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Wild Images

THE SNOW LEOPARD

April 10, 2020

THE Snow Leopard that is! Well, the best encounter of the 13 sigthings we had on my recent Wild Images/Birdquest Ladakh Snow Leopard special tour. Our visit to little Saspotsay started very slowly with a couple of unproductive short birding walks. There were a few Hill Pigeons among the Rock Doves but alas no Snow Pigeon. A Golden Eagle was sky dancing over the cliffs that tower over the small village and a few Robin Accentors and Cinereous Tits were in the bushes that line the fields below. We had just decided to explore the vicinity of the monastery that overlooks the village but as soon as we rolled up there, we got a call on the radio, ‘Snow Leopard!’. Not only was it a Snow Leopard but it was at a kill in the village! Nazir demonstrated his awesome driving skills in turning the minibus on a sixpence and we raced downhill to where the boys were gathered, behind the village looking up one of the narrow ravines that emerges at the foot of the tall cliffs. They told us that the cat had left its kill, an ibex wedged between some large boulders. The leopard had forced the poor ibex off the cliff and it fell to its death on the rocks below. Even more amazingly, the kill was directly behind one of Jigmet’s Snow Leopard Conservancy’s Himalayan Homestays! A villager had simply shouted to him ‘There is!’… ‘There is what?’ he wondered for a few seconds! Anyway, he was already arranging access for us and we were soon drinking masala chai in the yard of the homestay and waiting for the leopard to return to its kill only around 50 metres away.

In typical style, Jigmet said ‘the cat is here’, I’ve heard him say this lots of times now! The cat was indeed here, sitting high up on the crag looking down at the kill. I had been so sure that it would approach down the narrow ravine it had disappeared into but no, this incredible animal thinks nothing of climbing up and down sheer cliffs. Time went by and local folks came and went too, taking a look at the cat, excited kids held up by their mums so they could see. At last the leopard tired of the magpies bothering it and came down, more or less straight down, except for one small detour around a vertical section. Wow! An amazing show of agility. Even a passing Wallcreeper spotted by Jacob couldn’t distract us! We hid out of sight for a short while so it would continue all the way to its kill and then it proceeded to tuck in, starting with the intestines and juicy bits. An awesome experience but we did feel a bit sorry for the female ibex. We returned to our mountain homestay very happy after a very exciting day! Maybe it was the excitement, but I was still at 89% oxygen saturation this evening or maybe I was still struggling after the exertion of the Spango hikes a couple of days earlier?

Well there wasn’t really a question about where we would start the following day. We were back at Saspotsay before dawn in the hope of some more Snow Leopard action. However, there were far too many other folks with the same idea, a traffic jam of taxis and minibuses clogged up the tiny village’s streets. The leopard was also clearly full after a night at its ‘all you can eat’ ibex buffet. Although it was still on view, for a while at least, before noise levels grew too high, the views and light (in now overcast conditions) were nothing like the previous afternoon so we went off to look at the monastery. The government-funded road stretches a little further each year and has now reached the monastery but there wasn’t anything going on here either so after a lunch gathered around another second-hand Indian army wood burner at Jigmet’s son’s in-laws we headed back to Ullay. We had another enjoyable session watching the White-winged Grosbeaks, cracking rose hips again in the lower fields. At dusk the female flew into the sacred juniper tree, next to Nilza’s place, the only bird I’ve ever seen in it. Finally thanks a lot to Mr Snow Leopard himself, Jigmet Dadul, veteran of way over 300 Snow Leopard sightings and his Snow Leopard Quest team, without whom none of this would have been possible.

*The party’s over. Next day Snow Leopard tourists at Saspotsay.*

*Sleepy Saspotsay. The Dzo (Yak X cow cross) has no idea of the danger lurking nearby.*

*Commander Jigmet Dadul co-ordinates another Snow Leopard encounter.*

*Our minibus driver, Nazir from Kargil. If there is a better mountain bus driver I didn’t meet him yet.*

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RED-CROWNED CRANES OF HOKKAIDO

April 9, 2020

*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!*

*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.

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SNOW MONKEYS OF NAGANO

April 7, 2020

*Wide angle view. I put a 17mm lens on the ground right in front of the monkey in one of the pathways through the snow and it skipped over the top of it.*

Traversing Tokyo’s rail network in order to get to the Snow Monkeys saves a lot of time compared to a long bus journey, once you have survived the complexity of buying tickets, humping and lumping all your kit up and down various escalators and then working out which queue to stand in at the platform – they are all clearly marked so there is not scrum getting on and off trains and some of the Tokyo metro even has automatic gates on the platform itself so the trains can speed in and stop more quickly, before the gates, which are perfectly in line with their doors open! Oh, and then there also is a unique electro music jingle for every station! We were fortunate to see several Shinkansens coming and going before ours, including a pink one! Like missing a fly-by rare bird, I was disappointed not to get a photo of it. Travelling by bullet train was another quintessentially Japanese experience, boarding was very efficient, as to be expected and before long we were whizzing through the Tokyo suburbs at around 260kmph. Part of the world’s largest metropolitan area and home to around 38 million people, it is also one of the most densely populated. Apartment blocks stretch as far as the eye can see, within touching distance of one another but all looking modern, new, clean and well maintained. I have never seen anywhere like Tokyo. In under two hours we were far away from the city and in the heart of the Japanese Alps.

