HOKKAIDŌ, JAPAN
Hokkaidō Island offers great winter birding opportunities, delightful cuisine, and relaxing Japanese baths.
Hokkaidō Island in northern Japan is one of my favorite locations for photography in the world. I have been to this rather arctic island twice in February to photograph birds. The weather on Hokkaidō in winter resembles spring on the Varanger Peninsula in Norway, and some of the snowstorms can definitely be heavy!
Blakiston’s Fish-Owls, Red-crowned Cranes, and Steller’s Sea-Eagles are the main targets on Hokkaidō, but the island also offers good chances for Black Kites, White-tailed Eagles, Pintails, and Whooper Swans. The fishing ports attract Scaups, Red-breasted Mergansers, Goosanders, and Harlequin Ducks. They are easily photographed, especially if you use a car as a blind. Many gulls favor the ports, too. For a bird photographer, Hokkaidō in winter is full of great opportunities!
Hokkaidō can be reached from Tokyo by plane or bullet train. A flight from Tokyo to the Kushiro Airport takes about an hour. The island has lots of lodging at various levels. Renting a car is easy, but the roads can be icy and covered with snow. You will find great cuisine at Hokkaidō, and a Japanese bath puts a crown on any day.
Red-crowned Crane
The main three feeding stations for Red-crowned Cranes on Hokkaidō are Akan, Tsurui Ito Tancho, and Tsuruimidai, all of which are close to the city of Kushiro. Thanks to the regular feeding, the cranes are relatively used to people and will come close to photographers. The biggest problem is to single out one or two individual birds, because whenever the cranes start their signature dance there are always other birds either in front of them or in the background. To make sure you’ll end up with good images, it’s necessary to spend a lot of time at the feeding stations. The Red-crowned Cranes are very photogenic in snowfall or flying against a blue sky.
In my opinion, Akan along road 240 is the best feeding station, and it’s also the most popular place for photographing Red-crowned Cranes. On clear mornings the place is backlit for a brief moment when the sun rises from behind the hill and creates a beautiful setting. But if it’s very cold, the cranes might not come to the feeding at all; instead they will spend the morning in a nearby open-water river. In the afternoon at 2:00 the station keeper feeds the cranes live trout, and then there may be hundreds of photographers! Many arrive several hours in advance to get the best places in the front row. A number of them come to photograph the White-tailed Eagles diving into the midst of the cranes in hopes of catching trout. The situations can be truly magnificent, especially when, in midair, the cranes kick the eagles as the eagles approach with their claws out, ready to grab a fish. Occasionally there are also some hopeful Steller’s Sea-Eagles, but they aren’t comfortable with diving in too close to the photographers, so they tend to settle on snatching fish from the White-tailed Eagles.
The Otowa Bridge near Tsurui is another classic spot for photographing Red-crowned Cranes as they roost in the river. But the birds are mostly quite far away, and the place is better for taking landscape images of the cranes in their environment. Some of the images I’ve seen from the Otowa Bridge are great, but to get good shots the circumstances must be just right—preferably clear skies and very cold temperatures, which makes the birds along the open-water river become sugar-coated with frost and turns the water to steam. Early mornings offer the best light conditions, with the rising sun lending color to the frosty trees and steam. Still, evening can yield great images, when the cranes return to roost for the night. There’s a chance for landscape images of the cranes in the winding river from a high point on a hill north of the bridge.
Steller’s Sea-Eagle
Despite its name, Lake Fuhren is actually a sea bay that freezes over in the winter. It’s a good spot for photographing Steller’s Sea-Eagles. In some winters, hundreds of Steller’s Sea-Eagles and White-tailed Eagles gather on the ice in front of Lake Sunset Restaurant along road 44. The restaurant owner is a photographer and feeds the eagles fish on the ice every day. Some of the fishermen take photographers farther out on the ice in a sled, where it’s possible to photograph eagles in a slightly different setting.
Still, the best place to shoot Steller’s Sea-Eagles is Rausu. Usually by the middle of February the Sea of Okhotsk has pushed drift ice into the Nemuro Bay, where the ice stays for a couple of weeks. The eagles have grown accustomed to fish guts from the fishing boats, and during the drift ice season a dozen tourist boats leave the harbor every morning at 5:00 and 9:00, taking photographers out to the eagles on the drift ice. The photo trips last about four hours, depending on how long it takes the boats to reach the drift ice. Sometimes it takes just 10 minutes, other times it can take well over an hour.
A pair of Red-crowned Cranes calling, taken at the Akan Crane Centre (Grus japonensis).I angled my camera to conceal a restless background behind a wall of snow in the foreground.
