Hokkaido Birding Tour - Steller’s Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus) Feeding Stations

BLOG » Hokkaido Birding Tour - Steller’s Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus) Feeding Stations

Monday, October 17, 2022

By Japan Dreamscapes Photography Tours

We Hokkaido locals are very protective of our families, neighbors, land, and way of life, similar to Alaskans. And we don’t take kindly to Tokyo or international tourists spoiling places that our children, families, and friends use to get together to enjoy picnics, camping, or a bbq. Also, we almost never share our private bird watching photograph locations, but from time to time I take return clients who have become close friends. Personally, the locations where I photographed the largest herd of Eizo Sika deer (Cervus nippon) on our planet are also a closely guarded secret. In all honesty, we just don’t want loads of vehicles and tourist buses driving in our neighborhoods, parking in front of our houses, then walking around taking pictures of our homes, family, and friends. Some people would call the police, but think about it for a moment, would you want bus loads of tourists sitting and walking around your house or in your neighborhood? And that is why we Hokkaido locals steer tourists to Rausu to photograph the Steller’s sea eagles (Haliaeetus pelagicus). Also, we steer tourists to Notsuke peninsula to photograph Eizo Sika Deer as well as other birding opportunities in this area. For close to 25 years now, I have had a satellite office in Hokkaido, and I am close with the community especially with other the photography community, hotel and onsen owners, fishermen and the First Nations people of Japan, The Ainu.

While I am leading groups of international photographers on my annual Hokkaido Photography birding workshop tours, I assure them with a 99% certainty that we will spot and photograph the Steller’s sea eagle, the White-tailed eagle, Shima Enaga (Aegithalos caudatus japonicus) and other Hokkaido wildlife. Across Hokkaido, wildlife agencies have erected feeding stations for wildlife, and along the pacific coastline there are feeding stations for the Steller’s sea eagles and White-tailed eagles; these stations are especially important when fishing is slow, or foul weather and high seas keep the pack ice under the surface, and the raptors turn to hunting the shoreline. If even the shoreline isn’t yielding a reliable source of fish, they turn inland for sustenance, and during these lean times, house pets and children are closely watched when venturing outside. Even during foul weather, fishermen don’t go out, as they do not know when or where the pack ice will resurface, and trust me you do not want to be in a boat when pack ice comes popping up to the surface, you could easily be stuck in an ice jam or even worse, sunk.

Between Rausu to Nemuro is 160 km (100 miles), there are several photographers' hotels, plus this stretch of road is where photographers come from around the world to photograph Hokkaido’s raptors. And from Nemuro to Rausu there are about a dozen photographers’ hotels, where Japanese photographers stay, the only non-Japanese who stay at these hotels are my clients on my photo workshops. And some evening in the dining hall, there are Tokyo photographers drinking a little too much and talking a little too loudly about camera gear, and how they are going to get the best shots the next day because of their gear. At my table, we talk a little about gear, wildlife, Japanese culture and other topics of interest, after dinner I take 15 minutes to talk about our next day, what time we will meeting the lobby, and what we will be photographing and what gear is needed, where we will stop for lunch, and what time we will return to our lodging for dinner. Also, during winter I never stay in Rausu, due to the possibility of storms hitting, and some years the road is closed for 2 - 3 days, and my team and I have seen it closed up to a week due to it being washed out. During winter, I go into Rausu with clients to board vessels to photograph the Steller’s sea eagle and White-tailed eagle on pack ice, but only if the weather is fine, and our friends at the chartered boat company call us the evening before to talk about weather. And even some evenings when we get the green light the night before, and we leave arrive in Rausu just before sunrise, the weather has turned, and our date to board a boat to photograph the raptors is canceled due to rough seas being forecasted. And around the docks are dozens of international photographers and other agency tour leaders, 98% who drove in on a tourist bus and are stuck in Rausu. Since my team and I are locals and we know the region like the back of our hands, we pile back into the SUV’s, and we are off birding in the region. Around lunch time we return to Rausu, and if you like seafood as much as my team and I do, Rausu is Nirvana. During lunchtime on these foul weather days, we always hear other photographers and photo workshop leaders talking about maybe tomorrow will be better, or some other excuses, about how difficult or dangerous it is for their tourist bus to drive up the coastline looking for birding locations. My group looks at each other with smiles on our faces as we have full memory cards of raptors and other wildlife. Then we drive out of Rausu to continue our day of Hokkaido wildlife photography, and we stop from time to time for Hokkaido minimalist landscape shots. Then once we return to our lodgings, I already know the Tokyo photographers day was a washout, so I quickly edit a few photos for dinner, then during dinner I show a few images of raptors or other wildlife to my clients that we photographed together, and I make double sure the Tokyo photographers can hear and see, and, thankfully, on evenings when I’m showing images from a day of successful Hokkaido birding photography, I do not have to listen to them talk about camera gear all dinner, and how great of photographers they are. And that is just about the time when the owner of the hotel, who is a close family friend, comes over to freshen my tea, and gives me a kick and says in ‘quiet’ Japanese be kind to my Tokyo guests, while at the same time smiling and laughing. Presidents and executives of Canon, Nikon, Sony, and a few other makers stay at this camera person’s hotel, but they are usually with me or my friend who is another local pro sponsored photographer and they are well looked after as are my clients. For some reason, the average Japanese photographer or visitor thinks they can just show up to Hokkaido and the wildlife will come to them. Sorry, it does work that way.

See Hokkaido’s Raptors, Minimalist Landscapes, and Wildlife with me in 2023! Two Spots Just Opened!