Egress of an Egret

Part 5 of the winter birds of Japan.

Throughout the year we have many kinds of egrets and herons in the ponds and paddy fields not far from where I live. Usually, these birds have a very wide safe zone so it's quite difficult to approach near enough for us to get a good image with the limited telephoto lenses we have on our camera. However, as we get deeper into winter and food becomes harder to find these birds become less wary and it's possible to get close enough to get some decent shots. Professor Ewan was surprised a few days ago when one dropped down into the pond not 15 feet away looking for something edible, and the same thing happened again to both of us today in almost the same spot. Spent five minutes taking multiple shots without trying to move a muscle :)

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Christmas Kingfisher

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Part 4 in the Japan winter avian series.

On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
A kingfisher in a bare tree.

No kidding! I actually got my first good photo of one of these beautiful creatures at about the same time last year. Since then I have been searching off and on all year, and then on Christmas morning I was walking round the local pond and this one just plopped down in front of me! I must have been on Santa’s nice list ;) In the last few weeks I've been able to discover where it is nesting so hopefully I'll get a few more good images along with Prof. Ewan who is doing quite well himself at finding this particular bird.

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Get Yer Frog on a Stick

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Third in the Japan winter avian series ;)

Watched a nature program with my son about a Japanese bird called a ‘mozu’ – shrike in English. It is a very small raptor that eats insects, small frogs and lizards and has the interesting habit of spearing its prey on sharp sticks to snack on later. Anyway, with his usual optimism, my son said, ’Let’s go look for a mozu tomorrow.’ I was a bit doubtful as we live in a built up area. However, ten minutes after we started walking round the local park we found a biggish insect speared on a stick. Two days after that we found the bird itself. Very difficult to approach, but with a bit of patience managed to get a few decent shots. So what did I learn from this? It’s fun having a son, positive to the core and untouched by any feelings of doubt at all : )

The Neverending Search for Grub(s)

 

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Second in what will be a Japan bird mini series. 
It’s the season of birds over here. Meaning, it’s cold but no where near as cold as the north of Japan and Asia so we get a wide variety of stopover species, just when there are no leaves to hide in and the predominant color of the landscape is dun. This makes it almost ridiculously easy to pick out small birds which would otherwise be camoflaged and is great for photographers. Saw these Great Tits (In Japan, Shijuukara) searching for grubs in the nearby pond. Took little notice of me as they were all busy getting theirs. Had the luxury of being able to choose my shots for a change : )

Buzz Off Birdbrain!

Have been much too busy to post on this blog for a while so I'm going to play catch up with some of the nature we've seen over the past few months. As late autumn to winter is a great season for bird watching in Japan, there will be a few posts about some of the stunning avian life that visits us at this time of the year.

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First up on the list is this little character who appeared back in November. I had no idea what it was at first, but found out later it's called a 'siskin'. These arrive here from Mongolia and Tibet to winter over in Japan. They usually eat seeds from trees, but this and several others were feasting on seeds from cosmos flowers, which enabled me to get up quite close.

Took hundreds of photos of these birds at the time, as they were much too wrapped up in the chance to gorge themselves. Got really lucky with this shot though. I didn't see the bee while I was taking the shot, and only discovered it later while trolling through the footage :)

Summer's End?

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Thought I'd write a post on the very long hot summer we've enjoyed(?) this year. Usually, the summer here is hot and humid but I've never experienced one as long as this one. Over the last couple of days we've actually had temperatures of 27~28C. I should point out here I'm not complaining about the heat, but showing relief that the temperature has dropped from the 30+ degrees it's been since mid July! We're still having tropical nights (temp doesn't drop below 25C) and we're due a very powerful typhoon tonight that's going to drag higher temperatures back from the tropics tomorrow :(

You'll probably hear me complaining about the cold come January, but for the moment, I'd give anything for a bit of cool! However, the weather has been spectacular in other ways. The skies have been remarkably clear at times with wonderful cloud formations, and because of the heat the local greenery and wildlife has demonstrated a fecundity that's given us some great photo ops :)

Moon Moth

It rained a lot yesterday and when I came back from work, unusually both my wife and son came up, grabbed an arm each and dragged me onto the balcony. Wondering what I'd done this time and whether I had any useful excuses available, I didn't notice at first that they were pointing up. Then I saw it. A Japanese Moon Moth as big as my open hand fastened to the ceiling! It must have dived in to escape the previous nights rain.

I've seen these a few times, usually after heavy summer rains which tend to damage their wings if they're caught without shelter. They only appear around July ~ August and rarely last more than a week in their moth form. This is because they don't have functioning mouth parts so cannot eat. The short time they exist is just long enough to find a partner and mate. Beautiful creatures and we were honored to see one on our balcony :)