*Shinkansen! A not-to-be-missed, quintessential Japanese experience. Slow shutter speed to blur the train approaching the platform.*

Alighting at Nagano, proud host city of the 1998 Winter Olympics, we then made the short drive to the spa/ski resort town of Yudanaka, our base for the next three nights. We arrived in good time to spend the afternoon at the Snow Monkey Park. It is easy to forget that this is not actually a safari park and the Japanese Macaques (AKA Snow Monkeys) are of wild origin and are free to roam as they wish. However, with their free open-air hot bath and food supply, why would they want to stray? The monkey park entrance is around 20 minutes walk along a snowy contour trail from the nearest car park, involving a total of 81 steps, 31 at the start and another 50 near the monkey park entrance itself. Our first afternoon in the vicinity of the monkeys’ onsen produced some nice portraits, with a few flakes of snow in the air from 2pm onwards and some action shots of the monkeys walking along the rim of their hot tub but it was on our second day that things got really interesting.

*Using a bank of snow to blur the foreground. This style is very popular these days.*

For the first time in 90 years there had not been any snowfall in this region during the month of January, so imagine our delight when it started to chuck it down within hours of our arrival. With snowflakes falling steadily on my head while I was up to my neck in the 40 degrees warm water, the outdoor onsen at our hotel was very nice. Just like what would be happening to the monkeys the following day. No wonder they like it so much. We had lots of great possibilities in the snow. For a start, those who wanted photos of monkeys in the pool itself had plenty of opportunities but in the extreme cold there was a lot of steam too. There was a lot of activity around the pool as animals visited it in sometimes horizontally blasting snow. I tried for something different to the stereotypic monkey-in-a-bath photo, with a combination of fast and slow shutter speeds, either freezing or blurring the snowflakes into streaks across the image, with some great expressions on the monkeys faces. The snow also offered blurred foregrounds with which to partly obscure the monkeys as seems to be the fashion of the moment. The monkeys were so habituated they would walk right through a crowd of tourists and even hop over my camera when I stuck the lens in their way for an extreme close-up, wide angle view. We spent all day at the monkey park, with a break for a much-appreciated simple and very tasty hot lunch of Sansai Saba (= Mountain Vegetable Noodle Soup) followed by Chimaki (triangular rice cakes, wrapped in moist bamboo leaves) at the nearby onsen. The onsen itself here is sometimes shared by both human and monkey bathers! The snow continued to fall on and off all day and the monkey action kept some of us occupied right until closing time when the light turned blue again as evening shadows crept up the sides of the narrow valley in which the park is located. It was also a pleasure to meet ‘Mr Birding Japan’ himself, Mark Brazil, here. ‘Where do you usually see serow?’…’Oh there’s one right now’. How’s that for skill? Happily, it stayed long enough, lumbering up the snow-covered slope opposite the visitor center, for all to catch up with this weird-looking goat-like creature. Otherwise the cold, snowy forests were very quiet, and I only managed a single species of bird all day, a flock of Eurasian Nuthatches.

*Over-exposed in processing, to isolate the subjects, a mum carrying her little one through deeper snow.*

*Slower shutter speed to turn the snow flakes to streaks giving an impression of the blizzard.*

*Eye contact. I tried to avoid taking the same photos as everyone else but it’s hard to avoid at least a few monkey face portraits!*

Our second full day at the monkey park was bright and sunny and much of the snow that fell the previous day melted. The monkey activity was different too, many of them spent the majority of the day on the sunny slope opposite the visitor center, only descending briefly at feeding time and again towards the end of the day, when they mostly gathered on the opposite bank of the stream. Some activity continued at the monkey onsen all day though. We added both Sika Deer and Wild Boar to our mammal list, both apparently very infrequent visitors here at this time of year! Sunlit portraits were available today as well as action shots of groups of baby monkeys playing together across the river as well as a disturbing incident when one apparently psycho female tried to injure several tiny babies, biting them viciously before being fought off by their guardian mums. We very much enjoyed our stay in the mountains, with some great photo opps with the monkeys and some really wonderful food. The hotel even broke out their very stylish US$15 Japanese chopsticks on occasion, so fine you could pick up individual grains of rice with them… and did I mention the onsen? This one was voted the best of the tour, although it was a shame not to save the best ‘til last. At first it feels a bit weird to bath naked in the same pool as strangers but the relaxing experience of the geothermally heated, mineral-laden water made it worthwhile. I also figured out that to avoid the jibber jabber of the noisy gaijin ski-ers that shared our hotel, a late visit to the onsen after our evening meal was usually much quieter (although it is customary to go to the onsen before your evening meal).

