Sunny and Dull

January 5, 2015

Sunny and Dull

Fukushimagata

Niigata, Japan

Nikon D800

December 28, 2014

Welcome back to this blog for a new year.

After whinging on Phil’s blog that I had to work on Christmas Day, I then had 9 days off over New Year. (Sorry for the whinge, Phil).

Of those 9 days, just one; Sunday, December 28th, was fine and even sunny. All the other days were plagued with heavy winds and rain. -Not even decent snow, which I find more bearable to be out in.

SUNNY: On the sunny day, I went to Fukushimagata and wandered about ankle deep in very white, clean snow. The bright sunlight reflecting upon it really made for nice lighting, especially when birds flew overhead. The one thing that didn’t excite me however was that it was quiet for birds. All the accipiters and harriers of past weeks had gone as well as many of the waterbirds that I guess had attracted the raptors.

I did see a single White-tailed Sea-eagle sitting in a tree across the wetlands but it was far away and only visible with binoculars. Hence, December 28th was good for a healthy walk in nice scenery but not exciting for bird pics.

Then the week was very bleak and miserable. Perfect for DVDs and fluffy slippers. When Friday, January 2nd arrived we headed to the shops for the Japanese New Year Sales. After about a year of considering it, I bought a Nikon D7100. Exciting, huh? I got a nice deal and the kind staff at Yodobashi Camera gave me some cool presents; not one, but two real Nikon bags. Expensive accessories when you have to pay for them. I am very pleased.

I still love my D800 but there are times and places when and where I just don’t need full-frame, such as vast wetlands and kestrels along the Shinano River. I always just felt too far away with a 400mm lens on full-frame and almost always used crop mode. I realised a golfer doesn’t meander around the course with a single club so I am happy to expand my kit. I’ve read many nice things about the D7100. I’d looked at it often but was nervous of its small size and light weight. I came to the conclusion that people don’t complain that their iPads are getting smaller and more light weight.

According to my weather app, Saturday was supposed to be sunny but again the light was poor and and small but windy snowstorms were again more common than birds. I still went out for a walk with my new camera….

DULL: I went to Toyanogata and meandered ‘neath dark trees without any good bird chances. Finally near a waterway I sighted a very pale thrush-like bird and struggled to get it focussed in a very “twiggy” bush. I set the focussing system to single-spot focus but the bird flew out the back and I never saw it again. I was enjoying listening to music with earphones connected to my phone and shrugged the chance away as I stumbled onto a walk-bridge. I looked upstream and immediately picked up a peregrine in seventh gear and accelerating coming right at me. No time to think about camera settings, just point and shoot! …..Messed up! What an idiot! What was I doing? Dreaming about the place for hours just to mess up a fleeting chance. I guess there are lessons to be learned. A rough test for a new camera; a speeding peregrine in poor light, with the camera set to single-spot focus and earphones pulling at my ears as music fogged my mind. It’s such rare chances I want a responsive camera setup for. I just wasn’t expecting it first up. I probably won’t get such a chance again for some time.

I continued around Toyanogata for another couple of hours but snowstorms outnumbered photo opportunities. I know times are quiet when I spend time photographing corvids. Still happy to have time off and get fresh air. Will have to be more serious when I set out again.

Greater White-fronted Goose

Bean Goose

The new observatory at Fukushimagata. Very open. Not really a “Hide”

Black-eared Kite
Looks nice with the light beaming upwards
(above and below)

Grey Heron
(Above and below)

There were many dinosaur footprints about the place.

Carrion Crow

The light reflecting up from the snow even brings out the details of crows.

A mix of Geese

Great Cormorant

Another dark bird that looks attractive with the light reflecting upwards

Peregrine Falcon

First pictures with Nikon D7100 (cropped)

Photographic Tips: Don’t use single-spot focus! or Bose SoundTrue in-ear headphones when trying to photograph birds in flight.

