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
