BLAKISTON'S FISH OWL, HOKKAIDO

February 22, 2020

*Blakiston’s Fish Owl, Yoroushi, Hokkaido February 2020*

On my recent Wild Images Japan Winter Wildlife Spectacular tour I was lucky to visit the delightful Yoroushi Onsen in Nakashibetsu, set in a pretty little river valley with a rushing stream flowing past the elongated hotel building. Outside the lobby/restaurant area is a bird feeding station, visited by numerous tits (Great, Marsh, Willow and Long-tailed), Eurasian Nuthatches, both Great Spotted and Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers and Eurasian Jays. However, the thick glass of the huge windows results in a distinct lack of sharpness unless you photograph perpendicular to the panes. It was a lovely place to sit and watch the birds though. The rooms had by far the best views of the tour, with a pair of Brown Dippers feeding nearby and the food here was the runaway winner of the ‘Best Food of the Tour’ contest. While a fairly indulgent and unnecessarily luxurious stay, the main the reason we were here was for an appointment with the largest owl in the world, Blakiston’s Fish Owl.

The owl obliged at 9.27pm, after our evening meal, with a visit to its fish-stocked pool, a kind of ‘owl McDonalds’ but not before an American Mink had sneaked in and pinched one! Unfortunately, as well as a huge bright green Darvic ring on its left leg and a metal one on its right, the owl seemed to have an injured left eye. No wonder it had resorted to an easy life of stuffing itself with the endless supply of fish from the onsen. From some angles it was possible to lose both of these unsightly features. The owl was close, only around 4m away from the window on the banks of the tiny, floodlit pool and around 100mm seemed to be an ideal focal length. I decided to opt for a ISO1600/slow shutter speed portrait on a tripod with the 70-200mm lens. While its feathers were fluffed up and covered its leg irons, I was disappointed with its gammy eye and the background of wooden planks on the opposite side of the stream, which needed to be photo-shopped out later. The owl’s fish pool was restocked at 6pm and 4.00am and next morning it was back for breakfast at 5.30am, just before it started to get light. Checking recent sightings on the calendar at reception it seems we were unlucky not have an early evening visit by the owl. The other stars of Yoroushi were the gorgeous Sable that have moved in under the decking of the restaurant area after being absent (well, having been removed!) in 2019. Like the owl, the Sables were very tricky to capture in a photogenic situation among all the man-made bits and pieces of the bird feeding area but there were a couple of spots where this was possible together with some photo-shopping of obvious straight lines. They are fast moving too! We saw at least three different animals, one with a darker face than the pair that live under the decking. Solitary Snipe and Crested Kingfisher are also seen occasionally from the hotel windows along the stream, but we had no luck with either. The snipe has apparently not been seen this winter. The hotel had two onsens and the outside pool in the second smaller one in the new block was particularly nice to have to myself next morning with a dipper singing on the stream.

After a very late check out following the owl night vigil we headed northeast for another owl appointment. We would not normally plan to have the owl nights back-to-back for obvious reasons but this year demand for accommodation was such that it was unavoidable. On the eastern shore of the Shiretoko Peninsula lies Rausu, another true mecca for world birders. Not only is it known as being THE historic main site for Blakiston’s Fish Owl, it also hosts a winter gathering of around 300 eagles, mostly the awe-inspiring Steller’s Sea Eagle. We checked in early to our accommodation at Rausu, the famous Washino-Yado Minshuku, which has become synonymous with the big fish owl, with a view to setting up tripods for the owl session. We should be done by 7pm and have a good night’s sleep, right? No. Unfortunately the owls(!) did not show up until 3.30am next morning, probably owing to a frustratingly large number of noisy comings and goings by prospective owl watchers. The minshuku and adjacent restaurant are the usual places that folks shoot the owls from but I took a chance from the old bus that is snowed into the stream bank and although a little further away, faces the owl pools.

The bus was great until the heater packed in around 10pm. Again flash is not allowed here but the light from the strobe lights that flash at around 1/90 sec was sufficient to opt for the recommended settings of 1/80 sec shutter speed, ISO 3200 and an aperture of f/5.6 with the 500. At 1/125 sec every other frame is black on the 1DX’s high burst mode owing to the strobe effect so pushing up the ISO is the only realistic alternative if you want any kind of action shot. The owls usually fly off in the direction of the bus, but they leave the floodlit area very quickly and I wasn’t excited about the possibility of a flight shot. If only I could have chosen my company in the bus though. There was one chap who went out for a leak behind the bus twice and persisted in having long loud mobile phone conversations and then there was another person who actually went outside the bus to make a phone call too!!! Unbelievable, particularly bearing in mind that the owls usually fly in from the valley behind the bus. This combined with the early-evening-only visitors probably caused the owls to wait until things quietened down. At 7.34pm I wondered why some dipstick was rocking the bus back and forth but when I looked around for the culprit everyone appeared to be sat still and eventually the rocking movement stopped. I thought nothing more of it until someone asked at breakfast next morning if I had felt the earthquake!!! Flipping heck! It was a big one, at 7 on the Richter Scale. Luckily it was located deep off the coast of Hokkaido, centred at 44.7 degrees north, 148.9 degrees east with a depth of 160 km and did not present a tsunami risk. After Fukushima it seems there are tsunami warnings all along the coast of Hokkaido with risk areas and safe zones clearly marked out. Seeing all of this, I was quite happy to stay way upslope in Shiretoko National Park after our night at Washino-Yado, even if we are talking about a 200 years event!

