A lot below zero

An adult White Tailed Eagle at Yakumo this morning..........

Well last night was extremely cold and south Hokkaido was as wintry as I've seen it for a long long time. Deep deep snow and scarily icy roads were the order of the day as we drove up to Yakumo on the morning. The eagles were the same as last week although today's weather wasn't as good.

This young Stellers Sea Eagle was eating a salmon in a tree and after it finished it relieved itself in spectacular fashion.

Immature Stellers are much more attractive than the raggedy immature White Taileds..........toilet habits aside.

I got some more BIF shots but not as good as last week..............

Again, lots of birders around including 2 people linked on the right ('Dotetin' and Kim aka 'Sepak in Hakodate'). Because of my wife's job we only get to Yakumo at the weekends these days, in previous years we could go weekdays and pretty much have the eagles to ourselves. Not that I'm greedy or anything of course.

Not much else in the river valley, here's a male White Backed Woodpecker and a Common Buzzard being bugged by the local crows..........

We checked the river mouth and I was amazed to see the river was almost completely frozen, I've never seen this before...........

Not many birds about here of course. Offshore there were several species of duck, a few Great Crested and Red Necked Grebes and a lone Brent Goose. Lots of Glaucous and Glaucous Winged Gulls, here's one of the latter........

We got to Onuma just before sunset. A brief view of a Black Woodpecker was the highlight here. It was pretty dark by now, here a couple of high ISO shots with the lens wide open and the flash on.

I got back just in time to hear England capitulate in the cricket (what a weak end to the series that was). I watched 2 things last night. First up was 'The Road' and second up was Stoke v Liverpool. The former (a rather grim post-apocalyptic drama) was probably less depressing than the latter (Liverpool's second string throwing away 2 points in the last minute).

Still, before they began  I would have settled for 1-1 in both the cricket and last night's footy so maybe it isn't all that bad.

This upcoming week should be the week when the Waxwings come to town.............