(The headphones are great otherwise)

Toyanogata, Niigata, Japan

January 3, 2015

unedited and uncropped

Brown-eared Bulbul
Toyanogata
(above and below)

Bean Goose

Toyanogata

Japanese White-eye

Toyanogata

DULL: Black-eared Kite

Carrion Crow

Toyanogata…time to go home

Uncategorized

Bean Goose, Black-eared Kite, Brown-eared Bulbul, Carrion Crow, Fukushimagata, Great Cormorant, Greater White-fronted Goose, Japanese White-eye, Peregrine Falcon, Toyanogata

Posted by:

Russell Jenkins

I am a photographer into birds, nature as well as art and culture. From Australia, currently based in Japan.

10 responses to “Sunny and Dull”

Benjamin Harms

January 5, 2015 at 2:48 am

Great photos Russell, looking forward to more posts this year. 🙂

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The happy wanderer.

January 5, 2015 at 5:17 am

The snow does make a great reflector, doesn't it? I enjoyed the photos as they remind me of our last visit to Japan, and look forward to more with your new "toy"!

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Stuart Price

January 5, 2015 at 11:15 am

Much nicer weather than up here Russell…………………..

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Russell Jenkins

January 6, 2015 at 12:06 am

Thank you, Benjamin.

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Russell Jenkins

January 6, 2015 at 12:11 am

Thank you, Sonja!

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Russell Jenkins

January 6, 2015 at 12:17 am

Thank you for the comment, Stuart. As I said we had one fine day. Your comment motivated me to look up and compare the weather in Niigata and where you are in Hakodate…Niigata averages 186mm of rain in January compared to just 77mm in Hakodate.Yearly Niigata has 1821mm and Hakodate 1151mm. We have 64 hours less sunlight in Niigata but it is 3-5c colder where you are in January and you have more snow of 348cm vs 217cm here. We had one fine day last week but the rest of the time it rained with strong winds…I'd prefer to take my camera out in snow than rain.

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Phil Slade

January 6, 2015 at 10:18 am

An entertaining and instructive write up Russell. I struggle with autofocus settings and can never seem to find the ideal one and I'm resigned to the fact that the setting is different on too many occasions so not every picture can be 100%. Whether a single species ever allows time to change a current setting is another matter entirely. Thank goodness for digital bins and SD cards.You had great success with those White front and Bean Geese BIF. The Black-eared Kite and the Grey Heron too – spot on. Your first snowy landscape is so good and very evocative but I hope i deon't see that much snow in 2015. Happy New Year to you.

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Choy Wai Mun

January 7, 2015 at 2:08 pm

You have to change the title of your post because I don't see anything dull about it. Nice images as usual.

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Robert Ashdown

January 8, 2015 at 3:17 am

Hi Russ. Enjoyed reading this post and viewing the images. I hope you have lots of fun with the new camera, very exciting! Loved your peregrine shots anyway, always just great to see these birds at all. I had a similar experience here recently when a peregrine shot past me in a local park, didn't even try to lift the camera, just marveled as it rocketed past. All the best for 2015 mate, from Toowoomba.

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John Holmes

January 11, 2015 at 12:11 am

Great wintery feeling to the scenery shots in the sunshine. Nice to see all the geese, too.

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About Me

I’m an Australian interested in nature, photography, culture, and art based in Japan.

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Dark, Quiet,
by Russell Jenkins
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Apart from my visit to Australia, my 2024 was fairly uneventful birding wise. I’m on holidays at the moment but rain, rain, rain, wind, wind, wind, has been the schedule since December started. Snow is on the menu for tomorrow. The max will be 3, but it has been steadily going between 3 and 5 Celsius for a while now. It is dark. The middle of the day is too dark for bird photography. I’ve had my eye on the Nikkor 600mm f6.3 for a while, but it’d be too dark at that aperture. Even f4 struggles in the middle of winter here.

The photos I’m adding today are from a stroll through Toyanogata on the first day of 2025. It was a better day than last year. I ended up huddled on a rooftop with the threat of tsunami after the earthquake, and the year before I was sick in bed. Yesterday was dark, but I could go for a walk. I saw a Great-spotted Woodpecker, a Northern Goshawk and a Japanese Green Pheasant, but I was too slow to get clear shots. I did see lots of shrikes however. I don’t have many photos of shrikes, so I might try and get some if I have a chance in the days ahead. Birds were the usual suspects, and I was focussing on a Brown-eared Bulbul when it narrowly escaped a charging shrike. The shrike was much smaller, but very fast and aggressive. I always see these things and forget to take the photo!