*Washino-Yado, Rausu February 2020. The fish owl pool is towards the left corner.*

Time ticked away and I took a break myself from 11.30pm to 3am, after which I knew there was usually another flurry of sightings. Sure enough, BAM! At just before 3.30am both owls showed up, the branch of the tree they sat on bent under their combined weight. They dropped down to the fish pool and took a fish each but then disaster struck. The mobile phone call/weak bladdered guy turns up and walks up to the minshuku, almost falls through the window and flushes them. I will be very happy not to meet him again. However, after another nervous wait one of the owls returned twice, at 4.50am and 5.20am. The views from the bus were a little different to the usual side on shot and happily everyone that wanted to managed some images. As dawn approached the eagles started to leave their roosting sites in the valley, washi means eagle in Japanese and the lodge here is actually named after the eagles rather than the owls. Up to three Brown Dippers were now active by the fish owl pools in the stream and it was soon time for breakfast, our only western style one of the tour but by now we all missed a super-healthy Japanese seafood-based breakfast.

*Blakiston’s Fish Owl, Washino-Yado, Rausu, Hokkaido February 2020*

*Our ‘man in Japan’ for more than 20 years, Otani Chikara in the world famous Washino-Yado*

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ROUGH-LEGGED BUZZARD AT STAINFORTH

January 5, 2020

*Rough-legged Buzzard (second calendar year), Stainforth, South Yorkshire*

The Stainforth Rough-legged Buzzard has now spent at least three weekends hanging around the old pit heaps to the east of the small former mining town not far from Doncaster. I watched its activity all day, mostly from the vantage point of the top of the main pit heap overlooking some yards full of junk and partly flooded fields interspersed with patches of overgrown scrub. A classic post-indsutrial Peoples Republic of South Yorkshire landscape with four former coal-fired power stations visible from this spot but these have mostly switched to other fuel sources and the skyline is now dotted with wind turbines. I first visited nearby Thorne Moors, or Waste as it used to be known then, 39 years ago, when, as well as being part of the UK’s largest lowland raised peat bog, it was notable as the closest place with breeding nightingales to the northeast. Not they we ever saw any, rolling up around midday on a bird club field trip! Things have changed a lot since then, following the devastation of the local mining communities by Margaret Thatcher. The pits have all closed and the nightingales are gone too. However, I see that there is still some great birding in this area with Great Grey Shrike and cranes reported today as well as the buzzard, which was on view more or less all day. It made four sorties to the rough grassland of the pit top where I was hoping for closer views but it was still a real pleasure to spend so much time with this cracking looking raptor. I’ve still seen more Desert Wheatears than Rough-legged Buzzards in the UK and don’t really have any nice photos of one yet! A flock of pinkfeet flew west in mid morning and two Whooper Swans flew south, otherwise apart from some Stock Doves, a couple of kestrels that harrassed the buzzard and a couple of Common Buzzards that appeared briefly there was little else birdwise. Thanks a lot to local birders Stuart Allen and Paul Coombes for making me feel so welcome and to Mike Barth from Macc.

*Rough-legged Buzzard against a modern background*

*Rough-legged Buzzard hovering over the grassed over pit heap by the railway*

*Drax, fromerly the UK’s biggest coal-fired power station but now mostly powered by wood pellets (from the USA!)*

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EASTERN YELLOW WAGTAIL AT SEDGEFORD

December 29, 2019

*Eastern Yellow Wagtail, nr. Sedgeford, West Norfolk*

A question. ‘Is there really an exceptional influx of Eastern Yellow Wagtails going on this year or have they been overlooked in the past?’. Well, one looking like this first winter male might not have been but several birders have mentioned grey and white yellow wagtails in late autumn that are now suspected to have been ‘Eastern’. I spent five hours watching and listening to it today in mostly grim low light levels but a few times the weak, low angle winter sun shone through the layers of cloud to bring the yellow feathers on this bird to life. The rest of the time it often looked rather monotone against the light. It seems to have set up residence around a small area of dung heaps and an old storage tank about 400m down a track east of the Sedgeford to Ringstead road but occasionally gets on the flint-filled field on the opposite side of the track, where most of these photos were taken, poking the 500 through the hedge. The air was filled just after dawn with the calls of Pink-footed Geese, mostly heading southwest towards Shernborne and several raptors drifted over - a sparrowhawk, kestrel, two Red Kites (hardly anyone even raised their binos for the first one), a Marsh Harrier and a couple of Common Buzzards. It was also lovely to hear the calls of Yellowhammers, Linnets and Skylarks overhead too! The Eastern Yellow Wagtail flew in around 0800 from the north and apart from one visit to the large dung heap by the main road, it remained in the vicinity of the smaller dung heaps down the track until I left after 1300. My only UK lifer this year! Thanks to Nick Watmough for help with directions.

