Hokkaido 28 Feb 2018 (Day 6)

After a short sleep, we returned to the photo spot. At around 4am, we saw a pair of Blakiston's Fish Owl visiting the feeding pond.

one of our major targets

Blakiston's Fish Owl

we saw two showing very well, include courtship feeding

a pair of Blakiston's Fish Owl

we could recognized the individual by the ring, WW, which was born in 2014 

and this one, NN, an unknown?

The owls only showed one round, then we headed to Rausu harbour for our Eagle ferry which departed at 5am immediately.. So we were quite lucky to saw the owl at 4. For the owl, you need a special shutter speed at 1/80s, making photographing challenging.. (more details here: http://fishowl-observatory.org/blakistonsfishowl.html ) 

For the eagles, I took tons of photos of both eagles and other birds during the ferry, I need time to edit and probably publish another post later..

there were many boats for eagle, we all gathered before 5am

and met the drifted ice, and eagles before sunrise 

eagles, gulls, crows. sun

eagles and ice

eagles and sunrise

White-tailed Eagle

Steller's Sea Eagle, my bird of the trip

one photo to conclude what were we doing during the ferry

The ferry costed us JPY 10,000 each, which is quite expensive but highly recommended, as in this video, this is one of a life-time experience!

After the ferry, we were back to Washi-no-yado and had a nice breakfast and took a short break.

Brown Dipper, outside the dining room

Brown Dipper

our breakfast

Day 6 is an easy day, we were tired after the owl and eagles, so we just checked the shore and harbor later, and the river in Rasus. Then lunch, checked again.. and we were back to Washi-no-yado.

Harlequin Duck, a beautiful male

then an immature male

Glaucous, Slaty-backed and a hidden Mew

my only photo of Tufted Duck of this tirp

hillside in Rausu

lunch in seafood market

my favorite

my favorite too

hillside in Rausu again, sadly we could not find any hawk eagle..

Crested Kingfisher is not rare in Hokkaido, reminding me I missed the HK one recently...

female Harlequin

male Harlequin

Mew Gull

this one caused us an ID problem, because of the smaller size, different jizz etc.. but turned to be just a Slaty-backed Gull

you can see how small when this compared to other Slaty-backed

and a first winter Glaucous-winged Gull

final bird of today, a group of Whooper Swan

the final dinner in Washi-no-yado in this trip

and this night, the end of Day 6, would be a long night. As the owls not coming as frequent as before (due to breeding season?), I was going to stay here overnight!