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I will say I had the most amazing experience with this beautiful Square-tailed Kite who didn’t care about me standing right in front of it when it came and broke off nesting materials, then circled all around me. What a wonderful experience.
A Flurry of Ospreys
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When I was a kid, I read old yellowing pages about the effects of the agricultural chemical DDT on raptors such as Ospreys and Peregrine Falcons. The birds ingested the chemical via their diet and it caused the thinning of their eggshells. The rate they were disappearing, it was unlikely they’d see the new century.

I remember seeing my first Osprey sitting high up on a dead tree at the side of the Tingalpa Reservoir, Capalaba, (Queensland, Australia) during the hot mid-afternoon sun on Christmas Day in 1988. I was thrilled and took almost a whole roll of film with my Pentax K1000 and Sigma 80-250mm lens. I think my photos just looked like a grey match stick – the stem of the branch with a grey round blob at the end of it. (Maybe expensive slide film such as Ektachrome).

In the last week of March this year, 2024, I was standing at the edge of the Fukushimagata (wetlands) in Niigata, and I saw an osprey overhead. No big deal anymore. They are resident at the wetlands, and I am used to seeing them. However, after that osprey went by, another one came from another direction. I was lining up a circling bird to photograph it when another crossed its path with a large fish. I was just there for about two hours and saw a continuous flow of busy ospreys. The wetlands are surrounded by vast, then empty rice fields that had just thawed from the winter, and the ospreys crossed the fields at random. I went for a walk away from the wetland area and I saw one osprey hurrying over my left shoulder towards the water, and as I turned to watch it, I saw another one passing over me with another fish. I took it for granted and just visited twice. I think it rained on the Tuesday, but I saw it all happening again on the Wednesday. I visited again on the Friday and stood there for four hours, but didn’t see one. The flurry had finished. It was pretty amazing to see in Japan, twenty-four years into the new century. If I think back to 1988, I had no idea, I’d ever see such a thing.
Uncropped 500mm Full-frame Bird Photos at Wetlands on a Dull Winter Day
by Russell Jenkins
March 12, 2024

What a catchy title, I know, but as my usual Goldilocks-self, I had been pining for that 400mm 4.5 Nikon lens for the last year and a bit. For me, quick and nimble gets most of my best pics, but my experience yesterday, made me feel ‘Goldilocks’ should stick with the porridge she has. 500mm maybe just right for now.

It was sunny a fair bit after the January 1 earthquake, but I didn’t’t feel like standing at the edge of a remote wetland worrying about aftershocks and the near-by sea. Yesterday, was my first outing to Fukushimagata since December 28, 2023. It was pretty dull when I got there and I think most of the swans and geese have already headed north. I saw an eagle back in December, but I think any “Steller’s”, would be gone by now, though I think we should still have a chance to see a “white-tail” until the end of March. The joy of the day was the continuing views of osprey appearing every few minutes and catching fish around me.

I think my 500mm f5.6 is still pretty nice despite squeaks and rattles after five years of regular use. The new 600mm f6.3 might suit me better if I love standing around the wetlands, but as you can see by the dullness of these images, I am wary of going from 5.6 to 6.3, even though it is such a small difference.

Way back when I was young, osprey and peregrines were fading in numbers and became symbols of the damage of chemicals to the environment but I’m happy to announce that these many years later, osprey are one of the more common raptors I see in Niigata.

They seemed to be finding fish just behind a small island not so far off-shore from where I was standing but they’d disappear behind the reeds. I could hear the ‘splash’, but would have to wait for them to come back up before I could see them again.

Some ducks still remain, always lots of Great Cormorants and Great Grebe, with a few Marsh Harriers floating around the place. I love seeing them up against the snow-covered mountains. Of course it’s nice to have close-ups, but framing them in the surrounding environment is more, er, more. It’s more to look at?

Well. Not much snow this winter, and it’s raining here much of the time but I hope to return soon. March at Fukushimagata has its surprises.