Nikon D300S, 70–200mm f/2.8, 1/500 second, 110mm, f/8.0, ISO 200, one-shot focus with one focusing point, handheld camera. Akan, Hokkaidō, February 2010.
In the winter boat trips are arranged from the town of Rausu to the drift ice, where it’s possible to get very close to the White-tailed Eagles and the majestic Steller’s Sea-Eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla, Haliaeetus pelagicus)
Nikon D3S, 500mm f/4, 1/640 second, f/9.0, ISO 2500, continuous focusing with 51 points, Gitzo monopod with Wimberley Sidekick. Rausu, Hokkaidō, February 2010.
When the weather is clear I recommend taking the 5:00 boat. The eagles can be photographed with the sunrise in the background, and in general, the light is much nicer than later on. If it is cloudy, the 9:00 trip might be better. After you have reached the drift ice, the fishermen choose the highest peak and cover it with fish guts. Then they drive back a little and wait for the gulls, Large-billed Crows, and eagles to come and feed on the fish. By the time the eagles have come in by the dozens, the boats start to slowly move closer again. On the 5:00 trip, the sun rises about this time, so the eagles are backlit. By the time the sun has risen above the horizon, the boat is very close to the eagles and it’s time to use a 500mm telephoto lens to take extreme closeups of Steller’s Sea-Eagles and White-tailed Eagles. On my first trip I couldn’t believe how the eagles were not the least bit worried about the 10 or so photographers bustling about on the boat deck.
On the boat I prefer using a monopod and a Wimberley Sidekick. The monopod takes the weight of the camera and makes following the flying eagles easier than when handholding the camera. The boat engines are switched off for long periods of time while the eagles are feeding, so the deck is not vibrating all the time. A monopod is easier in a crowd than a tripod.
During the morning session the eagles get fed from several ice floes. Usually the fishermen throw fish from the boat into the open sea, and some of the eagles come fishing for them. Having photographed eagles at close range from a Japanese boat, I swore I would never again spend a single day in a White-tailed Eagle blind in Finland, but I have to admit my resolution did not last long. The material from a blind is just completely different.
This backlit profile of a Steller’s Sea-Eagle was photographed on an early morning boat trip from Rausu (Haliaeetus pelagicus). The only way to get this close to the eagles on Hokkaidō is from a boat.
Nikon D3S, 500mm f/4, 1/2000 second, f/8.0, ISO 6400, one-shot focus with one focusing point, Gitzo monopod with Wimberley Sidekick. Rausu, Hokkaidō, February 2010.
Blakiston’s Fish-Owl
The rare Blakiston’s Fish-Owl is a dream species to every bird photographer traveling to Hokkaidō.
On the shores of a river crossing the yard of the Japanese Washino-yado inn just outside the township of Rausu stands an old bus acting as a heated blind for photographers. Blakiston’s Fish-Owls can also be photographed from a car, but good locations are few and far between, so you should negotiate with the innkeeper to get a specific parking spot, and get there with plenty of time before sunset. The Blakiston’s Fish-Owls are fed with fish in pools made among the rocks in the river, and the owls’ fishing activities look very natural. The fishing area is lit by spotlights and the use of flash is banned. Usually these large and magnificent owls announce their arrival with deep hollow hoots. During the night several owls may visit the location, but sometimes it’s a long wait for just one bird.
A Blakiston’s Fish-Owl spotlighted by halogen lamps (Ketupa blakistoni). Additional light hits the bird from fellow photographers’ flashes.
Canon EOS-1D Mark III, 500mm f/4, 1/40 second, f/4.0, ISO 3200, one-shot focus with one focusing point, beanbag on car window. Washinado-yado, Hokkaidō, February 2008.
Whooper Swans are fed in winter on Lake Kussharo, where they can be photographed with wide lenses (Cygnus cygnus)
Nikon D3S, 14–24mm, 1/320 second, 19mm, f/13.0, ISO 1600, continuous focus with 51 focusing points, handheld camera. Lake Kussharo, Hokkaidō, February 2010.
Lake Kussharo
Whooper Swans winter all over Hokkaidō, but Lake Kussharo is probably one of the most famous spots. The shores stay open with heat coming from hot springs, and the swans are also being fed. You can shop locally for grain and bread crumbs to feed them. It’s the feeding that makes the swans so approachable on Hokkaidō. In February 2010, the fearless and photographer-friendly Lake Kussharo swans inspired and amused Hannu Hautala, the Grand Old Man of Finnish wildlife photography who has more swan photography under his belt than he cares to remember.
The Grand Old Man of Finnish nature photography, Hannu Hautala, is surrounded by the confident and cooperative Lake Kussharo swans.