Participants who join my annual Hokkaido birding photography tour are seeing Hokkaido with an experienced local pro team, and me a local pro photographer who has over twenty five years experience leading Japan photography workshop tours.  One of the first conversations I have with my birdings groups while on the road to our first birding encounter is, Japan to date has over 600 bird species recorded, over 60% of these are migratory.  Species that are either endemic or sub-regional endemic include: Blakiston’s Fish-owl (Bubo blakistoni), Red-Crowned crane (Grus japonensis), Pyer’s Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), Japanese White-eye (Zosterops japonicus), and Black Kite (Milvus migrans).  There are over 60 species in this category.  Japan is latitudinally long at over 3,000 kilometers. In the Northwest Pacific Ocean, climates range from sub-arctic conditions in the north, to subtropical in the south. There are two distinct ecological lines dividing Japan’s natural indigenous plant and animal life. The Blakiston’s Line and the Watase’s Line. Due to this uniquely rare ecological condition, Japan is abundantly avifauna rich, making it the perfect location for birding photography.  Many of the aforementioned bird species can be found in Hokkaido, but I wanted to mention some of the less well-known species that you may find while taking a Hokkaido Birding Photo Workshop Adventure.  The first is the glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus), the second largest gull in the world which breeds in Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and winters in the South. This dominant gull is usually very pale in all plumage, and mostly with no black on either of the wings or the tail. Another less often seen bird are Little grebes (Tachybaptus ruficollis) also known as dabchicks, which are quite small and rather dumpy birds with blunt rear ends. They are dark brown, with a chestnut-brown throat and face. This chestnut color becomes richer and more shiny during the breeding season.  Another not often photographed bird that resides in Hokkaido is the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) that is often confused with the Japanese tit Bird (Parus Minor) and is also known as the Oriental tit. Both birds are passerine bird of Japan and the far East of Russia. Until a few years ago, they were classified as a subspecies of the great tit (Paris Major), but studies have shown that the two species coexist in Japan and the Russian Far East without intermingling or frequent hybridization. In my twenty-plus years photographing them in Hokkaido, Japan, I still sometimes refer to them as Black-capped Chickadees as they are similar to the North American species and are difficult to tell apart for the newbie birder, and can sometimes give the veteran birding pause to identify.   A favorite woodpecker of mine to photograph in Hokkaido is the Japanese Pygmy woodpecker or (Yungipicus kizuki) is a species of woodpecker, which is found in coniferous and deciduous forests in Japan and neighboring nations. This species has also been placed in the genus Dendrocopos or Picoides.  An elusive bird is the Eurasian nuthatch (Sitta europaea) or wood nuthatch.  It’s a small passerine bird found throughout temperate Asia and in Europe, where its name is simply ‘the nuthatch’.  The nuthatch has a long pointed bill, short tail, and a black mask.  It’s usually spotted and photographed in single or in pairs.  It often feeds among the canopy, but it will take advantage of fallen seeds when the opportunity presents itself, one of the images attached to this newsletter is a image I took of a nuthatch while leading a private Hokkaido Birding Photography Tour for international birders.