Lucky that the head of the crane in the foreground is framed by the one behind. Over-exposed and reds increased in processing for effect.
After retracing our steps to Nagano, we caught the shinkansen back to Tokyo, from where we took a flight to Kushiro on the snowy northern island of Hokkaido, home to some of Japan’s most spectacular wildlife. As I walked out of the hotel next morning to clear the ice off the minivan’s windscreen, the hairs in my nose froze and when we rolled up at the classic crane overnight roosting site of Otawa Bridge, the temperature gauge read minus 19 degrees Celsius. Hokkaido is very different to the rest of Japan. It came as a surprise to me that the cranes are not guaranteed at the bridge every day. There had been none here the previous day, when they had been disturbed by some over eager ‘toggers’. However, they were closer in the river than usual, affording a nice landscape composition as the light turned from blue to golden with the sunrise. Beyond the cranes our first Steller’s Sea Eagle was feeding on something dead on a bank in the course of the river and an (introduced) American Mink swam by just upstream of the bridge. Within a couple of hours, the sunlight was far too bright, and we headed back for breakfast, relieved to be able to defrost our freezing extremities in the process.
The Otawa Bridge cranes roost was a little closer than usual today. Tripod for a slow shutter speed in the low, cold, blue light to keep the ISO down.
Some yellow light creeping into the frame. How/why did those dipsticks flush them?
After breakfast our next stop was the famous Akan Crane Observation Center. We were rather stunned to find that only doves and crows had turned up this morning at feeding time. They do not feed the cranes with fish here anymore, owing to fears of bird flu, so there are no longer any of the photogenic eagle/crane/fox conflicts of the past and in fact the cranes are not even guaranteed either. There is a move towards putting out less grain as well, in line with the authorities’ feeling that there is generally too much feeding of wildlife going on. We hung around, until lunchtime without any luck, kept going by the most amazing hot chocolate of the tour and then retreated across the road to a great little restaurant. We were in sight of the crane center and could soon see a handful of cranes arriving at last, while we ate lunch. Disappointingly, as soon as we returned all but one flew off! At least this ‘Billy-No-Mates’ sat down for us, affording some interesting images partly obscured by wind-blown snow. There weren’t any of the other zillions of ‘toggers’ around that we had seen at Otawa Bridge this morning, so we knew the action must be happening elsewhere. Indeed, it was and as we arrived at the Tsurui Ito Crane Observation Center in the afternoon a group of over 60 stately Red-crowned Cranes was gathered, overlooked by a larger gathering of photographers. Many cranes were still pecking in the snow, where the grain of the morning feeding session had been scattered. There was some coming and going that sparked a little dancing but mostly we struggled to isolate birds for portraits or to make some sense of the random and usually messy patterns of black-and-white birds against the white snow background. In late afternoon the cranes would walk up a low rise, taxi-ing towards their take-off runway from where most of them took flight back towards the river where they spend the night. We swung by Otawa Bridge on our return to Kushiro to find a few cranes had already arrived at their roost, although now in less than optimal light. A Steller’s Sea Eagle flew along a distant forested ridge in the sunset and it was soon time for us to call it a day too. The onsen this evening was rather swimming pool-like indoors and not very atmospheric, but the water was nice and the warmth of the outside, rock-lined, pool in bitingly cold night air was terrific.
Sit down protest by the lone remainer. The wind-blown snow flurries created a nice effect.
Three is better than two and four. Ask any flower arranger!
Evening bugle practice at Tsurui Ito.
If I bend my wings I’ll fit in the frame! BIG bird!
Hokkaido sunset. Yellow is my favourite colour!
Next morning, we made a beeline for Tsurui Ito where there was again plenty of crane activity to keep us occupied. We followed this with a very photogenic Ural Owl day roost site in a huge hole in the trunk of an ancient oak tree, about 35m from a fenced off viewing position not far from the main road. This is a regular spot for the big owl with a ‘deceptively gentle look’ and in fact there are often two of them side-by-side in the same hole. We could watch it for as long as we wanted, or at least until we got some owl images with less squinty eyes. We returned to Tsurui Ito for the late afternoon crane show, which was rather cloudy now, before heading back to Kushiro for the night.
I love the Collins Guide annotation ‘deceptively gentle look’. It isn’t called ‘Attacking Owl’ in Sweden for nothing.
Oh dear! A stunning hoar frost meant we should have been at Otawa Bridge this morning but I was relieved to hear that a later start had still been the best plan when I learned that again the cranes had been disturbed by ‘toggers’ at their roost and none were present at dawn. For the second time in five days, this is obviously becoming a serious problem. Instead we returned to Akan, where this time the cranes had come for breakfast. We suspect that the very cold morning two days earlier had caused them to stay longer in the warm waters of their roosting river. Their numbers built from 10 at 08.30am to 67 by 10am and we enjoyed lots of flight shot potential and some dancing too.
Some more over-exposed crane art
