Author: galtrym

Our trip to Japan is over, we’re now at the boarding gate.

Yesterday’s pelagic trip to see some albatrosses was amazing, with over 100 seen.  A great trip to a great country: we had a whale of a time!

“It’s been coming between half past five and half past six the last few days.”  Excellent – a great bird and an early night.   By nine o’clock the advice was “probably between three and five tomorrow morning, but it could come in the next five minutes.”  Time to take three-hour shifts so we got at least some sleep.  Both awake for three, still nothing doing, and four went past too.

Finally after just short of eleven hours watching it came in.  Blakiston’s Fish Owl: what a bird!

An hour of standing by an open window and no Blakiston’s Fish Owl yet.

A slightly more challenging day today, with a boat trip cancelled and the weather deteriorating meaning that the afternoon was done in snow, making photography a challenge. Still, we had some cracking birds and an encounter with a very friendly fox. The forecast is better for tomorrow!

After a day dominated by travel, today was a day dominated by sheer quality. It started off before dawn with the temperature around -14C with a trip to see some Red-crowned Cranes in a very atmospheric setting. After breakfast a visit to a Ural Owl site gave fantastic views and then on to much closer views of cranes in the snow. Add in a supporting cast of White-tailed and Steller’s Sea Eagles, Sea Otters and auks, it doesn’t get much better. My laptop is struggling under the weight of the 1800 photos I took today, so here are a few I can upload onto the phone from Karen’s camera.

Here we are at Kagoshima airport. There’s a volcano erupting a few miles away but that doesn’t stop anything in Japan.

As you can see we’re all smiles.

No doubt about today’s star bird: we went to the coast and took a boat trip to see the Japanese Murrelet, a fantastic little auk that gave us some terrific views.  They’re proud of their murrelets in Kadogawa, as we discovered when a man from the local government turned up to take our picture and present us with a gift bag including a cuddly murrelet each.

Tomorrow we bid farewell to sunny and warm Kyushu and head to the other end of the country, to freezing Hokkaido.

After a couple of days at Kaga we flew down south to Kyushu and had two nights at Arasaki.  It’s a frequent experience when visiting the far east to look out of your hotel window and see a lot of cranes, but this place is a bit different.  The cranes are part of a flock of 15000 Hooded Cranes, 500 White-naped Cranes and a handful of Common, Sandhill and Demoiselle Cranes.  It’s a noisy and unforgettable experience.

It’s a great Waxwing year. This is part of a flock of over 50 Japanese Waxwings. We have even had a few Bohemian Waxwings mixed in.

Lesser and Greater White-fronted Goose

Grey-headed Lapwing

Cranes flying in at dawn

A White-naped Crane spars with a Common Crane in the midst of the Hooded Cranes

The Demoiselle Crane is much smaller than the others, but is a smart bird.

Hooded Crane

Hooded Crane

A White-naped Crane towers over the Hooded Cranes.

So today was Snow Monkey day, when we visit the famous Japanese Macaques, sitting in their hot spring to escape from the snowy waste that they inhabit.  Unfortunately, for the first time in 90 years, there’s hardly any snow, so instead we had one monkey in the hot tub and the rest mooching around causing mischief.

If that was a minor disappointment, it was more than made up for yesterday.  Having mopped up the target species in Karuizawa in Thursday we had a long drive to twitch some Pallas’s Rosefinch, a difficult species to get.  Not only did we see them, but they performed astonishingly.  There’s little better than a rare bird that is superb looking and poses for the camera.

Pallas’s Rosefinch

2 of the 7 we say were adult males like this

Japanese Macaque – there was a bit of snow

Loafing in the bath

The day started with a trip into Tokyo to catch the shinkansen to Karuizawa.  It certainly puts our railways to shame in the UK.  At about 3000 feet altitude, there’s a little snow, but less than normal, but it is cold.  Not many birds, but some of them are superb.

Here it comes…

Japanese Waxwing (there a was a Bohemian Waxwing in the flock as well).

Bull-headed Shrike