearby location.