Firstly, Alice has checked on Nethy and no news really, she is still in Guinea Bissau, but the map has been up-dated to 4 pm yesterday (Thurs).
While I was away, Alice reported to you that I had texted her from Japan to say that I was seeing ospreys, and in number. Being largely a summer visitor to Japan, I must say I had not expected to see them and certainly not as many as I did. I was in the south island, Kyusha in Kagoshima Prefecture, near a place called Arasaki – a fabulous place for wintering cranes. Where I stayed, at one point I had 9,500 mixed cranes of five species, outside my room window.
Anyway, ospreys winter in this part of Japan and it was possible to scan the bay there and see as many as 20+ ospreys either fishing or sitting on poles and other infrastructure, all within a fairly small area. In all my time of working with ospreys, I have never experienced what amounted to a flock of them. A dozen or more could all be fishing, quite close together.
On one day cruising around this area I eventually lost count of how many in total I saw, certainly 50+, easily. It was wonderful to see them, and especially so many. It was worrying though, to see them perched and fishing amongst, what appeared to be either fishing nets set in the shallow bays, or nets set, upon which seaweed was being grown (a staple of the Japanese diet). Thankfully, I did not see any that had become trapped, but I am sure it must happen.
Many of you I know, are followers of my colleague David Sexton's work with white-tailed eagles on Mull, so you might be interested in this too. I also spent some time in eastern Hokkaido, Japan's northern most island. Compared to Kyushu in the south, it was deep winter in Hokkaido with frozen stretches of sea! This part of Japan is fabled for it's Steller's sea eagles, surely the world's ultimate raptor, a simply stunning enormous beast of an eagle.
Breeding in Eastern Russia, most of the world's population of this rare and vulnerable raptor winters on Hokkaido. Like the white-tailed eagle, it is a very much a marine eagle, largely coastal in winter distribution and feeding on fish. It's possible to watch them flying behind the fishing trawlers as they return to harbour. Watching sea eagles float past on floes of sea-ice is quite a sight too.
At a place called Lake Furen, I witnessed the most unbelievable sight – a mixed gathering of 350+ Steller's sea eagles and over 150+ White-tailed eagles, sat around together on a frozen lake and in surrounding trees – a flock of over 500 eagles! If ever there is a bird spectacle in the world to see, then this is it. I feel mean about doing so now, but I'm afraid I couldn't help myself but text David about what I was seeing. He did not reply! I thought though at one point, that I heard the faint sound of weeping down the phone. It truly was the most fabulous sight I have ever seen.
Talking of fish-eating birds, the other species I was lucky enough to see was Blakiston's fish owl, an absolute shaggy monster of an owl, the biggest in the world - it's like a bale of straw. They catch live fish, not osprey-like by plunging, but by sitting on rocks by streams and then just jumping in on some unsuspecting trout. A magnificent creature.
Anyway, it's March this weekend, and fair weather in prospect here in Blighty, so maybe we'll see the first signs of returning summer visitors, unlikely to be ospreys quite yet, but sand martins and wheatears are often amongst the first migrants. If you're out and about this weekend, in the south of England, I'd not be surprised if you saw something.
Richard Thaxton - Loch Garten site manager.