My birding seems to be completely in idle. I'm still busy with my studies and other activities in the campus, not to mention about the weather...... So here are some more photos I took during the walk around the forest near Beppu Ropeway earlier this month. It was actually a nice day for birding and I found species I don't often see like Japanese Green Woodpecker and Japanese Thrush. Lots of cuckoos were calling all day, both Eurasian and Oriental and Lesser. I flushed the Lesser Cuckoos several times but I couldn't get any photos of them. One time I heard a noisy aggressive call of the Red-billed Leiothrix from the bush behind me and out of the blue came a single Lesser Cuckoo flying out towards me. Surely, the bird quickly flew away as soon as it noticed my presence, so no chance for photographing as usual.
A male Blue-And-White Flycatcher with its young
My first ever shot of the Japanese Green WoodpeckerThis one is a male.
And the star of the day, the Winter Wren
It's a tiny bird with a big heart!
The common Red-billed Leiothrixes were singing as usual.
I came across one secretive female Narcissus Flycatcher so I stopped to see if there was any male bird around. Suddenly I heard a sound of an animal walking on the forest floor so I searched through the area and found this Japanese Badger or Anaguma(アナグマ) in Japanese walking slowly in the hill below. It was my first time to see this Japanese animal.
A Eurasian Nuthatch
A juvenile Long-tailed Tit
I then found a group of small birds feeding together fastly along the treetops. I spotted a species which I have only seen once last year, the Willow Tit. Among the species of tits that can be found around here in Beppu, this one is be the scarcest of all. I found one bird feeding along with many Long-tailed, Japanese and Coal Tits and Eurasian Nuthatches. The photo with flash shows its pale wing patch. Too bad the flash was still charging when I took the one which shows the bird's head.
My best shot of the Eurasian Nuthatch so far. This is the only one with flash on.
Others were like this. Without flash the colours look so dull.
And a Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker to finish off with.The lower photo shows the bird sunbathing on a nice perch.
7 comments:
Nice photos.
The mammal is not Racoon dog.
This is Japanese Badger (アナグマ).
The photo has a little information for identify, but the shape of its head is similar to badger's one.
It doesn't distribute in Hokkaido. I've ever seen it in Honshu.
Oh Thanks a lot martesorex for the identification!
I've edited the post :))
Nice stuff, your Nuthatches look different to ours........
Lovely set of photographs. That woodpecker has very subtle colouration and the leiothrixe's colours must make them hard to find in the sunny light of the trees
It seems you had a pretty interesting day! May I know what external flash you use for your system?
Thanks a lot Stu, Phil and Ryou!
I also think the nuthatch looks different to yours in Hokkaido. This one seems to have more rufous on the underparts.
Ryou > I use a very old Canon Speedlite 420EX.
Thanks for the info!
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