Update from Kyushu

A few images from a productive few days on Kyushu below. Full coverage of our Japan trip will feature as an illustrated daily diary on this blog when I'm back and have chance to sort through my images properly - I'll also include galleries of certain species as and when I get round to it.

We've had two great days of weather on Kyushu, although today has been truly atrocious - the rain didn't stop and the light has been poor at best. So far we're not doing too well for targets with Japanese Murrelet, Japanese Woodpigeon and Scaly-sided Merganser not seen - though the latter hasn't been seen by anyone so far this winter.

Black-tailed Gull, Kadogawa

One of the many Black-eared Kites coming to bread at Kadogawa

Forest Wagtail at Miike

Four of an impressive 250+ Saunders' Gulls seen at Yatsushiro

Hooded Cranes getting an absolute drenching in the appalling conditions at Arasaki today

Oh, and for the record, the Baer's Pochard was back on its swimming pool in Suminoe Park, Osaka, on Saturday morning - I had some great views and will post more pics when I'm home.

Russia preview

A dearth of coverage about the above trip on here admittedly, but the past month or so has seen me slowly processing photographs and writing the trip report in my limited free time. The trip report is gradually nearing completion and I should have it online for reading by mid-August, available on the blog as normal.

A few tasters in the meantime; a full album of images does currently reside on Flickr which is available for viewing - here's the link.

Spring 2014 summary

An utter lack of posts on this blog is largely down to a total lack of time; it seems having an SLR means that you spend most of your free time processing photos and writing a blog post too has been beyond me in such a hectic spring. I've actually been working on my Flickr portfolio, which you can visit at https://www.flickr.com/jrmjones/.

April and May weren't exactly busy for me on the bird front; I visited Southern France at the end of March for a weekend with Dan Pointon and collected Citril Finch, a distant Wallcreeper and, erm, Fischer's Lovebird for WP tally. Easter weekend was again spent with Dan (and his dad), this time in Corsica where we had a truly wonderful four days. Great views of both the nuthatch and finch were afforded and there were some great orchids too, not to mention the scenery and food. What a beautiful place!

  Corsican Nuthatch

Tongue Orchid

I was fortunate enough to get a new car in early May and that's naturally helped to mobilise me considerably. As such, lots more trips during the month - mainly for orchids and butterflies:

Grizzled Skipper

Fly Orchid

 Pearl-bordered Fritillary

 Burnt-tip Orchid

But also a few birds too, like the Dotterels on Pendle Hill in Lancashire. Having these things running around you feeding and interacting, utterly unconcerned, was a genuinely astounding experience and I'll be sure to go back next year.

About as good as it gets ...

So, that is a whistlestop summary of my spring. Not really done it justice, but check out my Flickr page for plenty more images. I've yet to get round to uploading all the Corsica images, but that'll be my first task on return from Russia - another reason I've not had time to do anything to this blog, organising the trip there has been a bit hectic..! We're off to the Ural Mountains for a couple of weeks, primarily bird-related but with the outside chance of some interesting mammals too (Brown Bear, Siberian Weasel etc). We may also have the chance to do some pioneering stuff down towards Kazakhstan. Watch this space, I hope!