My annual Hokkaido birding tour always includes Steller's Sea Eagles Haliaeetus pelagicus), which can be spotted and photographed from Rausu to Nemuro and even in the Kushiro region when the pack-ice is thin, and fishing is slow. Also, from Nemuro to Rausu, approximately 160 km (100 miles), there are over  a dozen points where the fishing is especially good, and sea eagles can often be spotting at these points.  Also, fishermen and the raptors are in perfect sync with each other, and fishermen in the region don’t let anything go to waste, and they are more than happy to feed the left overs to the sea eagles, of course to get these photo ops, you need to be a local, and know the regions rhythm.  One day you may spot a hundred raptors in a region where fishermen are giving hand outs, and the next day you come back expecting the same, but zero raptors, and you find yourself asking where are the raptors?  They are either out fishing on the pack ice, or are at one of the rich fishing point along the coastline, or getting a handout from locals.   The Steller's Sea Eagle prefers a diet of trout, salmon, or other fish but will eat sea lions or land animals when fishing is slow.  The Steller’s sea eagle photo attached to this newsletter, I photographed about mid point between Rausu, and Nemuro, while leading my annual Hokkaido photography tour, this day the seas were rough so there were no boats going out to photograph the raptors, as the pack-ice was submerged and the Steller’s sea eagle, and white tailed eagles were fishing either from the shoreline, or on ice close to shore.  For this shot I used the Nikon Z7ll and Sigma’s 120-300mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM Sport with X2 teleconverter giving me a focal range 240-600mm. My camera setting were ISO 500, f/11, and my shutter speed was 1/3200s.