*Ah, that’s got it! Another slower shutter speed image to blur some movement.*

*Don’t ignore the cold blue light of the shadows to exagerrate the impression of the surroundings.*

*Out-of-focus can still work/snowflakes against a dark background.*

*Even more out focus can still work…maybe?*

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SEA EAGLES OF HOKKAIDO

April 4, 2020

I’m going to need some bigger superlatives to describe the boat trips out of Rausu, on Hokkaido on my Wild Images tour, probably made more exciting because we had resigned ourselves to missing the much-desired pack ice, which had not yet reached Rausu this winter. We had watched the tourist boats trying to make the best of things, throwing fish for the eagles just outside the harbour walls the day before and had thought we might be able to do something with flight shots in some interesting early morning light maybe if we were lucky. Well we needn’t have worried. ‘The ice is here’ said an excited Otani San first thing next morning. It had arrived overnight to the coast, a short distance north of Rausu and very much within our reach. A thin line of white on the skyline marked the front edge of the drift ice that forms every winter to the north of Hokkaido in Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk, at 44 degrees, the most southerly drift ice in the northern hemisphere. This would be like having sea ice in the Bay of Biscay!!! As we approached the ice in our jet-boats we could see that the eagles were already waiting for us. Around 300 of them eventually gathered on the ice around the boats, which were expertly bumped into the ice and were soon surrounded by a wildlife photographer’s dream of subjects. Again, like the cranes it could be tricky to isolate them and there was so much going on it was a challenge to decide what to do with such a bewildering array of possibilities that included flight and action shots, with or against the sunrise.

Portraits either close-up or from a distance of singles or groups of Steller’s Sea Eagles or White-tailed Eagles, separately or with both species side-by-side, showing the huge size difference (it is amazing to see the massive White-tailed Eagle dwarfed by Steller’s)? Landscape format or portrait format? Don’t forget the latter for uses other than a desktop monitor! Flight shots against the gorgeous forested hillside or snowy mountain backdrops? Motion blurred flight shots? The list goes on and from time to time I simply watched the action away from my viewfinder. The eagles can be very close, sometimes within the 5m minimum focussing distance of the 500 and I was cutting bits off all over the place too, wings and tails etc. However, it worked well to isolate birds and after our four boat trips I preferred using it to the 70-200mm as nothing touches it for clarity at an ideal range, despite my arms aching a bit from shooting so much, something that I never felt before. However, a 200-600mm or 100-400mm zoom lens has got to be the way to go for an all allrounder in combination with a full frame sensor. As for the eagle sea ice spectacle itself, it is certainly one of the best things I have ever seen and although I hate making lists, it must be a new entry to my top five or ten, I suppose. If you haven’t seen it yet, then shove it up the bucket list and make sure you do!

It was great to hook up with Birdquest colleague Dave Farrow, who was guiding a Sunrise Birding group with Gina and Steve. As we cruised along the coast towards the sea ice on our second outing… ‘Is that a Thayer’s Gull?’, it eventually got the nod from Otani San with his Japanese photo guide of hybrid gulls. One of my favourites too, it is a shame that it has been relegated to subspecific status with Iceland Gull but it was great to see a perfect adult, straight off the page of Klaus Malling Olsen’s ‘Gulls’. It had travelled a long way to get to northern Japan from Arctic Canada. There were lots of other gulls here too. Mostly Slaty-backed but also a few Glaucous-winged and Glaucous in that order of abundance. Vega Gull is only to be found far to the south in Honshu in winter. On another boat trip a group of three Stejneger’s Scoters flew past Rausu harbour mouth and on most others, there were usually a few Spectacled Guillemots on the sea as we travelled to and from the area of drift ice just to the north of Rausu.

We woke up next morning and it was snowing. Quite heavily in fact. There had been about 10cm overnight and it was still falling. We called in at Seicomart in Rausu and loaded up with breakfast items before heading south. There were folks clearing the snow off their drives and the stretches of road adjacent to them everywhere but there were hardly any vehicles out and about yet. In fact, the gas stations were mostly closed, as were the shops and restaurants all the way to Nemuro. Rolling up at a very snowy Lake Furen, the guys at Hotel Sunseto were preparing to put out fish for the eagles and kites that hang around here. This is a different opportunity to what you get at Rausu, a mass of eagles fighting over fish scraps on a snow-covered (today) frozen lake. It can produce some very interesting results but is more about getting down for a low perspective, blasting away on high burst and hoping for a nice distribution of eagles across the frame. At least the blizzard conditions made the images more artistic with snowflakes right across the subjects. Motion blurring both the snow and eagles can be interesting too. There were more White-tailed than Steller’s here and both were outnumbered by Black-eared Kites, the most we had seen on the tour by far. Finally, many thanks to our Man-in-Japan Otani Chikara, whose experience and expertise made our tour very successful!

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THE SNOW LEOPARD

RED-CROWNED CRANES OF HOKKAIDO

SNOW MONKEYS OF NAGANO

SEA EAGLES OF HOKKAIDO