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2019 HIGHLIGHTS

December 25, 2019

Alexander’s climbing started to take off in January with a third and then three second places in the North West & Lakes rounds of the BMC’s Youth Climbing Series as he continued to improve his skills. The Masked Shrike pin badge marked the last of my involvement with the Spurn Rarity Series but this had already been a worthwhile project that has raised enough money to cover several months of the bird observatory mortgage payments. I have some plans to raise some money for Snow Leopard conservation but more of this in due course. I hiked up Pendle a few times in the dark in preparation for Ladakh but it was not until late February that I took a decent wildlife photo.

My Wild Images and Birdquest Snow Leopard Special tour thankfully produced three sightings of the main attraction, albeit all distant but the real outstanding highlight was a beautiful Pallas’s Cat at Tso Kar high on the Tibetan Plateau. Well worth enduring high altitude and temperatures as low as minus 32 Celsius for. There were some unforgettable memories of that tour including our drivers lighting fires under the cars trying to defrost the oil in their engines. Eastern Ladakh was by far the most rewarding element and also included walk-away views of Tibetan Sandgrouse in the snow as well as my first Tibetan Snowcocks high on the 5200m Polokongka La pass. Thanks as always to Mr Snow Leopard himself, Jigmet Dadul and his wonderful team for looking after us so well yet again.

I struggled to hold on to my next tour, a now familiar journey around Northern India for the most part, visiting my favourite lodges of Chambal Safari, Desert Coursers and Blackbuck Lodge. Chambal Safari Lodge is an oasis of calm in a sea of hustle and bustle and its nearby river is always a delightful glimpse of what all the big slow flowing rivers of India must have been like long ago. The gharials and skimmers were again awesome. I arrived at Chambal directly off the operating table in Agra but there are few places I would rather be in this state than Chambal. Thanks to Ram and Anu for making things much more comfortable for me. At Desert Coursers in the Little Rann of Kutch many of the winter visitors had departed but Dhanraj still managed to conjure up some Sykes’s Nightjars and Desert Foxes and best of all were the Striped Hyenas. We had a couple of encounters out on the salt pans. The Striped Hyena show at Blackbuck National Park was even better, with a mum and three almost fully-grown pups on view daily, at one point even chased by the wolf pack. Mickey Desai’s lodge remains the most luxurious lodge I stay at in India and the outdoor shower in your private courtyard is always something special. The food at all three of these places was top class too, how I love Indian cooking.

This year also saw my first visit to Tadoba Andhari National Park in Central India. We enjoyed almost 30 tiger sightings, some of them multiple repeats of the same animals but there were so many that a few proved to be very photogenic. At last, I finally caught up with Sloth Bears here too and we saw Leopards, Indian Wild Dogs (or Dholes) and the rare Four-horned Antelope (or Chowsingha) a couple of times in some lovely dry deciduous forest. Even the buffer zones were awesome, which is feature of Tadoba, now that control of income has been handed to local communities resulting in much less encroachment. Quiet for long periods then bam! Another great tiger sighting. Thanks here to Aditya and his team, particularly Lahu who kept us on the right track many times. My guardian angel, Mojgan did her best but was no longer able to keep me going and it was clear that I needed another operation. I had two more before I left India and went straight to hospital on my return for a more major one.

Two months of struggling on followed, during which time Alexander competed in the grand final of the Youth Climbing Series, two years off the top of his age group and surprised everyone by finishing 12th in bouldering, even beating the lad who had won every Northwest regional round in the process. I was back on the road again in late May. This time it was for a reunion with my Hungarian friends in Romania. From Bucharest we recced some sites in the south locating a colony of Semi-collared Flycatchers before heading to the Black Sea coast. Our time in the Macin Hills and Dobrogea followed by the Danube Delta was very special and we had a lot of fun. Point blank Collared Pratincoles, a vagrant Demoiselle Crane (my first in the WP since 1986!) and Pied Wheatears were very enjoyable. It was also great to explore the heart of the world’s biggest reedbed and we did a lot of nice artistic stuff here expertly guided by Zoli Nagy with help from our brilliant boat driver Romi. Up to 28 Pallas’s Gulls in breeding plumage around our boat and against the sunset was another highlight. Thanks to János Oláh for the invitation and to Fiteti and Manu for supplying the pálinka and for putting up with me again after all these years. A surprise detour to the forests of Transylvania followed where a stunning couple of sessions in the bear photo hides produced much better results than I could have hoped for. The bears are doing very well here now! Thanks to Zsolti and Tibi for looking after me here.

