Japan was never very high on my travel list…especially birding in the winter. My home base is on the Oregon Coast, where it is much cloudier and colder than I would like, so I prefer to seek out birding locations where I can get a little sun and a whole lot of birds. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the appeal of winter birding in Japan. Dancing cranes, fishing owls, and ice surfing eagles! There are obviously a lot of attractions that many of my Facebook friends and acquaintances have been posting about their Northern Japan trips, which led to my FOMO and ultimately to us booking travel and a guide to see what it’s all about.
Upon landing at the airport in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands, we got in the rental car and headed off to the Red-crowned Crane Sanctuary in Tsurui. Along the highway, we saw a few cranes here and there, but nothing like at the sanctuary! Dozens of photographers were already there, so we hurried in and set up our gear against the split rail fence to capture this magical experience. There were tiny snowflakes gently falling, not enough to really notice, except that every once in a while, you would notice a piece with the sun shining off, and it looked like glitter. Everyone was so engrossed in watching these birds that the only sound was shutters clicking, cranes clucking and bellowing, and a few Asian Tits in the trees behind us. It was too early in the season for the cranes to seriously consider mating, so they mostly just milled about pecking at whatever food was still on the ground from the feeding earlier that day and chasing off other birds that offended them.
The weather was pretty rough over the next few days, and our goal was seawatching, which resulted in your usual suspects: Harlequin Ducks, guillemots, lots of Black Scoters, and various gulls. Since it was so windy and cold at the capes, we ended up driving through some of the ports to see if the weather had driven any birds into the calmer waters.
Fortunately for us, the weather improved just in time for us to go on the Shiretoko Nature Cruise, world-renowned for the Steller’s Sea-Eagles on the drift ice. We boarded the boat just after 8:00 am and made our way to the bow for the voyage. Not too much to report on the trip out, other than our lifer Thick-billed Murre, but once we were a few miles away from land, we started to notice Steller’s Sea-Eagles flying past towards the direction we were headed. Then, a few minutes later, we pulled into the drift ice with nearly 500 Steller’s Sea-Eagles and a couple of dozen White-tailed Eagles eagerly awaiting our arrival.
Our boat was the first one to reach the ice, but others quickly followed. The deck hands got busy chucking fish chunks to the hungry eagles, and we sat for 1 ½ hours watching the eagles. You could almost reach out and pat them on the head (of course, we did not). There were groups perched on the ice all around us, gingerly walking towards the fish chunks, and battling it out over the morsels. The sun was out, which made the cold temperatures tolerable. After we all got our fill of the eagles, the boat turned back, and we jetted to the port, where I was surprised to get a can of hot chocolate from a vending machine – it came out toasty hot!
As I said, Japan wasn’t somewhere I had just been dying to go, but seeing the eagles so close and the magical cranes made me realize why it is such a special place. This was just a small part of our trip there – more to come soon!
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