ROSYFINCH

Asian Rosyfinches on the Notsuke peninsula, Hokkaido The next morning, an excited guest gesticulated from the breakfast table towards a nearby tree. Amazingly, the female Fish Owl was roosting in plain sight, barely 10 metres away. To see this nocturnal creature at all was a dream come true, but seeing it by day defied belief. Yet still Yoroushi Onsen was not finished with us. The lodge’s bird table was packed with Jays, Marsh and Willow Tits, Great Spotted Woodpeckers, and Nuthatches. A Brown Dipper fed in the stream (thereby completing my family set) and the rarely seen Solitary Snipe huddled beneath a snowbank. Forsaking Yoroushi was a wrench. Heading north we reached Hokkaido’s Okhotsk coast at Abashiri, then birded our way eastwards.