With all the freezing conditions of this winter there were many opportunities to shoot ice scenery. Frozen waterfalls are most popular. This is a little different. Water was spraying out of the hole of a fractured water pipe near a hot spring. Despite the temperature of the water ice had formed on the trees and bushes around it. With the sun out it provided a ton of magical mystical scenes!
Thrushes, Starlings, Wrynecks and Bulbuls all like this place. It has some Multiflora Rose ノイバラbushes with berries. It also gives them protection from the Harriers. Today our yearly guest, Naumann's Thrush, ハチジョウツグミ
Friday January 8th
Snowy, cloudy and a few sunny periods. We donned our winter gear (including crampons) and went for a walk. I often wondered what the place would look like when covered in snow. After so many summer and spring walks, here is the winter version
How did you all get along with all the snow we had?! I prayed for snow all year long, hoping to see a thick pack of it, but what we got was mostly icy conditions and a lot of powder snow of the type that doesn't stick to anything. We drove around Kyushu, planned our route according to the weather forecast and the first snow we saw was around Mt Kuju. We camped in Billie our RV for 3 days in freezing weather, didn't leave the car much on the first day, but became a bit braver on the second. Our drinking water froze and the pump stopped working, we feasted on frozen cucumber that tasted truly horrible and suffered from-heated-toilet-seat-withdrawal symptoms. But generally we were happy. Thanks to lots of blankets, thermal wear and kailo's. Jaap climbed Mt Hosshozan and some of his amazing photos are in here. I looked for birds at my usual checkpoints. Camera work was hard. My cold fingers could not compete with the speed of wings. And I was constantly struggling with exposure. Snow is so very white!
