Sunday, October 10, 2010

Autumn Tattlers

These photos were taken during the last few weeks. There were several autumn Grey-tailed Tattlers residing in a small artificial river near my place along with a pair of Common Sandpiper and White Wagtails. The tattlers were all juveniles judging from the pale fringes on their upperwing coverts. I still haven't seen any non-breeding adult. These birds will come back all in full breeding plumage in spring.


Juvenile Grey-tailed Tattlers (Heteroscelus brevipes)

Non-breeding Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos)
The weather changes quite often during the last two weeks. Some days were a bit cold, with so much raining, while some were very sunny or windy. All these changes made me feel sick, actually not just me, but a lot of people in the campus seemed to catch a cold. I already saw some Ginko trees shed their bright yellow leaves as well, but most of the others are still green. Hope the real bright weather of autumn arrives soon, I'm sick of dull overcast and rainy days.

White Wagtail (Motacilla alba lugens)

They caught small insects living under the surface.
Ducks have also arrived Beppu as well. Above is a flock of 17 Northern Pintails and 1 female Common Teal. The flock was flying from somewhere in northern direction and landed in the sea behind my dorm. I went to check the teals at Sekino-e the other day, but found that the fields were still full of lotuses, thus no birds could be seen. These lotuses should dry up in a week or two, then the farmers will clear them up, and now that's time for birding again.


Some more shots of the Common Sandpiper to end this entry

3 comments:

Stuart Price said...

Nice wader shots, they've all gone from here now........

Chris said...

Wow you got pretty nice pictures of these fellows. I love the colors of the water and the reflection! Beautiful!

Phil Slade said...

A brill set of wader shots, all spot-on. I can't get over how much the tattler looks like a big Common Sandpiper. That might be a good thing to remember when one turns up over here maybe?