I was feeling much better in June but still far from right when my Birdquest Iceland tour came around. Iceland is another of my favourite tours thanks to some lovely birding in unique and spectacular volcanic scenery with waterfalls, geysirs, lovely people and good food, accommodations and roads. What more could you ask for? Gyrfalcon was harder to see than usual but thanks to local help we eventually caught up with it. Better still was the Blue Whale on our boat trip out of Husavík! The first time we have seen it here after many years of trying. We even managed to include five Game of Thrones filming locations without even trying as well as the jaw dropping Dettifoss, the thundering waterfall made famous by a scene in the sci-fi film Prometheus. Thanks to Gaukur and Edward for help as always.

In July I was finally just about back to normal again in time for Svalbard on SV Noorderlicht with Wild images and Birdquest, my fifth time aboard. The extent of sea ice was such that getting all the way around Spitsbergen was out of the question but we still had a good time nevertheless. Only two bear sightings was dire but at least we did not miss it, as happened to others recently. We saw more Blue Whales, Walruses, Ivory Gulls and were able to make a very nice landing at a Little Auk colony but the highlight for me was probably our visit to the abandoned Russian mining settlement of Pyramiden and its Arctic Foxes - a very nice bonus. It was sad not to have my old friend Arjen on board but his replacement Phil Wickens was a great expedition leader. A bizarre sighting was a flock of five Ruddy Shelducks found at Ny Ålesund by the UK’s no. 1 bird lister Steve Webb and was followed by another singleton later in Isfjorden. Where had they come from, Central Asia via a Russian river flowing to the Arctic maybe or from somewhere almost as far away in western Europe?

This year saw hardly any birding let alone chasing rarities in the UK, just Curlew Sandpiper (a pair new for me in East Lancs at Alston in the spring); the ‘what-ear’ (Pied or Eastern Black-eared) at Fluke Hall and the last gasp Eastern Yellow Wagtail at Sedgeford on 29 December, my only UK lifer of the year after ignoring/not being fit or able to go for a few others earlier in the year. The mega roost of 20-30,000 Redwings at Longridge Fell found by Pete Morris and Kris McBride was a terrific spectacle and nice to have on the doorstep.

Lucky for me that my tour schedule only stretched to the end of July, so I enjoyed the last five months of the year at home in East Lancs, spending a lot of time in climbing centres with my little star, Alexander. My favourite job is being his dad. He has also started his assault on the world of judo but with nowhere near the same success as his climbing. Despite being strong for his size it involves some very different skills. He enjoys it and is going to stick at it when he’s not got any climbing comps on the horizon.

Finally thanks again to everyone who has supported me in 2019 and kept things going while I am away: my partner Évi, my colleagues in the Birdquest/Wild Images office; my local guides, agents and my group members; Alexander’s climbing coaches at Boulder UK in Bamber Bridge, Jordan, Abi and Ed; Zsolti at Csipi Boulder in Debrecen and finally Elliot Payne, who has helped Alexander to get in the right frame of mind for his climbing as well as teaching him some new skills. Looking ahead, 2020 is set to be a very busy year of guiding and at last Alexander gets to compete against kids his own age. We are looking forward to it.

[2019 Highlights: (left to right rows from top) Ibisbill, River Indus at Choglamsar; Wolf pit at Tso Kar, Ladakh; Tibetan Sandgrouse and Pallas’s Cat, both also Tso Kar. Indian Skimmer, Chambal River; Striped Hyena, Blackbuck National Park; Sloth Bear and Bengal Tiger, both Tadoba. Harlequin Duck, Laxa River, Iceland; White-winged Tern, Gardur; Blue Whale, Husavík and Gyrfalcon. Brown Bear, Transylvania; Collared Pratincole, Dobrogea, Romania; Pallas’s Gull and Dalmatian Pelican, both Danube Delta, Romania. Ortolan Bunting, Macin Mountains; Whiskered Tern, Danube Delta; Lesser Grey Shrike, Dobrogea and Brown Bear, Transylvania. Ivory Gull, Ny Ålesund; Walrus, Sarstangen; Red Phalarope, Longyearbyen and Boreal Jacob’s Ladder, Skansbukta, all Svalbard.]

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BLAKISTON'S FISH OWL, HOKKAIDO

ROUGH-LEGGED BUZZARD AT STAINFORTH

EASTERN YELLOW WAGTAIL AT SEDGEFORD

2019 HIGHLIGHTS