31 December

This really long winter break makes me feel almost too lazy to do anything, even updating this blog! Anyway, the school will finally start again this coming Tuesday and I just have to clear up all the homeworks I have. These photos were all taken on the super fine December 31st. I got up earlier than usual and found that the Spa Beach outside was totally white with snow. The sun rose as I walked down to take photos of the beach. It was such a great moment, a perfect sunrise from a snow-covered beach, especially on the year end. I later caught a train to Kaku in hope of getting some better shots of the Baikal Teals.

You can still see the blizzard roaming behind my dorm!

I arrived at Kaku as another blizzard started to hit the area. A lone Northern Goshawk and another Peregrine Falcon were seen flying through the snow storm as I walked down to the river. However, the wind was so strong that the blizzard was blown away very fast. What's left was a nice view of snow-covered fields against blue sky. There was a big flock of about 50+ Eurasian Skylarks in the field. A female Common Kestrel also came patrolling by and stopped briefly on the electric pole. There were fewer ducks in the river than the last time. Much worse, there was not a single Baikal Teal in the flock. The number of Eurasian Wigeon increased a lot, and there was even 1 male Tufted Duck (Aythya fuligula), a new species to my local list, joining in the flock, though.

Mt. Takasaki (高崎山) is seen in the background

A flock of Grey-capped Greenfinches (Carduelis sinica) on the river bank

Long-billed Plovers (Charadrius placidus)

There was a flock of 7 Long-billed Plovers on the rocky bank of the river. I've only seen 1 of this bird in the lower stream last January, and it's quite a rare bird in Thailand, so I shifted my focus from finding a Baikal Teal to taking photos of these plovers. Unfortunately, they were all too shy and skittish and I couldn't get close to them. One or two birds seemed to be juveniles, while others were all in adult plumage. I can only hope that they will breed around this area, so I can come back to photograph them again in spring, which I think should be a bit easier.

Asian House-Martins (Delichon dasypus)

There was a big flock of more than 50 Asian House-Martins (Delichon dasypus) swifting over the river. A small number of House Swift (Apus affinis) also joined the flock. At first, I didn't even want to try photographing these fast martins, but since there was no other bird to photograph, I just had to try taking photos of them. The 4 photos above were the few acceptable shots out of the total several hundreds I took.

Japanese Wagtail (Motacilla grandis)

Rustic Bunting (Emberiza rustica)

Because there were so few birds to photograph, I decided to walk all the way to Oita, which was almost a wrong decision. I walked almost 10 kilometres from Kaku through the crazy wind and occasional light blizzard. At least, I came across a big flock of Rustic Buntings (Emberiza rustica) somewhere near Nanase-kawa. I've only seen this species once in Sekino-E in December 2009. I even found a few more smaller flocks along the way to Oita. They all seemed to feed on the ground, and have the habit of flying up to a dead tree when disturbed, which was good because I could get much closer to them than when they're on the ground. I finally reached Oita around 6pm and caught a train back to Beppu with my exhausted feet. I wished I could just go back and sleep at home, but my friends were all insisting me to join the count down party, so I went there like a zombie and that's how I ended my 2010.

House of Martins

As I have mentioned earlier in the previous post that a large flock of Asian House-Martin was found hanging around in my campus, today I went to the campus early in the morning in order to pick up my forgotten documents. This time I brought a camera with me, and surprisingly the birds still showed up in the same area, so after I picked up my things, I quickly grabbed some photos of the martins that were flying and perching on the clock tower at the center of the campus. Too bad there was no way for me to get close to the birds, so these shots are just for the record.

I noticed that juvenile birds took up almost 70-80% of the whole flock. They have distinct grey breast band and much duller upperparts, while adult birds have no distinct band on the breast with glossy black upperparts. All the birds flew out of the clock tower around 10am and dispatched to other area. While I was walking around trying to find their new roost, I came across several individuals of Red-rumped Swallow swifting around the football field, along with Barn Swallows and some of the Asian House-Martins. I later found their new roost and it was a high steel tower far away down the hill below the campus. It also seemed like the number of the bird has increased. There were around 200 birds perching all along the wire with many flying all over the places. Pretty soon this flock should disappear to the south as part of the autumn migration. A new phase of birding has started warming up already!