Starting in 2025, I will once again run my annual Hokkaido-only Birding & landscape Photography tour workshop, February 1-9, 2025. Of Cours I will continue running my annual Snow Monkey, Mt. Fuji, & Hokkaido photo tour with annual dates February 14 - 24. My Hokkaido only photo tour will take place exclusively on Japan's northern Island Hokkaido, well except for our flight from Tokyo to Hokkaido in the early am on day one. The highlights of this winter Hokkaido Japan photo tour are the Steller’s Sea Eagles (Haliaeetus pelagicus) and the White-Tailed Eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla). With these two species of raptors close cousins, there is often an uneasy truce between the local wildlife, the White-tailed Eagle, and the seasonally migratory Steller's Sea Eagle. The battles between the two factions rage from time to time and can turn brutal, especially when fresh prey is spotted among the pack ice floes. However, from time to time, when the weather turns bleak on the pack ice, the birds return to dry land, and I have often seen The Steller's Sea Eagles and White-tailed Eagles along with ravens huddle shielding themselves from the windchill. However, this sympathetic behavior is a pure survival instinct and is always a short-lived cessation of hostilities among the eagle cousins and other avian wildlife. As soon as hunting resumes, this becomes their primary focus, and as a member of the uneasy cabal catches a fish, a rodent, a rabbit, or any form of edible prey, the battle begins anew. The Steller’s Sea Eagle is an ice age relic, never needing to evolve due to its apex predator perfection, so the first capture is usually by a Steller’s Sea Eagle. Once the prey is caught, the successful hunter immediately tries to devour it, but on many occasions, the successful hunter takes to the air to defend its catch while others seek higher elevations to start their dive bombing or a sneak attack from below or a blind spot in the hunter’s line of sight to strip the prize away. For this reason, the perfect spot to capture these images is from the deck of a ship photographing the Steller's Sea Eagle and the White-tailed Eagles. Other species we will spot and photograph are the Red-crowned cranes (Grus japonensis), the Eurasian nuthatch (Sitta europaea), The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus), The Ezo Sika deer (Cervus Nippon), The great spotted woodpecker (dendrocopos major), The whopper swan (Cygnus cygnus), Japanese pygmy woodpecker (Yungipicus kikuki), Shima Enaga (Aegithalos caudatus), among other species and landscapes, and minimalist Hokkaido landscapes.
