A few recent birds in Mie

During my last few visits to to the Matsusaka and Tsu area there have been a lot of decent birds, or decent shots of ordinary birds, that haven't found there way into blog posts for one reason or another. These are a few of those birds.


Starting off with one that's already featured, the current star bird of the area, Canvasback.

As has Goldeneye.

One Swallow may not make a summer but the first one passed through on March 13 and Japanese Skylarks were singing everywhere, this one as it was walking along the roadside.

There are still a few Buff-bellied Pipits around but I was more surprised to see an Olive-backed on the beach, they're usually under pine trees here.

White-cheeked Starlings seem very variable when it comes to the extent of white about the head. Might this be age related or just individual variation? Could they even be prone to leucism? I saw the first of these bird a couple of weeks ago and the second during the week.

Extensive head markings aren't anything unexpected. The breast band is unusual.

This individual is getting a little carried away.

On the wader front, several Little Ringed Plover were in this week as was a Spotted Redshank and this Temminck's Stint.

Pity this Temminck's was against the light.

Other waders have been around all winter...

Northern Lapwing

Sanderlings

Dunlins

Kentish Plover

This American Wigeon was a month or so ago and is the only seemingly pure bird I saw this winter.

I planned last Wednesday as a gulling day and this was the sight that greeted me on the beach.

The sun hadn't risen but as is often the case when conditions are suitable the fishing boats were as close inshore as they could get.

As the light was broadening.

One of the better gulls was this juvenile Glaucous.

Rausu and Notsuke

From the Blakiston's Fish Owl atYoroushi Onsen we cut across to the coast to head up to Rausu and the next iconic Hokkaido sight, the flocks of eagles around Rause harbour.


The eagles were the main target and though it would have been good to connect with the likes of the returning Bufflehead, the local wintering Ravens or anything else of interest we moved soon moved south to the Notsuke Peninsula once we'd had good views of the eagles and checked the various (largely empty) harbours.

Imagine this on your doorstep.

The usual birds were in the harbours but from the Kansai perspective Harlequin Duck, Glaucous-winged and Glaucous Gulls were the pick.

Harlequins



Glaucous-winged Gulls

Juvenile Glaucous takes some beating...

The first birds we saw on Notsuke were Snow Buntings but it was really difficult to get decent shots because they were quite flighty and the grass stems meant some were always out of focus. It was only after going through the images at home that I realised Snow Bunting was a photograph tick!

In late afternoon hundreds of Sika Deer were coming out into the open along the peninsula.

I've never been to Lake Biwa when there wasn't a long line of photographers' cars and ranks of cameras at the ready to capture 'our' Steller's every move. It almost seems sinful to have a solitary Steller's all to yourself.

Taimyr Gull: 1CY again

I recently posted on a couple of 1CY Taimyr Gulls and last week I was surprised to run into one of those two gulls again, 23 km south as the gull flies.


I mentioned on that occasion that some juveniles are greyer and others browner and posted images of a very large first winter bird and an overall grey juvenile. Last week the very large first winter was teamed up with a browner juvenile so I'm going to post more images of the large bird along with some of the browner juvenile. Starting with the large gull again...

Before the early morning sun hit the beach.

Later in the morning with a little sun on its back.

With Slaty-backs.

Another early shot, showing the spread wing.

In the sun again (with a Vega).

This is the browner bird...

An attractive, nicely proportioned gull to my eyes.



With Slaty-backed.

Leaving the Taimyrs, there was also an adult Glaucous Gull near by. Other people were trying to photograph it so I contented myself with this more distant shot. Glaucous is more common in Mie than round the Kii Peninsula in Osaka but it's still a very good bird locally.

A heavily cropped shot of an adult Glauc with Vega.

After a nice start to the day my mobile packed up and I decided to cut birding short and return to Kyoto to sort the problem out. On the way back I fell foul of a police trap to catch motorists overtaking in a safe, but nevertheless illegal, spot. Hmmmm, December is one of the months they have 'campaigns' to meet their quotas... bang goes my 'gold' license. They needed my phone number so I gave them my mobile and told them if they could get it to work they could have the number, otherwise tough. They didn't succeed which was a pity because I could have gone back to birding, but they congratulated me on my birthday which was the date the 9000 yen fine had to be paid by. Thanks guys.