Hokkaido Winter Birds
Change of climate, anyone? Think of winter clothes, hats, gloves, boots, minus 10 degrees. Several of us went for a winter self-drive bird photography trip to Hokkaido in February 2011.
Change of climate, anyone? Think of winter clothes, hats, gloves, boots, minus 10 degrees. Several of us went for a winter self-drive bird photography trip to Hokkaido in February 2011.
9 pm Wed Feb 16 So we all got to the airport. All checked in. All overweight, but ANA let us on! Now in an hour we’ll be in the air 🙂
9 am Thu Feb 17. Arrived in Haneda. Whew trying to connect to the Internet for past two hours. Difficult! Will catch flight to Hokkaido soon. No sleep on the red eye, a wee bit sleepy!
4:15 pm Thu Feb 17. Arrived at Washi mo Yado in Rausu. Been traveling for about 17 hours! Now we are in the small inn. There are plenty of Stellar Sea Eagles perching on the trees around the inn. And also lots of deer 🙂
Several of us will be in Hokkaido from Feb 16th to Feb 26th for winter nature photography, mainly birds, but we’ll be happy to see some mammals too and some nice wintery scenary. We’ll fly the red-eye from Singapore to Tokyo Haneda airport, and then catch a domestic flight to Nakashibetsu airport. There we’ll pick up a couple of rental SUVs and drive on to the Northeast coastal town of Rausu. We’ll spend three nights here focusing on several large birds of prey. Stellar’s Sea Eagles gather in the hundreds on pack ice near the harbor, we should also see some White-tailed Eagles. And a night we’ll be looking for the Blakiston’s Fish Owl. The eagle and the owl are both among the largest birds of their kind, it will be impressive to see these truly large birds!
